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The Nord Stream 2 front opens: this is why the US is not playing only Kiev, but also Berlin (and Europe)

The Ukrainian crisis is deeper than it appears, it reaches the heart of Europe, in Berlin. If, after having suspended the authorization, the Germans decide to open Nord Stream 2, Biden will have lost not only Ukraine but also Germany and with it continental Europe.

It took Washington almost 24 hours to define the entry of Russian troops into the occupied Donbass provinces as an "invasion", while yesterday's three clues confirm what Enzo Reale wrote: Vladimir Putin will not stop at the Donbass, he has Kiev in mind . If anyone in the West thought they were getting him to settle for a mild reaction, they miscalculated. The Russian president wants the whole of Ukraine back under his control. It sets no limits to its reconquest mission. His is a step-by-step plan, which leads to regime change in Kiev, not to an incorporation but to Ukraine, a satellite state with limited sovereignty, like Belarus.

First clue. After some uncertainty and conflicting signals also from Masca, Putin himself officially confirmed yesterday that the recognition of the Donbass separatist republics extends to the entire regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, including the territories still under the control of Ukrainian forces, about two thirds.

The other two clues are closely related. Yesterday the Federation Council, the Russian Senate, authorized the use of the Russian armed forces abroad. And also yesterday the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, not one used to talking nonsense, declared that Ukraine "does not have a right to sovereignty", having lost this right in 2014, since Kiev does not represent the entire population. on its territory. They are declarations of war.

However, the first Western sanctions also arrived yesterday. Initially the US administration had limited itself to blocking American investments in regions recognized as independent from Moscow, therefore without even sanctioning Russia (and which US company would be crazy enough to invest today in Donetsk or Lugansk?), Then yesterday in the evening the President Biden announced something more: the complete blockade of two Russian financial institutions, VEB (the Russian state development bank, ed ) and Promsvyazbank (the bank used by the Russian defense industry, ed ), and sanctions on Russia's sovereign debt, in order to prevent the Russian government from accessing Western finance.

The United Kingdom and the European Union, in addition to hitting the trade of the two breakaway regions, have adopted a package of sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs linked to Kremlin decisions and military operations, denying markets, financial services and EU capital to the state and the government Russian.

But the real sanction came from Berlin, with the German government's decision to suspend the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. “There has been a dramatic change in the situation and now we have to reassess it; this will include Nord Stream 2 ", explained German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, announcing that he" asked our Ministry of Economy to conduct a new analysis on the security of energy supply. In the current circumstances, certification is not possible ”. Adding: “It seems technical, but it is a necessary administrative step, without which no certification of the pipeline can take place”.

Attention: Nord Stream 2 is not dead, it is not the renunciation of the pipeline, but for now it is officially put on standby.

In reality, in fact, it changes shortly after Scholz's announcement, because the process was already substantially at a standstill pending a legal solution from the company capable of satisfying the European legislation that requires a separation between gas supplier and carrier – point as you will understand. politically very sensitive, because if both were Russian …

And in reality, Moscow was already irritated by this length of time, so much so that, as we wrote last November , since the beginning of autumn Russian gas arrived with a dropper in European storage centers (as it still does today, hence the increase in prices) and many analysts linked the increase in supplies from the Russian side to the start of the new gas pipeline. In short, Nord Stream 2 had not yet entered into operation and Europe was already under Putin's blackmail.

"Russia is set to continue the uninterrupted supply of gas, including liquefied natural gas, to global markets, to improve existing infrastructure and increase investment in the gas sector," the Russian president said yesterday in what many it seemed like reassurance. Except that he was not talking about the Ukrainian crisis, but to the guests of the VI Summit of the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries.

Moscow's reaction to Scholz's announcement came instead from Dmitry Medvedev and was not at all reassuring: “Good. Welcome to the new world in which Europeans will very soon pay 2 thousand euros for one thousand cubic meters of natural gas ". A tweet followed by the Kremlin's hope that the stop on the pipeline is only "temporary" and for "political reasons".

Of course, further increases in gas prices, or even blackouts , due to possible supply interruptions, due to the Ukrainian conflict or in retaliation by the Russian side, would put the European economy in trouble – and certainly Italian companies on their knees.

Scholz had tried to keep the pipeline off the list of sanctions on Russia, but could not help but respect the commitment made with Washington.

"President Biden made it clear that if Russia invaded Ukraine, we would act with Germany to ensure Nord Stream 2 does not move forward," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki wrote on Twitter . "We have been in contact with Germany all night and welcome their announcement." Last night, President Biden confirmed that "the United States has collaborated with Germany to stop Nord Stream 2 ". Biden warned that "defending freedom will cost money, we have to be honest about that." Costs borne almost entirely by European countries, true, but on the other hand they themselves put themselves in Putin's hands …

Here, then, is that Washington's signature is on the suspension of the authorization process for the new gas pipeline. It was not a decision taken in complete autonomy by the German government, but the application of an informal pact between Washington and Berlin, signed when the Biden administration, last spring, gave its substantial green light to the pipeline, renouncing to apply the sanctions to avoid its completion and implementation:

"If Russia attempts to use energy as a weapon or commits other aggressive acts against Ukraine , Germany will act nationally and push for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions, that limit Russian export capacities in the energy sector. ".

