Thread by @AKaszon

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Why the war in Ukraine could lead to a global financial crisis if it doesn't end soon and the risks of territorial concessions by Ukraine to Russia.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Foreign policy is always a matter of weighing up risks. Many people wonder what poses a greater risk.
Territorial concessions of Ukrainians to the Russians, which could lead to further aggression, or the risk of another global financial crisis,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto the shifting of political balances in Europe and the loss of the european competitiveness ? At first glance, I can understand that some US strategists tried to prevent Germany and Russia from working together too much,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto but on the other hand Germany's loss of competitiveness would also have very negative effects on the US and i want to explain you why, as some Americans believe they could benefit from a collapse of the EU through bilateral deals.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Some of the statements made by Ms. Merkel and Mr. Kretschmer from germany regarding the relations with Russia, which some people might find difficult to understand,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto are certainly not due to their sympathies for Russia, but to a differentiated assessment of the situation and the risks for Germany and Europe and the west as a whole.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto I can understand some politicians' concerns that granting territory to Russia could lay the groundwork for further aggression, but for now the Russian army has been pretty much weakened.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto This gives Europe and the US enough time to equip the Baltic States with defensive weapons, which could be supplied on the condition, that they are not allowed to be used for aggression but only in the event of an invasion.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto I consider the consequences of the war, such as rising inflation, to which the ECB cannot respond adequately, the loss of the competitiveness in germany and europe,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto the change in the political balance in Europe and the risk of another world financial crisis for much greater than a territorial grant to Russia.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Germany has been the financial backbone of the EU since GB left, and without a competitive Germany the EU is history and that would trigger a new global financial crisis.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto When GB left the EU, measured in terms of economic output, it was as if 28 countries had left the EU at the same time.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Now a few words about the economic situation in Germany. LPG is part of a tactical energy diversification strategy, but in general fracking gas is far too expensive to sustain Germany's industrial base and our competitiveness.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto For this germany need cheap pipeline gas, which does not necessarily have to and should not exclusively come from Russia, but Russia is Germany's insurance, if all energy diversification efforts would fail.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The gas price is currently 10 times higher than in the USA or Asia. the Chinese already bought a chip manufacturer and now also parts of the port of Hamburg and I don't understand how the german politicians can allow that to happen.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto As already mentioned, Germany is the economic engine of the EU. Germany vouch for all of the EU's aid packages more than proponially and lifted many of the financial aids for the Mediterranean countries, which were not competitive long before the energy crisis.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The inflation of commercial producer prices is currently already at 45.8% and tending to increase.

https://twitter.com/Schuldensuehner/status/1572110530998927360

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The consumer climate index and exports have collapsed.

https://twitter.com/ZusammenAlle/status/1569943014306467848

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto

https://twitter.com/Schuldensuehner/status/1543844756614258689

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The situation for the EU is serious because the ECB has been in a financial policy dilemma since the global financial and euro crisis. The ECB has 2 options.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Scenario 1
If the ECB increases interest rates in line with inflation, some countries will no longer be able to meet their obligations. National bankruptcies would be the result and countries like Italy cannot be compared with Greece and the smaller Mediterranean countries.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto That would have devastating consequences. Many of the debts of the Italians cannot be forgiven. They are heavily indebted in dollars. If that happened, incalculably high sums of payment default insurance would be due.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The banks would get into trouble and that could possibly trigger another world financial crisis and that hurts in the pockets of all countries.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Scenario 2
The ECB is letting inflation run its course. That would have massive consequences for the currency union and if the currency union would collapse, we would suffer economically, just like Russians did after the fall of the Soviet Union.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Unimaginably high sums of payment default insurance would become due and Russia and China would gain much more influence in Europe in the long term. This scenario does not rule out a global financial crisis either.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The ECB cannot raise interest rates to US levels. and this rate convergence makes energy more expensive by over 20% and leads to massive capital flight.

https://twitter.com/Schuldensuehner/status/1563416712707710976

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Germany need cheap gas so that this doesn't happen.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto German politicians could enter into negotiations with the Cypriots and the Turks with the aim of ending the dispute over the gas field and creating a joint gas consortium involving both the Turks and the Cypriots in order to extract the gas field off Cyprus as soon as possible.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The German citizens were once promised 3 Pipelines from their politicians. Northstream 2, the Iran pipeline and the Qatar pipeline.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto All those promises have been broken! Germany needs to grow up and learn to define and defend its own geopolitical interests, but the ruling parties don't seem to be getting it.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto That's not a very rosy outlook for Europe, nor for the US. When a great country goes under, other countries are drawn into the abyss with it. The war in Ukraine came at the worst possible time and the Russians and Chinese are hoping for a changing world order.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto It should therefore be in all of our interests to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible and to insist on diplomatic solutions. As mentioned earlier, I consider ceding some areas of Ukraine to Russia to be less of a risk than risking a financial crisis,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto through which people lose all their savings and which would hit us all. During the last financial crisis, the amount of money has already increased tenfold.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto I think a war decided on the battlefield would go on for years to come.The Ukrainian military is in momentum, but the Russians have mobilized 400,000 troops and there may be multiple mobilizations, so we still have to be very careful with the analyses.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto To end a war we need to analyze what circumstances led to the escalation in Ukraine.
I think it was a serious mistake that Ukraine presented the EU and the Russians with security policy ultimatums.
dw.com/de/kiew-denkt-…

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto In hindsight, statements like either we will be accepted into NATO or we will build our own nuclear bombs and station them on the Russian border were not very clever.
Ukraine used to have its fuel rods enriched in Russia.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Sometime last year, Ukraine decided to push ahead with uranium enrichment in the Ukraine. This also produces fissile material and plutonium.
faz.net/aktuell/politi…

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto This has been classified as a security threat in Russia. I wanted to clarify this in case anyone is wondering why the Russians took control of the nuclear facility.
handelsblatt.com/politik/intern…

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto I wonder what would happen if Mexico formed a defensive alliance with Russia and wanted to plant Russian nuclear bombs on the US border.
Would the USA accept that and do nothing, or would they invade Mexico in violation of international law in order to neutralize this threat?

