With the predictable consequences...
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| illustration: Daukantas.com |
The EU's dependency on Russian gas is a direct result of the EU's own catastrophic energy policies in the past. It seems that Europe, having made itself almost totally dependent on Russian gas and oil during the past decade, now wants the US to come and save it from self-inflicted disaster.
The Ukrainians by now should have come to realize that with friends like the EU….The fallout is everywhere, from a maimed Ukraine with hundreds of dead, to the West entangled in a trade war with Russia, with sanctions going back and forth.
While the West is fighting a war with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the European Union is bringing the relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine into an ever greater mess. The free trade agreement between the US and the EU, the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), is likely to become the next victim of the Ukrainian conflict.
Last week, European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht warned that TTIP is at risk of never being agreed upon. He blamed the debacle on Washington's and Berlin's failure to provide political leadership. The real stumbling block, however, is De Gucht's own European Commission in Brussels. It insists that TTIP include an energy chapter in which Washington guarantees the Europeans unlimited access to US energy and raw materials in case Russia limits its oil and gas supplies to Europe.
The EU's dependency on Russian gas is huge. Countries such as the Baltics and Finland are 100% dependent on Russian gas. Even Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, is dependent on Russian gas for over 40% of its supply.
This crisis is the direct result of the EU's own catastrophic energy policies in the past. Exactly one decade ago, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs foolishly created the conditions that permit Moscow to use gas as an economic weapon to maximum effect.
In 2006, an exasperated Bush administration -which saw the present situation coming- warned the Europeans "about the use of energy to exert political pressure."
Europe's conceited political leaders, however, did nothing to reduce Europe's dependency on Russian gas. On the contrary, they began to close down their own nuclear plants, with the disastrous result that the Kremlin currently provides more than a quarter of the energy needed in Western Europe.
They also allowed Russia to build gas and oil pipelines directly to Germany, bypassing Eastern Europe. The latter, as critics in both Western Europe and America predicted would allow Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to demand the same price for oil and gas from Russia's former satellites as from Germany, thereby putting the squeeze on countries that the Kremlin perceives as gravitating too much to the West...
more >>> (h/t BadBlue News)