How Germany — Europe’s biggest economy — became so dependent on Russian natural gas that it faces a ‘virtually unavoidable’ recession if it cuts off supply
How Germany — Europe’s biggest economy — became so dependent on Russian natural gas that it faces a ‘virtually unavoidable’ recession if it cuts off supply
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I don’t blame Germany for refusing to commit economic suicide, but they could at least be more willing to send some of their older military equipment.
That´s actually a fairly well researched and balanced article, thanks for that.
The article is written by someone with no insight into the development in EU energy supply.
Natural gas used to be bought by Ruhrgas. They would sit down with a potential supplier who had discovered a gas well, and agree on a price. With that contract, the supplier would turn around, develop the field and pipelines, and supply Germany.
Enter EU free market morons. They basically tried to make this a free market, with prices set by supply and demand. As supply can only change with 15 years preparation, this is so stupid it’s unbelievable.
Russia having just one entity selling gas, could, and did, underbid any other supplier, and ended up with near monopoly.
Germany not only got security problems, they got extremely overpriced gas.
The little gas Norway is still supplying, are from development back to the Ruhrgas era.
That’s the punishment for poor voting decisions.
The Germans gambled and lost on Russia. They thought if they got entangled economically war would never happen. It was a sound theory, and permeated most of the west to some extent post-cold war, although the Americans, Brits and Eastern Europeans at least kept their wits about them unlike western Europe who could see the world through no other lens.
What is unforgivable is Germany continuing to become even more dependent post-2014 Crimea invasion. The initial policy was an understandable mistake, everything post 2014 was cowardice and weakness from the Germans.
Shock therapy, like in Eastern Europe in the nineties.
Because it’s cheaper to get gas from Russia than pretty much anywhere else.
Of course, there’s also the dumb decision to shut down their nuclear power plants, making them even more dependent on gas and coal power plants, but at the end of the day, it’s just about the money: Russian gas is the cheapest option.
Can someone provide insight into the German mindset both politicians and leadership and culture. It seems they have a blindspot for genocidal dictators and I mean that in a respectful way. It’s like they don’t believe evil exists and we’re basically all the same. I love Germany have German ancestry I just don’t understand how a rich, smart, country can continually not see what almost everybody else sees.