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Comment by golemotron | Hacker News Reader

> We're on track on a big part of Europe being energy-restricted this winter, so at least right now there's not an abundance of energy even for the current needs of the first world

That's self-inflected and the result of poor choices. In a just world, Merkel would get more blame for cozying up to Russia, and the rest of Europe would as well for choosing austerity. As world events have shown, austerity is not robust in the face of events you can't control. It leads to a fragile energy system prone to catastrophic failure.

Poor choices, poor results. Europe can do better if they learn from this travesty.

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Another way to fix the problem would be to help Ukraine a bit more and forcibly take the gas from Russia as reparations. At this point it’s obvious their military was all bluff.

This doesn’t even change the final outcome, it just speeds it up - USA won’t allow Russia to become China’s asset, and there aren’t that many options to guarantee that.

Or, more likely, Europe capitulates some time this winter and part of Ukraine goes to Russia. It seems pretty likely that Russia is betting they can survive sanctions longer than Europe can survive without gas. They don't have to actually win in Ukraine; they just have to insert chaos long enough for Europe to freeze.

There is no assumption that Europe would freeze this winter. The aspects I'm complaining about are the inconvenient and costly measures that would be required to ensure that the currently stored and otherwise available energy is sufficient to not freeze and not be pushed to make deals Europe does not want. And while Europe does need gas in the long term (as it's a key industrial resource, not only a source of energy), this is the last winter with a dependency on specifically Russian gas, the ongoing capacity building for alternate sources (e.g. LNG terminals) combined with other investments IMHO would be sufficient to not freeze in the next winter even if the war goes on for years, which I believe it won't.

There is plenty of gas in Europe, it is just mostly used for industrial purposes not residential heating. Somehow people assume that houses will go cold before factories will slow production.

> Another way to fix the problem would be to help Ukraine a bit more and forcibly take the gas from Russia as reparations.

Nuclear weapons foreclose many options.

Why assume this one Russian weapon actually works, if all others turned out to be shit?

Seriously, can we really expect a country that can’t even manufacture cars to be able to refurbish nukes?

Not to mention that the assumptions of MAD doctrine might not have been true for quite some time now. Which means, even if those nukes left their silos, they might not get anywhere near the targets.

You want to play Russian roulette on nuclear weapons? Are you listening to yourself right now?

We believed in Putin's bluff for the past two decades, and see what turned out.

> Why assume this one Russian weapon actually works, if all others turned out to be shit?

I haven't seen the new Jackass movie. Is this the plot?

> forcibly take the gas from Russia

Surely, you're not suggesting invading a nuclear power to seize their natural assets.

Of course not - it’s Russia who invaded the West. It would be merely a defense and peacekeeping.

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