Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Just how well trained is the Russian army? (And are its logistics up to the task?)" video.

@alexanderirving7577 I would say the petroleum industry destabilized the Middle East. Having the lowest cost of production can be something of a curse. Russia, having its own oil resources, has little interest in having other countries produce oil and thus hold down the price of oil. Oil and natural gas revenues explain a lot of Russian behavior.
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@ЮрийМоисеенко-ц9о You are right to make the point that Russia is not the only nation with interests that want oil and gas prices as high as the market can bear. Oil and gas interests have more of a global orientation than just a national perspective. Russia and America deserve some criticism for how they use their militaries in support of economic interests. The imperial impulse is a human impulse. Small, boutique nations have become very risky ventures. They inevitably must align with one of the empires. Look up the article by Anne Applebaum, "The Bad Guys Are Winning."
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@ЮрийМоисеенко-ц9о President Biden backed off on sanctions regarding Nord Stream 2. The United States is finding out that sanctions can become a two-way street. Sanctions increasingly put the dollar at risk vs. the yuan (sorry, rubles not so much). And getting in the way of who or what? It makes sense for Germany to have access to some degree of pipeline options in order to moderate pricing. For the same reason it makes sense for Germany to pursue renewable energy and conservation and moderate its dependence on gas. It would also make sense for them, or anybody that can build them, to invest in atmospheric CO2 extraction plants so they can offset a couple of coal-fired plants well into the future. Sanctions are losing their potency. And that is kind of a bad thing, because conflict might get resolved in more violent ways. I disagree that the US can control European pipelines as it might have 10 or even 5 years ago. The US deliberately intertwined its economy with China, and both countries are starting to see that sovereignty is perhaps not what it used to be. The evidence that the United States does not completely control Germany is the fact that year after year, Germany does not meet US % of GDP expectations for German defense funding. Influence Germany, yes, but always tell it what to do, no.
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@ЮрийМоисеенко-ц9о Thank you for the good thinking. Is not the idea of the EU to provide its small nation members a geopolitical counterweight to Russian power? As a whole, does Europe possess the scientific and production potential to be a center of influence?
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@ЮрийМоисеенко-ц9о Yes, there are things to worry about. We need to be good citizens and do our part. However, I enjoyed a beautiful walk in my neighborhood early this morning, and I hope you have that opportunity as well. Kind regards, and I am happy to continue to hear your concerns and perspective.
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@MrCastodian See manning of SAM sites in North Vietnam during the war. Makes sense the Russians would take the opportunity to improve their SAM technology through their client state against the US.
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@roshanchachane142 No. The US decided opposing the Russia, China, and mostly Pakistan-backed Taliban was taking away resources from the defense of the Pacific Rim, support of NATO and Ukraine, and its need to pay for military modernization programs. There was also a sense that the Afghan conflict had gone far past a proportional NATO response to 9/11, and that anti-terrorism cannot mean stationing troops in every possible anti-American sanctuary country. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a strategic choice and, yes, also a whim of Trump's America First ideology. It did reveal that the Afghan military was too intertwined with NATO to stand on its own, but not intertwined enough for the US to know how fast it, the Afghan military, would retire from the field. The notion that the Taliban by themselves ejected NATO from Afghanistan is what Russia, China, and Pakistan want the world to believe. Kind of like saying the Afghan mujahedeen ejected the Soviet Union by themselves. The "ragtag group of Talibanis" and their backers apparently did not have a plan to replace American and NATO economic support of Afghanistan. Is anyone going to hold hearings about that? Taliban posers need to go back to school and the farm and figure out how to expand and improve their irrigation under drought conditions, and provide safe access to their mineral resources, or they are going to be very stuck in poverty. They didn't seem to have any kind of a plan for climate change. They predominantly had a will to power to establish their idea of a religiously pure society.
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@AbdulRasyidPangrango-qr9dt Well, we seemed to have settled down about Cuba since the early 1960s. Can't we all just get along?
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@AbdulRasyidPangrango-qr9dt Calm your mind. You are right, messing, yes. Gathering tens of thousands of troops and equipment in Florida and Guantanamo for a possible invasion, no. Flying large formations of warplanes toward the island, no. Russia and China are an order of magnitude more hostile to their neighbors. Ukraine cites 14,000 fatalities so far due to the conflict with Russia. I am not aware that Cuba has cited similar casualties due to its contest with the USA. Cuba presents China with the case that it is not abnormal to have an island nation with a different ideology just 90 to 100 miles away.
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@AbdulRasyidPangrango-qr9dt There is a difference between sanctions and massing one's military next to a border.
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@12313846 It does make sense that Russia would want to limit Saudi and others' access to the European oil and natural gas market. And given Russian petroleum expertise, it is odd that Venezuelan oil production has not been brought back to a serious level of oil exports that would help stabilize that country. Kind of makes the Russian interest in oil markets a higher priority that political stability. I think you have your finger on the underlying explanation. Russia would naturally be concerned when facing a future that may contain a smaller market for oil and gas.
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@TheOne-ve7hs In the case of Venezuela, if it can pay, that country can get almost anything it needs from Russia or China, and it does have agriculture and commercial fishing. But Russia, having considerable oil production skills, has only modest interest in helping Venezuela repair its oil industry, because any Venezuelan petroleum export capability would put downward pressure on the price of oil and thus downward pressure on Russian oil revenue. And neither Russia nor China are in much of a position to be charitable. Looking forward, US and Russian oil producers see many forces acting to reduce demand for their product. It makes perfect sense for them not to restore a Venezuelan petroleum export capability. Venezuela needs to find new ways to make a living. As in many countries, in Venezuela the classic pride of the accomplished stoked populism in the masses. And insolent populism chased Venezuelan skill right out of the country, leading to a significant loss of expertise and maintenance of the infrastructure and economy. Somehow the populists cannot get enough people interested in learning petroleum engineering and all the related engineering it takes to be a reasonably self-sufficient oil exporting nation. Perhaps it is another lesson in human limits of tolerance for income inequality. In the US, the people can and do have a lively public debate on social justice and make enough progress on it to keep its constitution. In other countries, one needs to be careful what one thinks.
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@12313846 Yes. And whatever terms Venezuela is looking for as far as the US goes, they have to be responsive to US concerns or go elsewhere for trade and assistance. They so far have been unresponsive and they are unlikely to be responsive because US concerns are too costly to those who benefit from the current situation. Almost anything Venezuela needs can be obtained without going to the US. But no oil producing nation would really want to rebuild Venezuelan oil production capacity in the face of global warming and the need to reduce the use of petroleum. The best they can hope for is for someone to help them at least meet their domestic demand for petroleum products. That does seem to be in the works with help from outside the US.
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@hailexiao2770 Yes. In the 80s Harper's magazine had an article about forming a "Geezer Brigade" of men in their 50s. It could be a great way for that group to improve their fitness and moderate their enthusiasm for armed conflict.
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