🍁 League Discussion – Energy, Russia, and Stalling Europe 🍁

Gentlemen,

This discussion builds on our previous Christmas Day special —

 🍁 League Discussion — Housing Sectors, China, and Global Trade 🍁

In that discussion, we explored questions across these categories:

A: China – Property, Exports, and Fiscal Strategy

B: Canada – Housing, Debt, and Policy Options

C: Global Trade Dynamics We now turn our focus to Moscow.

Question 1: Through the war in Ukraine, has Moscow been effective at slowing European growth, raising energy costs, and exposing divisions within the EU over economic and energy policy, and within NATO over military commitments? 

Is this a deliberate trade-off of short-term economic loss for long-term geopolitical leverage, shaping alliances, testing cohesion, and amplifying China’s influence through discounted energy produced exports? Even without a decisive battlefield victory, is Russia using time, discounted energy to China, and uncertainty as instruments to maintain its global position — a position that would have been threatened by a previously strengthening Europe fueled by convenient Russian energy supply?

Is the U.S. the party with the most to lose — both in terms of direct contribution costs to the conflict and through the strengthening economic and political ties between Russia and China? If so, how much has this emerging alliance influenced current U.S. tariff impositions and broader trade policy measures? From the U.S. perspective, is cheap Russian energy giving China too great an advantage? Question 2: Given Russia’s heavy reliance on energy exports for government revenue (~40%), has Moscow deliberately structured its strategy to avoid catastrophic downside risk? By entering the war and triggering a bifurcation of energy markets, has Russia effectively split global supply into two regimes — one constrained, higher-priced market for non-Russian energy, and one discounted but stable market for Russian exports?

In this structure, does OPEC have little incentive to flood the market, knowing its barrels now clear at a comparatively higher price in the non-Russian energy system? In other words, has the fragmentation of energy markets raised the clearing price for alternative suppliers, protecting Russia from being undercut through price and oversupply in the short run?

By securing potentially long-term energy agreements with China, has Russia traded margin for revenue certainty, insulating state finances from vulnerability to coordinated market pressure? 

And in this context, is prolonging the war — and avoiding a decisive or rapid defeat — not merely a battle over land, but a signal of regime survival, designed to deter an increasingly threatening NATO by demonstrating endurance? Question 3: Could strategic ambiguity — selectively providing, adjusting, or delaying financial support, or withdrawing/ participating from certain NATO group categorizations — serve as a tool for Canada to preserve autonomy and protect trade and export interests?

Is it wise for Canada to want to be seen as taking a firm stance in any direction?

Question 4: By lowering China’s energy costs, has Russia directly expanded China’s fiscal capacity to fund defense? If discounted Russian energy frees up capital and and secures supply for China to allocate toward shipbuilding, aerospace, cyber, and AI-driven defense systems, does this alliance amplify global rearmament pressures—forcing the U.S., NATO, and middle powers like Canada to raise defense spending in response?

Previously in the League Discussion, we examined China’s export pivot—an accelerated, even large-scale expansion of exports—as a deliberate structural response to a post–housing-growth model. In that context, was it foreseeable to Russia that China’s growing capacity to overwhelm mature domestic industries would force the U.S. to slow trade with China? And does this dynamic further insulate the Russian regime by spreading U.S. economic and strategic attention thinner, reducing its ability to concentrate pressure?