Yeah the only thing Germany got out of that deal was 80 years of peace and the ability to turn itself into one of the best countries to live in. That for the most part without being too big a part in the really shitty stuff the US does.

That is surely why the Canadian government claims to not have sold arms to Israel since 2024… /s

There is another option, which is Putin is couped out of office. The new Russian government wants to get rid of Putin and sending him to the Hague would mean he is locked up for life and all the problems Russia has can be blamed on him. It also creates some good will with the Ukrainians for peace negotiations. The Wagner revolt shows that this is certainly possible.

But the US has a lot of refineries on the Texan coast, which are designed to refine Venezuelan oil. Canadian crude can not be easily supplied, due to KeystoneXL having been blocked and Mexican crude is just not enough to run those refineries at capacity.

The regions Russia has invaded have large unexploited oil and more importantly gas reserves. Not only that, but some of the gas pipeline, which supply Russian gas to the EU run through that region. So if Ukraine holds them, it is fairly easy to them to replace Russian gas.

For the US the war is extremely usefull. Russia gave the EU a somewhat independent energy supply. But the war against Ukraine is just too dangerous. Especially with Russia threatening EU countries on a regular bases. So they turned to other suppliers and the biggest oil and gas exporter is currently the US. Due to the war a third of fossil gas used by the EU is from the US right now. That is a huge dependence.

As for oil, Ukraine is obviosuly very willing to attack Russian oil infrastructure. So the US is litterally taking out a competitor fairly long term here.

Something similar was happening with Iran. Israel actually attacked some oil and gas infrastructure in Iran as well. Obviously the entire region is always close to explode again.

This is also a good move against China. They import a lot of oil from Russia, Venezuela and Iran. So if the US can control Venezuela and take out Russia and Iran, then it is able to really punish China in a war. That is why China is going for EVs, renewables and coal. They can have those inside China. Something similar is happening inside the EU as well, but less strategic.

Also back to Ukraine. It is more complex then that. Ukraine is culturally close to Russia, so them removing a dictator might well be a bad example to the Russian people, from Putins point of view. It also acted as a buffer between Russia and EU/NATO, has a lot of farm land and due to Soviet legacy an economy, which integrates well into Russia, as well as a lot of Russian speakers. The war also helps Putin internally, as an excuse to strengthen the hold over the country and remove competition.

Democracies can plan ahead and do so all the time. Most laws and system stay in place even with changes in government. In fact you see that a lot in climate policies. Stuff like combustion engine or fossil boiler phase outs, carbon caps, subsidies for green technology and plenty more, which are for a long time. The UK has halved its annual CO2 emissions since 1990 and a good number of European countries are not far behind.

The West is not united on the issue. The EU got a hard lesson from Russia, that fossil fuel dependence is a massive problem. So you see actually quite large investments into the green transition. This is building on some good progress earlier. Obviously Trump doing what he does scares the EU, which currently imports way too much LNG from the US to easily replace. There is push back from the fossil fuel industry, but the laws in place and general direction are good. It is too slow however.

The US as the other large Western power went in the other direction. They elected Trump and currently work on blackmailing the world using oil. This year alone, they bombed Iran, moved a massive fleet towards Venezuela and used sanctions to destroy Russian oil exports. So the three largest oil producers, who deliver a lot of oil to China and are not some sort of vassal to the US.

Me looking up the project: At least they figured out that they need a metro, given they plan the Nusantara Autonomous Rail Transit. Turns out it is a bus.

Unlike many other countries in the world, Spirits have the same right as humans in Manchuria. Your anti spirit racism is just disgusting.

Source: https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Manchuria

Exactly enough money to bridge the period between ending the war and having created enough jobs in the civilian economy. Right now unemployment is basically zero and given all the dead Russian soldiers that is going to be rather possible.

We are talking about $200B of Russian government assets in the EU. That is enough to pay the soldiers and workers in the military industry for some time until the economy can recover. Even if a lot is lost and lets be real that is happening with military spending as well.

Right now Russia has massive fuel shortages all over the country, the coal industry is collapsing, there are rolling black outs in some regions and high inflation. The base for recovery is pretty low. Add fossil fuel exports to the West at global higher prices and it goes a long way. Nothing some good propaganda can not handle.

Russia has some massive advantages ones they have peace. One is the assets they have in the West. We are talking billions and they could be sold to help out the local economy. The other one is lifting of sanctions. They sell a lot less gas and oil under market prices. So having those lifted would help the economy a lot.

It then is a matter of giving everybody who looses their jobs in the military sector a new one. That can be done with infrastructure spending or something similar.

The transition between unipolar and multipolar is inherently unstable. BRICS wants the multipolar world, so it is destabilizing the US world order. That means change, which can be for good. However the transitions tend to be bloody. We unfortunately see some of that. I just hope we do not end up with some US-China war.

The Paris Climate Agreement and still binding, but a lot of countries would rather everybody else does something about it and petrostates want no action at all.

As for Cuba, the issue is taking action. Words are cheap, but nobody wants to actually help Cuba.

By democratic on a grassroots level you mean that if you try democracy, you can see the roots of the gras growing above your grave?

That was kind of the case for the US as well. They became Germanys largest trading partner basically because Germany needed to replace Russian oil and gas. That has happened, so trade is probably going to fall.

Cheap EVs for Germany, but not the US…

Your antisemitism is active support of Israel. Not all Israelis are Jews and even more importantly not all Jews are Israelis. Antisemitism is the biggest argument for Zionism. As in if Jews are hated by everybody else, they need to have their own country to live without hatred.

In this conflict it is only a matter of time until the ceasefire is broken. Anything could be used as a cause.

Milei wants to dollarize Argentina. Ones you do that, it is very hard to move to your own currency again and it would give the US massive influence over Argentina. The good news is that Argentina has a much more functional democracy then the US and their parliament is stopping Milei from doing too much bs. So probably this is going to fail.