One of the main concerns related to Nord Stream 2 is that it would allow Russian gas to reach Germany directly bypassing Ukraine, leaving the country completely devoid of negotiating levers compared to Russia. Now, with the Donbass occupied, and the entire country in danger of falling into the chaos of a war, the gas pipelines that transport Russian gas to Europe through Ukraine (not a few as can be seen from the Wall Street Journal map) become points critical and may even stop, whether or not this appears to be the will of the Kremlin.

As the WSJ reports, Yuriy Vitrenko, chief executive of the Ukrainian state-owned gas company, Naftogaz , said in the weeks leading up to the mobilization of Moscow troops that the government will likely have to shut down parts or even the entire network for security reasons if hostilities break out. . In a war zone, high-pressure gas pipes could cause explosions that destroy entire cities, he said in an interview.

And this without considering possible actions on the Russian side, on the Ukrainian gas pipelines or on the one in Belarus ( Yamal ). In fact, the invasion also gives Moscow the possibility to close or restrict the gas taps in Ukraine, perhaps accusing Kiev of sabotage, to force Berlin to open Nord Stream 2 .

If there are those who think that the suspension of the gas pipeline authorization, and its eventual unblocking, could be the "key" to bring Putin back to reason, the other possibility is that, on the contrary, in a gas escalation they are the Germany, and the EU with it, to capitulate, allowing the opening of Nord Stream 2 and Ukraine to Moscow, in order to loosen the energy noose that Putin could decide to tighten. In fact, in the new European security architecture that Putin has in mind, there is not only Ukraine as a Russian protectorate, but also Nord Stream 2 as an instrument of energy and political influence on Europe.

German industry is heavily dependent on Russian gas, and will be even more so with the country exiting both nuclear and coal, just as it is dependent on exports in particular of machinery to Russia. Due to the announcement on Nord Stream 2 alone, despite the fact that the certification of the pipeline was not expected shortly by the markets, the price of gas in Europe rose by 11 percent, up to 80.58 euros per megawatt hour.

So let's imagine that this happens: what happens if in the event of an energy crisis, due to an interruption in the flow of Russian gas, the reserves and liquefied gas are not enough to compensate for it? Between the risk of blackouts or intolerable economic and political costs on the one hand, and the ready and empty Nord Stream 2 on the other, Berlin and Brussels would be forced to choose the latter (“Europe cannot run out of gas”). How would they take it in Washington? And what significance would it have from a geopolitical point of view? In this case, Trump must have been right in seeing Germany "totally controlled by, and captive to Russia" .

The completion and entry into operation of Nord Stream 2 – against US opinion and in the midst of a conflict with Russia – would represent a qualitative leap in the process of detaching Germany from its American ally, almost a declaration of strategic independence of Berlin and the EU. In addition to Ukraine, the United States would also have lost Germany, and continental Europe, now forced by their energy dependence on Russia to a position of de facto neutrality – while surviving NATO.

This is the trouble we got into by allowing Germany to conduct EU energy policies, both with the choice of relying on Russia for the supply of gas, and with the objectives of the Fit 55 climate package to reduce emissions. An energy policy in line with the historical German Ostpolitik , but contrary to our interests, and functional to the design cultivated in Berlin (and Paris) of strategic autonomy, which in practical terms, not being able to guarantee our security with our forces (and resources), means disengaging from the US orbit to end up vassals of China and Russia.

We thus return to a theme that we have dealt with several times here in Atlantico Quotidiano , at the heart of the German question: Germany as a “pacifist threat” , the main factor of instability in Europe.

And here's the mess the Americans got into when the Obama administration gave its substantial clearance to double the Nord Stream and left Germany too many free hands in leading Europe to focus on the Indo-Pacific. The worst nightmare, in the eyes of Washington (and not only): to see the interests between the defeated power in the Second World War and the defeat in the Cold War settle and to see them return hegemonic on the European continent.

The worst scenario described by Henry Kissinger a few years ago, commenting on the Trump-Putin meeting: Europe "an appendage of Eurasia", at the mercy of a China that wants to restore its historic role as "Middle Kingdom". America is a geopolitical island, protected by two huge oceans but without a rules-based order to sustain itself.

In an interview with la Repubblica , the political scientist Francis Fukuyama yesterday recalled a great truth, which everyone knows, few admit, but with serious consequences. Was it a mistake in 2008 to promise Ukraine membership in NATO? Fukuyama replies that he was against it at the time, not because Kiev did not have the right, but because he was aware that “there was no way for us to defend Georgia and Ukraine, so it was not wise to do so. But no one ever thought that Kiev would enter. Saying that she could unite was a way of compensating her and pushing her away ”.

Then, he adds, Kiev is "the front of the global struggle for democracy". However, Washington never intended to defend that front. In a nutshell, he is telling us that Ukraine has been used by the US administrations – Obama before and Biden now – to keep Russia under pressure and prevent Europe from completely falling into the Russian gas trap.

In 2008 it was possible to decide to let Ukraine join NATO, or to close its doors and commit to finding a balance with Moscow – Kiev as a "bridge" between the West and Russia, as Henry Kissinger suggested, not as " an outpost ”of one side against the other. Having kept it halfway is a hypocrisy that will cost the Ukrainians very dear first of all and in any case risks not being enough to save Europe.

The post The Nord Stream 2 front opens: this is why the US is not playing only Kiev, but also Berlin (and Europe) appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/si-apre-il-fronte-nord-stream-2-ecco-perche-gli-usa-non-si-stanno-giocando-solo-kiev-ma-anche-berlino-e-leuropa/ on Wed, 23 Feb 2022 03:52:00 +0000.