this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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I have to say, I did not expect to Europe eagerly destroy its economy to show up Russia.
It was pretty wild how after Merkel govt maneuvered for 20 years to avoid that, next one just plunged headfirst on the concrete. Though to be fair Merkel govt is also complicit (and probably in many ways we don't know yet), to avoid it they just needed to seriously enforce Minsk accords, which they absolutely had the power to do.
Then again, their motivation was pretty obvious: what's better than cheap Russian resources? Imperialist control over the even cheaper Russian resources. Pity they forgot to never trust USA.
Indeed, I think Merkel understood that Europe needed Russia to prosper, and she was probably the last leader Europe had with any brains. I agree she was ultimately complicit in what has now unfolded, but at least she had enough sense not to let it happen on her watch.
It’s always the little details you forget that getcha!
Prevent Putler from invading Europe by removing any possible gains from invading Europe. That's how you play 5D chess.
And failed at that latter task, too lmao
The fact that Russian economy is actually growing does make this an absolute farce. What Europeans are now realizing is that they need Russia, but Russia doesn't need them.
The big question is whether they will realise it's the same/worse with China before or after decoupling/starting a war.
I think vast majority of the population understands this, but the political class is entirely captured by US at this point. My prediction is that we'll start seeing populist governments form across Europe over the next few years that are going to break ranks with US interests. Countries that managed to break away from US agenda will start doing better economically, and those that don't will continue to spiral down the drain.
IDK about europe, but in the US, they won't extrapolate "everything is made in china" to "If we go to war with China, we will have nothing". Even after it starts, if they blame capital, it will not be systemic, just "some bad individuals didn't do capitalism correctly".
For sure, and we kind of see this with Russia right now. It's obvious that the economic downturn in the west is a direct result of the economic war with Russia, but it's taboo to actually say this out loud. So, we get all these weird excuses for why the economy is all of a sudden in a nose dive, or outright denials that there are problems even. Like in Canada, we've been pretending that we're not in a recession for the past year, and now they're calling it a "soft recession".
So, it is likely that a period of right wing idiocy will be required to convince people that right wingers don't have any better solutions than the libs.