US will abandon Ukraine peace efforts if no progress made soon, Rubio says
US will abandon Ukraine peace efforts if no progress made soon, Rubio says
www.reuters.com
reuters.com
36 comments
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France and Germany are both ready to step up to be the new voice of the western world. I will be glad when the US finally finishes falling down the “up” escalator so they can get out of the way of serious peace talk attempts.
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I hope it's not going to be Germany, the policies of their current conservative leadership is why we're dealing with a lot of these fires.
They are responsible for making the EU reliant enough on Russia that they thought we would stand by and let Ukraine fall. They are responsible for the absolute state of Hungary. The migrant crisis. Bankrupting Greece in the name of austerity. I'm sure the list goes on.
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What is the nexus between Germany and Hungary's autocratic state?
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German car manufacturing. VW's biggest engine factory is in Gyõr, Hungary. BMW is building in Debrecen, then there is also Mercedes. Hungary is also a major battery manufacturer since recently.
Couple that with some other industry, like the only non-Danish Lego factory in the EU for example, or others.
Cutting Hungary out from the customs union would cost a lot of people with a lot of power in the EU a lot of money.
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Wouldn't it cost Hungary more in terms of job losses and economic loss of productivity to the point Germany should be able to leverage Hungary more?
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It would, but Orbán isn't Hungary. You can't blackmail Orbán with Hungary, he doesn't care for it beyond using it as a vehicle of power. Hungary is also in a lot of hardship already, so I doubt some more layoffs would be the breaking point.
The factories wouldn't close immediately, they are huge. Also, China is also building up in Hungary, and it would continue being an important transit and manufacturing hub between China and the EU, even if it was not part of the EU. It's still on the shortest path between the Belt and Road connections and Germany, and there is no point in either going the Croatia route over the mountains or through Ukraine and Poland, again through mountains and presently, war. It is also chock full of Chinese battery plants that would continue to sell to the EU, because even without being in the trade union, Hungary has the advantage of not giving a shit about environmental regulations for building such plants.
To be honest, this is why every sane Hungarian wants Ukraine to succeed in defending itself, as if we had a Russian border in Transcarpathia, that's when shit would get real and Orbán would go full Belarus.
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I would hope this would be a coalition not a single choice. Putting all of democracy’s eggs in one basket seems too precarious given current circumstances.
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It's time for new leaders to take up the mantle. Germany has tried being the world leader a couple of times but was never truly able to show us how good it could be.
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36 comments