Now that US fuel exports aren't throttled by US energy policies, why can't we get NATO countries to get their fuels from the US and not Russia? This is one thing they can do besides loud talk, and doesn't require them to actually have armed forces.
3. Biden shut it down (or someone did - per Speaker Johnson - some machine signed the order)
4. EU still think they can take it from Russia via Ukraine, and use "seized" Russian money to do it.
5. Lead time: Low field price in Summer surplus means little or nothing to availablity in Winter shortage when more than half of your refining capability is shut down. Stocks are low:
Biden-Harris nitwits could have ended the war quickly by doing exactly what you suggest in 2022. After all, that was why Nordstream was sabotaged. Instead, Russia has developed longer logistics lines and made EU pay the difference. And Nordstream is nearly repaired, so EU isn't planning on getting their NG from anyone else -- they want the Russian natural gas, they just thought they'd all but own it by now.
You could step up production (being done) step up shipping capacity (ditto) and fix something up for a couple months from now, but if EU is in a snit and Trump wants it over quickly, I don't think it will be on first offer.
We'd need major leverage on the EU to push things along. Maybe some of their leaders are in the Epstein files. Anyway, this should be our goal whether or not it affects Ukraine. This very good book by Vladimir Bukovsky documents past fraternization with the Soviets:
There are two people I consider to be sufficiently informed about Russia/Ukraine whose opinions are honestly arrived at based on reliable sources: Tucker Carlson & Konstatin Kisin. Im probably 80% leaning toward Tuckers position as Kisin, I believe is much more emotionally invested in his position and less clear-eyed about it. Frankly, it doesnt matter what one thinks of Putin because whoever comes after him would probably be worse. Russia’s access to the Black Sea is an existential issue for them and they will never give it up. That access is not nearly as existential for any other party to the conflict. Lets deal with the world as it is, as opposed to how we wish it would be. If we hadnt put bioweapons labs in eastern Ukraine, supported killing thousands of people in eastern Ukraine for 10 years, and indicated that we wanted to get Ukraine into NATO, this war would never have happened. Basically, all we had to do was not be evil assholes. Our globalist class couldnt pull that off. They’re happy to fight to the last Ukrainian to prove a point, I guess. Well that, and keep their money laundering grift alive.
I keep hearing condemnations (or damnation by faint praise) of Carlson, and then I try to think of all the alleged journalists (or sometimes just lowly reporters) who would have killed and/or donated vital organs to getting interviews with opponents. And then I think of the Dan Rather and MP Tony Benn interviews with Saddam Hussein, or any of the others that did occur, and I think of the NY Times stated reasons for not giving up on the Durante Pulitzer, or the mulitple refusal of Time to retract "Man of the Year" puff pieces on such classy figures as Hitler and Stalin.
Confronted with the deafening silence from much of "media" about the Steyn and Stemberg suit by Mann, and the Guardian suit by Douglas Murray, on top all this hand wringing about Carlson, I wonder what happened to journalism.
Or I did wonder until Jeff Bezos and DOGE exposed that jornalism and the media have been bought out. So I don't hear that stuff anymore. But I do question the source.
Very good stuff, professor. Thanks for writing this. Neat tidbit about Trump's requesting the publication of Codevilla's book (even though hearsay, it makes sense.)
Maybe. You know people formulating our new foreign policy better than I do. But it seems to me that everyone here and in Europe having fits about Ukraine are doing just what Trump needs them/us to do in the circumstances.
I'm trying to figure out how this all works within Trump's other foreign policy moves, including the economic ones and the threats against friends, or perhaps I should say former friends.
Wow! no - not even close. sorry Dr. Hayward; I usually think of you as a teacher whose experience is always worth listening to, but not this time and not these views.
Ironically, going back to Adams is something that would make sense to a Russian - but, in this case the better option might have been to go back to America's Putin: Teddy Roosevelt. Regardless, however, of the need to place things in an American historical context the reality is that it's context on the ground that matters, and that context is something over a thousand years of intermittent conflict among peoples who are so much like each other in language culture that even locals steeped in local lore have trouble deciding who's on the side of right of what this week.
It is this context that made Ukraine ripe for exploitation by groups with agendas unrelated to the good of either Russia or Ukraine - I'm thinking the Obama people, Soros et al, the European elites (whose traditional commitment to treachery - as in the Minsk agreements) Russians worry about and so on - all leading to, and sometimes helping along, the border wars starting from the end of the Soviet Union and developing into to the full scale war of today.
So how to fix that? well, take a look at my idea for a peace plan under "abhorrent solutions" on paul530.substack.com - basically give everyone what they want and the bad guys will choke on it while most Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans and Americans end up better off.
Something about riddles wrapped in enigmas. There are so many “facts” about Putin floating around out there that it’s practically impossible to know which is actually true. On the one hand he’s a Soviet hardliner hell bent on restoring the USSR and bringing back the iron curtain. On the other he cares about protecting his country against NATO encroachment. Waiting for him to decide which is hard and alarming.
Now that US fuel exports aren't throttled by US energy policies, why can't we get NATO countries to get their fuels from the US and not Russia? This is one thing they can do besides loud talk, and doesn't require them to actually have armed forces.
