Trade in War

Most times that a country attacks another is a tragedy of the commons situation. A few people at the top will profit from the war even if most citizens from both countries lose because of it.

The country as its citizens does not profit from war. The country as its leaders sometimes it does, or at least it may do so in the short term.

I think what they refer to is that while the interests of the individual and the country almost never align, the government can work to align these interests; e.g. through tariffs on trading with that other country. By doing so, a country can reduce/remove the incentive to trade with that other country's individuals, thus aligning the interests.

It doesn't take a war to do that, in peacetime governments can also manufacture reasons to just not do things - up to and including just changing the law. The main defence against that is that if they are going to do that later on they simply won't sign up for the deal, so we'd expect a government to honour anything they sign on with.

I'd imagine the logic goes something like Ukraine believes they are benefiting and Russia is too, but they aren't sure which side is gaining more from the movement of gas through Ukraine (which, note, in real terms is supporting the economies that are arming Ukraine). In that situation, the obvious thing to do is just let things play out as contracted. If it was obvious that Russia was gaining a lot more from the deal than they are then they'd just stop.

Sure. War also makes Nordstream II a legitimate military target. You still have to weigh if it is worth it to risk your good relations with your allies over sabotaging infrastructure which is important for their national security.

I'm speculating.. but...

The Ukraine needed (and continues to need) support from the buyers of that gas - the EU

The war has been going long enough, and the Ukrainian government would have made it very clear that thy would not be renewing the contract.. meaning that the EU had a chance to get their energy via some other route.

I don’t think you are naive - it’s counter-intuitive. The political context is important: Ukraine is incentivised to portraying itself as a country that respects international law and norms. The fact of life is that this includes respecting civil contracts made in good faith. This moral high ground has a cost.

> Ukraine also was deliberately not targeting Russian oil assets earlier at the request of the US for economic reasons [...].

I find this fascinating: the US is a net oil exporter so 'as a country' would benefit from higher oil prices.

But it seems in the US your average Joe who tops up his car at the petrol station has more political power than the oil industry.

> Ukraine also was deliberately not targeting Russian oil assets earlier at the request of the US for economic reasons - though I'd say recent American political history shows what a mistake that is.

There's been a change in the administration (and therefore strategy) of the USA, which changed the way the game was being played.

I think that (almost) everyone that has actual skin in that particular game also knows that none of the agreements that any of them make are reliable for a long term (I saw recently that the Ukranians gave up the Nukes they had at the behest of the US government, and on the.. I don't know if it was explicit, implicit, or just assumed.. understanding that the USA would provide some sort of security guarantee (which, of course, has never materialised)

It is not that much different with the US policies in the middle-east. If anything EU is at least not supporting coups in pro-russian satellite states. But I think that is mostly because the EU can't operate at that level of intervention as a federation, it is up for individual states and that can get them into big trouble with the EU.

But yeah, it is not great look for democracies when they can't support good causes because it will cause harm domestically which leads to less votes.

Can’t they just increase their imports from the US?

I'd be curious to hear what Europeans actually think of it on the ground. Is it not a major domestic issue that your governments are funding a genocidal regime? Do people just kinda pretend it's not happening b/c it's inconvenient to talk about? Just kinda blush, say sorry, and carry on?

I don't really understand the psychology of it. Are people for instance actively trying to use less gas in their personal lives?

> huge US LNG deal was forced on the EU in the tariff negotiations

It wasn't really, as the EU have no ability to make member states do basically anything around energy, so that clause accomplishes basically nothing.

It's not abstract. The money goes directly to committing war crimes and the bombing of cities. Civilians are dieing as a direct result of their funding of the regime. As far as I can understand, it's not ambiguous that they have blood on their hands

Applies to both conflicts apparently.

Switzerland has plenty of tariffs around farmed goods to keep our farmer market healthy. But it does indeed make products more expensive (and higher quality) and everybody here knows and most accept that.

Yea sure? Of course. If US wanna tax their own population for imports it's fine (just like most countries have import taxes aka tariffs). But my question was about sanctions.

I actually had Iran in mind. Russia at least ostensibly behaved in a way that's worth sanctioning by destabilizing the world. Iran just held some hostages 50 years ago, as best I can tell, and it's hard to be angry at that. Israel has harmed many times more Americans than Iran has, but Israel also seems to be the reason we continue to sanction Iran. It makes no sense on the face of it.

The reveal of much of the right wing influencer network being funded by Russian state actors makes this more understandable. https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential... It goes from bottom to top with Tulsi Gabbard parroting Russian talking points on Russian state TV then from the White House and now those right wing influencers repeating Russian talking points at White House press conferences. It's probably the most successful adversarial state sponsored social engineering effort ever.