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Each country can choose its own partners, but the price of such provocations ultimately has to be paid by the own children.
I'm pretty sure the war could have been avoided if our politicians had been a little more far-sighted.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto I am convinced that all knowledgeable politicians must have been aware that Ukraine's rapprochement with the West and a bid to join NATO will result in war. All strategic thinkers warned to be prudent !👇

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto That's 50 tweets including videos and newspaper articles. A little too long to list all the videos, so I'll link the tweet.

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491107902062592

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Our politicians must have seen the war coming. At the latest after the speech of the Russian President in December last year.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Here is an excerpt of the speech.
"What is happening now, the tensions that are building in Europe are their fault. At every step Russia was forced to respond in some way; at every step the situation kept getting worse, worse, more and more worse

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto and now we are in a situation where we are forced to make a decision : we cannot let the situation develop as I did said. Isn't that clear to everyone? It should be understandable."
Here the link to the full speech.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Count von Waldersee did everything in his power to mediate between the Russians and the Ukrainians to avert a war, but the Ukrainian Government didn't want to de-escalate the situation.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto They could not have imagined that Russia would try to invade a country as large as Ukraine. A fatal misjudgment with catastrophic consequences.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Many people wonder why the war broke out, why the Minsk Agreement failed and whether the war could have been prevented. I would now like to go into more detail

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Let's start with why Russia perceives the NATO's eastward expansion and Ukraine's rapprochement with the West as a security threat, even though NATO has repeatedly emphasized that the Russians have nothing to fear from NATO.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto This is because the Black Sea Fleet, which is strategically important for the Russians, is stationed in Crimea and important suppliers for Russian companies come from the Ukraine. Especially for their defense industry.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto By signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, Russia guaranteed Ukraine's sovereignty, but also voted against NATO's eastward expansion. Boris Yeltsin declared that the NATO's eastward expansion would endanger the democracy in Russia and threatened Russia's security interests.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The world was told in no uncertain terms that the only decision Russia would never accept would be a rapprochement between Ukraine and the West.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Later, the Russians agreed that each country should be able to choose its partners, but that was only because the Russians assumed that this would never happen in the case of Ukraine, becuase the neutrality clause was added in the constitution of Ukraine at that time.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Therefore, the conflict in Ukraine was predictable and happened with announcement.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto After the Euromaidan demonstrations and the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, the new Ukrainian government wanted to move closer to the West. Viktor Yanukovych's supporters wanted to move closer to Russia. This is how the disaster took its course.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The separatists living in the east now demanded their autonomy and Russia stood by them and annexed Crimea. This led to the war in eastern Ukraine, which was followed by talks between Russia and Ukraine.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The Minsk agreement stipulated the self-administration of the oblasts Donetsk and Luhansk and Russia probably feared that the Ukrainians would never accept this and just wanted to buy time with the Minsk agreement.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto I agree with Florence Gaub that the timing of Russia's invasion of Ukraine was not accidental. The West was massively arming Ukraine, and Russia feared that Ukraine would soon be able to retake Crimea on its own.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto President Trump supplied the javelins to Ukraine under the condition that these weapons are not be allowed to be used in eastern Ukraine and should only be used for defense in the event of an invasion by Russia.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto If all partners had done this and openly threatened both Russia and the Ukraine with sanctions, if either of these countries violated the Minsk agreement, the Russians would have been relieved of fears that Ukraine would eventually launch a military offensive.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The Russian side claimed that a reconquest of the occupied areas had already been planned and backed this up with alleged documents. The authenticity of this documents are difficult to judge for a normal citizen.

https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1501461950735257602

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto What we as ordinary citizens can verify is the suffering of the people in eastern Ukraine. Donezk and Luhansk have been badly scarred by war over the years.
tagesschau.de/ausland/europa…

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Crimea was cut off from the water supply.
derstandard.de/story/20001254…

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Until 2014 the water from the Dnipro, diverted via the North Crimean Canal, covered 85 percent of Crimea's water supply. But immediately after Crimea was annexed by Russia, Ukraine blocked the canal and wanted to let Crimea dry up.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Water shortages, sanctions, continuous breaches of the armistice by right-wing units like the Azov regiment and war crimes in the form of attacks on civilian objects in the separatist areas gave Russia a pretext for war.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto The Germans wanted to ensure that Russia would not use its natural gas as a weapon. The Russians agreed that they would continue to supply gas to Ukraine,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto and if the Ukrainians had returned water to Crimea in return that would certainly have eased the Situation, but Ukraine used resource water as a weapon.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto Another red line was the 2021 military agreement:. "Ukraine is a key regional strategic partner that has made significant efforts to modernize its military and increase its interoperability with NATO."
state.gov/u-s-security-c…

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto In Oct 21 Austin answered to Russia, Russia had no right to interfere in the Ukrainian efforts to jo join Nato.

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto What could a compromise look like? I am not sure. Maybe the Russians could withdraw their troops, various countries would need to guarantee security guarantees, Ukraine would have to pledge to neutrality,

@RichardGrenell @AdamLaxalt @CortezMasto the enriched fuel rods are only imported from abroad and the Ukraine is not enriching uranium. The part of Crimea where the Black Sea Fleet is located could be ceded to the Russians for a hefty sum.
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Andre Viktor Baron Thyssen Bornemissza von Kaszon