These stations will become Russian operated which they probably already are. While we may be led to believe these actions will hinder Russian oil production and refinement I would beg to differ on that opinion. Russia not only produces oil they refine it for their consumption as well. Oil Refining As @tampagtr noted in his previous post the world is waking up to the unintended consequences of global trade and danctions. IMF Staff Statement on the Economic Impact of War in Ukraine
Lest my intended meaning from my earlier post linking to Noah Smith be misunderstood, I fully adopt this statement from his piece. Standing up for Ukraine is a moral imperative and a security imperative, but there will be costs to doing that. I just like to understand causation and effect
Global trade is important but if covid didn't do it, this situation further illustrates there needs to be a shift to more manufacturing and farming brought back here to the US. If farm labor is an issue offer an OFFICIAL pprogram for migrants to come in with a path to citizenship. But there is zero reason to be paying farmers not to farm (someone mentioned that and I don't know anything about that, but with food prices/shortages that sounds ludicrous and like many government things, doesn't make sense)
As it happened: Russian shelling prevents evacuations once again - Ukraine - BBC News Asked what's gone wrong with so-called humanitarian corridors, he said they had been talking to both sides "for days", but problems remained confirming the detail of any ceasefire agreement - to allow civilians out of bombarded cities. Stillhart said the challenge was to get the two parties to an agreement that is "concrete, actionable and precise". He added that so far there had only been agrements "in principle", which had immediately broken down because they lacked precision, regarding routes and who can use them. Illustrating his point, he said some ICRC staff had tried to get out of Mariupol along an agreed route on Sunday, but soon realised "the road indicated to them was actually mined".
I agree a sense of national security is globally dependent on one's ability to produce for it's own consumption that which may be a necessity in troubled times or at a minimum have strong alliances in trade with nations that can make up the difference. The unfortunate aspect of this is international corporations do not view this as a necessity regarding their bottom line. The United States is in a much better position than many of our European counterparts but we are not immune to the effects of a global economy. Times will get worse before they get better and there is no solution that doesn't require time and investment to alleviate the consequences. Nations like China are not concerned about climate change much less ESG, DEI, or any other alphabet soup you want to throw at them. International corporations are not going to act against or move out of China, India or other nations until their bottom line is threatened. These nations among others are not compliant with any of this and could care less as well as the corporations that have significant operations there.
We will see how much everyone in this country still supports Ukraine when gas is $6 a gallon and some food prices double.
This is why I'm an advocate for self sufficiency. Not everything, but food and energy should be produced right here.
Told ya. This isn’t about getting the USSR back together. This is about a new Russian Empire under Vlad.
If a worldwide pandemic didn't wake us up to the need for bringing the production of critical items back to the US albeit at an increased cost (items like computer chips, PPE, insulin, etc) than maybe the carnage of watching innocent civilians and their children getting blown up in the streets of Ukraine will do it.
Honestly, just makes me despise Putin/Russia more. They're the ones who decided not to be good stewards of humanity.
To Vlad they're one and the same. Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union a great tragedy. While he has absolutely no interest in restoring a failed communist economic system especially given that crony capitalism has made him the richest man in the world, he almost certainly wants to restore the Soviet sphere of influence over Eastern Europe, including reincorporating Ukraine into Russia or at a minimum established a puppet government in Ukraine totally subservient to Moscow. Also keep in mind that under both the Czars and the Soviets, Ukraine was an integral part of Russia. Interestingly, there was a previous attempt at Ukrainian independence following the 1917 Russian Revolution before it was forced into the Soviet Union as a Soviet "Republic" in 1922.
That and the routes the Russians proposed would lead the evacuees into Russia and Belarus. I can only imagine what would become of them after that. (camps, forced labor, or extermination). The corridors need to lead to actual safety to the west.
It’s a double edged sword, because, as Adam Smith famously noted, wealth is basically proportional to the size of the market. So if we did go self sufficient, prices for food and gas would be constitutively high (much higher than by just cutting off Russia). Self-sufficiency could answer some security concerns and help with price consistency, but if the absolute level of prices is a main concern, sufficiency would be self defeating.
there are lots of alternatives in either direction of this, it’s just a question of where they fit on your moral or risk scale.
U.S. to ban Russian oil imports This is the right move, and I’m glad we’re doing it. I admit, though, that I’m a little disturbed that the President had to be led on this decision instead of leading. Sometimes there’s only one correct answer, and this was one of them. And I would absolutely be saying the same thing if Trump were still President, and he were inexplicably stalling on such an obvious war measure.
This is why Biden is looking like an idiot now for killing the Keystone pipeline and backing out Trump's ban on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (then walking that back a few days later). Worse, instead of looking within the USA for oil, he wants to do business with other nations, including Venezuela. Venezuela would then send a portion of our dollars to Russia. What an Idiot-n-Chief to suggest bringing a noted adversary back from the brink just because he doesn't want the environmentalists to go ballistic. Which all of them are too stupid to even vote. Climate change isn't going to avoid the US if we buy oil from another country. It's the reason why 70% of the Amazon Rain Forest in the past year has been carved up because of California. If climate change is real, it's global. So if you know that, then why not just tap our own resources rather than make a despot wealthy?
