Item — HN Reader

There isn't much more we can do. NATO could end Russia with more weapons and making a defence deal with Saudis in exchange for price dumping of oil and gas[1].

But no one wants a nuclear state to fail. Moscow must be terrified of another coup d'etat, hence Navalny's death.

[1]extracting, insurance and delivery cost for Saudis are about $17 and for Russia it maybe as high as $40 now.

6 comments

When Russia invades Poland to create a land connection to Kaliningrad, just as they invaded Ukraine to create a land connection to Crimea, Europe will wish it had done 10x as much as it did.

Western countries could deliver planes, Germany could deliver Taurus cruise missles, countries could give submarines in the atlantic to target Russian oil rigs etc.

Exactly this. They're slow-walking this thing when they should be decisive. Kick Orban and Hungary out of the EU if they keep playing silly games, make a real stand and stay the course. This dumb half-assed stretching the line is going to end up in misery.

> When Russia invades Poland to create a land connection to Kaliningrad, just as they invaded Ukraine to create a land connection to Crimea, Europe will wish it had done 10x as much as it did.

If it invades Poland. Finland joining NATO makes such an invasion less likely, because (I'm told) that membership gives NATO enough logistics to encircle Kaliningrad without going through the Suwałki Gap, and this in turn changes Kaliningrad itself from an asset into a liability. No, I'm not sure why Latvia/Lithuania/Estonia were not already sufficient for this.

> Western countries could deliver planes, Germany could deliver Taurus cruise missles, countries could give submarines in the atlantic to target Russian oil rigs etc.

Yes, though I've heard convincing arguments that part of the current Russian strategy is to keep NATO sufficiently worried about escalation that they focus on building up their own forces instead of donating those same resources to Ukraine.

Why Poland instead of Lithuania?

Because the OP can't into maps.

To be fair, a nuclear state did fail. The US launched a program to help secure nuclear material and it more or less worked out.

You could argue that if the Russian state failed then a group of nations could literally just buy their nukes from whatever gangsters ever up in charge.

I'd argue USSR collapse was a messy dissolution. A failure would be: Tatarstan declares independence, regular fighting in the streets of Moscow for months.

Why would Saudi go against Russia for doing something they do themselves, i.e murdering opposition(Khashogi)? Similarly, why would this be the trigger when the Saudi experience shows US is fine with it?

In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter. The number one problem for SA is security. The state is fragile. Wahabi, Muslim Brotherhood, tribes that hate House of Saud. Secondly, Iran possess a direct threat, Houthi could destroy critical infrastructure. $$$$ spent on military doesn't help - they lost the war in Yemen.

SA is on a lookout for allies: Defence partnership with Pakistan which probably end up in a nuclear technology transfer or purchase of atomic weapons.

If USA would give better security guarantees to SA (similar to Jordan) with some tech transfer, SA would increase the output by 2x, which would result in $45 per barrel.

Wahhabism isn't an internal threat to Saudi, like at all. It's their export ideology and it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world. Wahhabism in actual Saudi is completely different to what gets exported.

As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China), will need to see where it leads. It's pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list, as they realised(correctly) that all the human rights issues in Russia exist there as well and might get tackled by the West in a decarbonised future.

> It's their export ideology

Not anymore after MBS came to power. Wahabhi missionary worm was a King Fahd policy (and why so many foreign mosques are named after him).

> it is not at all appealing to the citizens of one of the best welfare states in the world

Not to most, but it's definetly appealing to a small subset similar to how White Nationalism is appealing to a small subset of Americans.

The religious reforms post-2017 have been massive [0], and the fact that shows like Masameer or Bait Tahrir are being openly produced is a testament to that fact

> As for Iran, seems like recently there has been a rapprochement(mediated by China)

Only limited to Yemen. The relationship post-rapprochement was still fairly shaky and went down the gutter once 10/7 happened [1]

> pretty clear to me SA is on the lookout for allies, but US is low on their list

Yea no. Saudi is still continuing with US lead Israel-Saudi normalization [2] along with pushing for a US Defense Pact similar to what Japan has [3]

[0] - https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/07/saudi-arabia-s-reli...

[1] - https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/12/saudi-iran-rapprochemen...

[2] - https://www.mei.edu/publications/saudi-israel-normalization-...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-pushe....

I think the notion that US Defense Pact is a sign of the countries being true allies needs to be examined. It's clear what the benefit for Saudi is, but it isn't so clear what the benefit for the US is/what the cost for Saudi is(beyond spending money on US arms which they wanted to do anyway).

The reason why I say this: Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything. I think MBS is going fully down the Erdogan/Orban route where he is nominally "West aligned" but is going to be playing both sides as much as he can. When I said allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm).

