JURAJ MESÍK
BRATISLAVA – In the right circumstances, we can all be
gullible fools – which will be the case if the European Union welcomes the Nord
Stream 2 project to double the delivery of natural gas from Russia via the
Baltic Sea to Germany. According to the five European companies involved in the
project (each with a 10% stake), their partnership with Russia’s Gazprom (which
owns the remaining 50%) is simply a commercial business initiative. In fact, it
is much more – dangerously more – than that.
A decade ago, when the first Nord Stream pipeline deal
was announced, Poland’s then-foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, compared the venture to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact (the non-aggression treaty between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet
Union). As the EU signed off on the deal, Sikorski was accused of grotesque
hyperbole.
Today, in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea,
and ongoing subversion of Ukraine’s sovereignty, