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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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No not Russia, do you even know any other countries? It's China. If you can't even read + only understand the most rigid statements, I'm not going to bother.
Germany cannot do any of the things you are proposing because it is not even politicians who make these decisions, it is investors, who will put their money wherever it is most profitable. Fundamentally this is different from a nation which has capital controls, industrial planning, and is not reliant on energy & manufacturing inputs from lower-income countries. This is why we are seeing industry in the highly financialized core countries decline: it's more profitable for investors, who are increasing labor costs by charging workers in these countries as much as possible for housing, goods, and essential services. To talk of a concerted effort to make more solar panels or missiles domestically under this political system is just entertainment. A haphazard thought experiment
And in practice, does the EU sanction China to any relevant degree right now? Afaik, there are some tame EV sanctions, and some provisions against too much low-value shit originally destined for the US being rerouted to the EU. Not much else.
Cool cool cool. However, if German politicians actually want something, they can be remarkably effective at pushing things through. That a large number of them are apparently easily corruptible does not mean that incumbent industries deciding industrial policy is some kind of axiom here. Incidentally, and I know—you don't like elections, while our former minister for economy from the Greens was way too centrist and clearly also did listen to lobby bullshit, since we have a gonservative minister for economy, policy has actually changed quite a bit. Or, like, right at this moment, there are completely pointless, cruel, and illegal border checks that also massively hurt industry through traffic jams at German borders—and yet, this practice is continuing.
All you're doing then is spreading is apathy—and that tactic is remarkably in line with propaganda from the country you're defending all the time.
No I'm not spreading apathy and I support the communist party of Russia as well as the economic development of Asia. Please stop doing the fucking Adam Curtis monologue about how Putin is psychically poisoning society it's so overdone and irrelevant. Your country has a problem with Russia because it has nationalized its oil supply and other resources, and is contributing to a trade and monetary system that is increasingly independent of the dollar. If Russia stayed in full post-USSR collapse Yeltsin policy mode and refused to develop at all there would be no issue and Germany would take the cheap energy, but that's just not really possible since the country is one of the few geographically capable of autarky.
This isn't a pissing match between countries this is about neocolonialism and Germany's leadership is fighting for its place within that system rather than integrating based on geography and resources. Stop repeating the same old con to me. Russia isn't a great power or Sauron to real development economists. It's just got the kind of backbone Europe and the US have repeatedly bombed out of Middle East and African nations, and just failed to bomb out of Iran. Germany cannot have that backbone until you give up being one of porky's favorite little slaves.
Hope this helps
So, first, it's at least a little interesting that you say nothing about EU sanctions against China in your response. That's the one concrete point from my reply which you could have responded to.
Funky. Otoh, you were basically saying that German politics is completely determined by corporates. That exact idea is spreading distrust in democratic processes and that is what I mean when talk about spreading apathy.
I have no clue who Adam Curtis is. I am sure you know who that is. Rather consistently though in this thread, you seem to suggest things about me and put words in my mouth. Do you consider that good discussion style somehow?
What makes you think that?
West Germany has had a relationship with Russia and its variously nationalized or semi-nationalized oil and gas infrastructure since the early 80s. And Germany has just progressively bought more of the stuff produced there.
One of Germany's chancellors even went straight from calling Putin a "flawless democrat" to lobbying for Gazprom. The German political system could never get its hands on enough Russian gas—even after Russia attacked a country that neighbors the EU in 2014. German politicians watched people in Poland freak out about Russia's imperial potential for close to a decade and didn't think anything of it. Germany literally allowed Gazprom to buy its national gas storage. That last bit is actually completely insane, even if the buyer of said storage hadn't been an autocratic nation.
Russia only became an issue to Germany, when it launched a full-scale attack on said country neighboring the EU.
I believe it is a war.
Russia is not a colony, and it never was. Post-1990, Russia was largely just left to its own devices which you can certainly criticize as being unfair but I honestly don't know what you get out of throwing the term colonialism around in this context.
Honestly, this is such a warped view of reality. Germany is quite sure where it stands overall, as a defining part of the EU, amidst Western nations. To me, it seems post-1990 Russia never was so sure of its identity. Now the official goal appears to be filling that void with imperialist ambition. Russia being geographically large and geographically "close" to Germany does not really figure into the equation of political/economic/mental closeness though.