1. Shipping
2. Compression (CNG from LNG)
3. Biden shut it down (or someone did - per Speaker Johnson - some machine signed the order)
4. EU still think they can take it from Russia via Ukraine, and use "seized" Russian money to do it.
5. Lead time: Low field price in Summer surplus means little or nothing to availablity in Winter shortage when more than half of your refining capability is shut down. Stocks are low:
https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/storage/dashboard/
Biden-Harris nitwits could have ended the war quickly by doing exactly what you suggest in 2022. After all, that was why Nordstream was sabotaged. Instead, Russia has developed longer logistics lines and made EU pay the difference. And Nordstream is nearly repaired, so EU isn't planning on getting their NG from anyone else -- they want the Russian natural gas, they just thought they'd all but own it by now.
You could step up production (being done) step up shipping capacity (ditto) and fix something up for a couple months from now, but if EU is in a snit and Trump wants it over quickly, I don't think it will be on first offer.
We'd need major leverage on the EU to push things along. Maybe some of their leaders are in the Epstein files. Anyway, this should be our goal whether or not it affects Ukraine. This very good book by Vladimir Bukovsky documents past fraternization with the Soviets:
https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Moscow-Soviet-Western-Complicity/dp/0998041610
There are two people I consider to be sufficiently informed about Russia/Ukraine whose opinions are honestly arrived at based on reliable sources: Tucker Carlson & Konstatin Kisin. Im probably 80% leaning toward Tuckers position as Kisin, I believe is much more emotionally invested in his position and less clear-eyed about it. Frankly, it doesnt matter what one thinks of Putin because whoever comes after him would probably be worse. Russia’s access to the Black Sea is an existential issue for them and they will never give it up. That access is not nearly as existential for any other party to the conflict. Lets deal with the world as it is, as opposed to how we wish it would be. If we hadnt put bioweapons labs in eastern Ukraine, supported killing thousands of people in eastern Ukraine for 10 years, and indicated that we wanted to get Ukraine into NATO, this war would never have happened. Basically, all we had to do was not be evil assholes. Our globalist class couldnt pull that off. They’re happy to fight to the last Ukrainian to prove a point, I guess. Well that, and keep their money laundering grift alive.
I keep hearing condemnations (or damnation by faint praise) of Carlson, and then I try to think of all the alleged journalists (or sometimes just lowly reporters) who would have killed and/or donated vital organs to getting interviews with opponents. And then I think of the Dan Rather and MP Tony Benn interviews with Saddam Hussein, or any of the others that did occur, and I think of the NY Times stated reasons for not giving up on the Durante Pulitzer, or the mulitple refusal of Time to retract "Man of the Year" puff pieces on such classy figures as Hitler and Stalin.
Confronted with the deafening silence from much of "media" about the Steyn and Stemberg suit by Mann, and the Guardian suit by Douglas Murray, on top all this hand wringing about Carlson, I wonder what happened to journalism.
Or I did wonder until Jeff Bezos and DOGE exposed that jornalism and the media have been bought out. So I don't hear that stuff anymore. But I do question the source.
Very good stuff, professor. Thanks for writing this. Neat tidbit about Trump's requesting the publication of Codevilla's book (even though hearsay, it makes sense.)
Maybe. You know people formulating our new foreign policy better than I do. But it seems to me that everyone here and in Europe having fits about Ukraine are doing just what Trump needs them/us to do in the circumstances.
I'm trying to figure out how this all works within Trump's other foreign policy moves, including the economic ones and the threats against friends, or perhaps I should say former friends.
Angelo Codevilla: One of the greatest FP analysts of the last 100 years. Died too young. RIP.
Wow! no - not even close. sorry Dr. Hayward; I usually think of you as a teacher whose experience is always worth listening to, but not this time and not these views.
Ironically, going back to Adams is something that would make sense to a Russian - but, in this case the better option might have been to go back to America's Putin: Teddy Roosevelt. Regardless, however, of the need to place things in an American historical context the reality is that it's context on the ground that matters, and that context is something over a thousand years of intermittent conflict among peoples who are so much like each other in language culture that even locals steeped in local lore have trouble deciding who's on the side of right of what this week.
It is this context that made Ukraine ripe for exploitation by groups with agendas unrelated to the good of either Russia or Ukraine - I'm thinking the Obama people, Soros et al, the European elites (whose traditional commitment to treachery - as in the Minsk agreements) Russians worry about and so on - all leading to, and sometimes helping along, the border wars starting from the end of the Soviet Union and developing into to the full scale war of today.
So how to fix that? well, take a look at my idea for a peace plan under "abhorrent solutions" on paul530.substack.com - basically give everyone what they want and the bad guys will choke on it while most Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans and Americans end up better off.
The Monroe Doctrine is looking better and better all the time.
Something about riddles wrapped in enigmas. There are so many “facts” about Putin floating around out there that it’s practically impossible to know which is actually true. On the one hand he’s a Soviet hardliner hell bent on restoring the USSR and bringing back the iron curtain. On the other he cares about protecting his country against NATO encroachment. Waiting for him to decide which is hard and alarming.