this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2022
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Sanctions were a poorly thought out response. Russia started a conflict in Ukraine, and Europe chose to participate in that conflict by sanctioning Russia. Once Europe became a party to the conflict, Europe can no longer complain that Russia is retaliating against Europe economically. This is a fight Europe chose and these are the consequences.
But it can, the same as Russia can complain that NATO members are supporting Ukraine.
True. But this fight was chosen in response to Russias agression. Diplomatic solutions before the war failed because of Russias maximalist claims.
It can complain all it likes, but the fact is that Europe chose to start an economic war with Russia and it is losing this war. Meanwhile, Russia is systematically destroying the Ukrainian army and NATO weaponry in Ukraine instead of complaining.
If I punch your friend in the face and you choose to stab yourself in the gut that's a response. It's just not a smart response. Meanwhile, Russia asked for very reasonable things such as Ukraine being neutral and implementing Minsk agreements which both Ukraine and NATO agreed to. If you think that's Russia being maximalist then you have no clue.
Europe responded with sanctions because of Russias war. Economic wise both sides are losing. The intertwined economy between Russia and the EU is breaking up hard.
The EU did not stab itself. You fail to see that the current economic difficulties in the EU do come from the fact that they try to be dependent of Russia energy deliveries (besides the fact that the delivery stopped mostly). Geopolitically if the EU is smart in future investments it will be more resilient and self-sufficient regarding energy resources. But this is not solved by buying gas from the US and Saudi Arabia.
The reason the economy is suffering so hard is the pace of the break-up. Generally the direction of being less reliant on gas is a good decision.
We all know why Europe responded. This isn't what we're debating. My original points were that Europe made a choice to respond, and that this choice was poorly thought out.
Russia has been building up its domestic economy since 2014, and made sure it wasn't reliant on the west for anything essential. The narrative that both sides are losing is false. Russian economy has largely stabalized at this point with inflation being down in the past couple of months and prices on essentials being stable:
Meanwhile, inflation in Europe continues to spiral out of control with essentials like food and energy becoming scarce and it's not even winter yet. The difference is that Europe was reliant on Russia for bare essentials such as fertilizer and fuel. Europe is not able to replace these things after six months of trying.
On the other hand, Russia was getting nice to have things from the west that people can live without. It's also worth noting that western companies losing business in Russia are symmetrically hurt by the loss of business while they create niches for domestic companies to fill stimulating Russian economy.
What's actually happening to EU is that it's headed for an economic collapse because it's not able to replace around 60% of the energy it was getting from Russia. This is causing European industry to shut down and input costs for everything to surge. I highly recommend watching this interview with Garland Nixon to see where things are headed this spring.
Sure, this is my whole point. Europe made a stupid decision that's destroying European economy. A smart thing to do would've been to start building out alternative infrastructure using the energy Europe was getting from Russia and then decouple in a planned way. Incidentally, this is precisely what Russia did. They continued selling gas to Europe while they established new deals with other countries like China and India, then started slowly cutting gas off ensuring that their economy wasn't negatively impacted. That's how you do a trade war in a way that benefits you.