A Cold Winter for Europe: Blame Strategic Blindness
by Burak Bekdil • November 12, 2022 at 5:00 am
In 2008, the "flawless democrat" Putin invaded Georgia. The West was shocked. Putin critics... were shocked that the West was shocked. In 2014, Putin invaded the Crimean Peninsula, sovereign Ukrainian territory. The West remained shocked. In February 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed parts of the sovereign state. Was the West still shocked? It should not have been.
Apparently the "flawless democrat" Putin is hoping to weaponize winter and force Europe to surrender, but giving in to the Kremlin would be disastrous.
The EastMed pipeline project was designed to improve Europe's energy security by diversifying its routes and sources and providing direct interconnection to the production fields while reducing dependence on Russian gas supplies.... U.S. President Joe Biden stepped in with a historic strategic miscalculation that came with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO's pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe's energy security.
Only a few weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Biden surprised the EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified energy supply to Europe, and further assuring Putin's energy blackmail against Europe.
The White House said the $6.7 billion project was antithetical to its "climate goals." Biden presumably hopes no one will actually still be using fossil fuels by 2025, the date for the planned completion of the EastMed pipeline. The Biden administration also cited a supposed lack of economic and commercial viability, even though a 2019 study financed by the EU confirmed that "the EastMed Project is technically feasible, economically viable and commercially competitive."
If the Europeans freeze this winter or must pay sky-high bills, they should drink a toast to the likes of Schroeder and Biden.
The story goes back to early 2000's when German's then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder decided to develop strategic relations between Berlin and Moscow. He went so far as to offer partnership to Russia in EADS, a multinational European defense and aerospace powerhouse. In November 2004, Schroeder called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "flawless democrat." Unsurprisingly, in 2004, Schroeder hailed Turkey's Islamist autocrat, then prime minister (now president) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a "great reformer."