> Around the time of the price cap on Russian oil US was already asking Saudi to pump supply so that Russian budget would suffer, and of course Saudis didn't do anything

You're overreading into what is a fairly routine demand and response.

Saudi is in the process of implementing MBS's Vision 2030 [0], which requires a lot of financing, and oil prices have been dropping significantly over the last few years.

Most US allies outside of Europe are indifferent to Russia because the bigger bad to them is China or local rivalries.

Even in the US, Ukraine (and Israel and China) almost never comes up in conversations outside of Reddit. Adviika and much of the Russia-Ukraine war is barely mentioned in any mainstream American news because it doesn't hold much relevance to most Americans compared to domestic concerns [1]

> allies I meant someone who they would have reciprocal relationships with(which IMO isn't really the case with US atm)

Nothing you've said is proof to the contrary. Oil price decreases are always a no-go for Saudi given that 75% of state revenue is financed by oil.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Vision_2030

[1] - https://apnews.com/article/2024-top-issues-poll-foreign-poli...

I mean that's kind of my point. I don't really understand what the point of calling US and Saudi allies is when this clearly only extends to the Iran issue in which Saudi is only too happy to freeload on US commitments to the region/Israel as it matches their goals. Its also my more general point, US doesn't really have a lot of allies in the sense "I help you out you help me out", most of these so-called "allies" are interested in freeloading on US's back as much as possible whilst trying to get as much from Russia/China elsewhere as possible.

>Oil price decreases are always a no go for Saudi

Factually false, remember 2015? Saudis tried to kill US shale pretty aggressively.

The US Congress could pass the Ukraine funding package. That's one obvious thing.

You can and should blame the Republicans. Congress isn’t the problem. Republicans are.

I didn't say anything about who was or wasn't to blame. My point is just that it's weird to say "there's not much more we can do" when that funding package is still in limbo.

You didn't say it, but it is the Republicans that are to blame. They seem to believe that obstruction is a form of government. And the weirdest thing is that their supporters seem to believe this is true.

I agree, but the person I was responding to seemed to think that I was somehow blaming Congress in general rather than the Republicans, which is reading something into my comment that simply wasn't there.

I saw it more as a confirmation and expansion on your point than a contradiction.

<< They seem to believe that obstruction is a form of government.

It may come as something of a shock to some, but US constitution effectively guarantees gridlock if the various blocks are unable to agree. It is a feature and not a bug.

In other words, obstruction, such as it is -- last time I checked there were still talks about aid package slowly making it through house with pieces being cut out -- is a valid form of political expression.

Those people should open a history book or two, it might help them to see what their future image will be.

History is not a set of if/then statements. It is not written in stone. My most charitable interpretation of the post is that history can be a useful heuristic, but to blindly assert 'future will be' x is inaccurate at best.

I think I understand where you am coming from, but the post I see from you are all unnecessarily 'angry' presenting an opinion as an axiom. It may be worthwhile to take a step back and consider whether those contributions are useful to the community. Frankly, it may be detracting people from the message you intend to spread.

edit: second paragraph spelling errors

But there isn’t much we can do, given the reality that a major US party is increasingly pro-Putin. That’s a constraint on what we can do.

We might eventually get to a place where we can dramatically increase support for Ukraine, but there’s a lot that has to happen first.

The question that kicked off this discussion was "What do you want [the] world to do?" In that context it's pretty obvious what it means to say that the US Congress could approve more aid to Ukraine. Of course some people don't want to do that. That's why it remains something that we could do rather than something that we're doing.

But the US Congress can no more approve significant aid to Ukraine than it can make pi == 3.

In a platonic ideal world, sure. But in the world as it stands, this is not possible. The constraints on the system prohibit it as surely as if the Constitution specifically forbade it.

That's an odd take. It's quite possible that the bill will eventually get through the House.

> Saudis price dumping

This is a nice idea but thanks to the shale revolution the US is now a net exporter of fossil fuels, and I suspect the will is not there.

> insurance

What percentage of energy is going out insured? It was my understanding that the transportation was moving to state owned vessels.

Russia has already failed. The mob controls the nukes, that's the only reason why they managed to get as far as they did in Ukraine. If not for that it would have been long over.

I'm not sure I understand, can you elaborate please?

Russia is a nuclear kleptocracy, it is ruled by a mob that seized power in a country that was already very fragile but that still had a massive arsenal. If you think about Russia in terms of a large gang run empire it starts to make a lot more sense. I know plenty of absolutely great Russian people, the country however is giving me the creeps and I don't see any of it ending well.

The mob is Putins gang. And they have access to nukes, which is why they dared start this expedition into the Ukraine in the first place.

hm.... Maybe the real solution is proving that nukes don't work

Even if 98% of them don't work that's still a big problem.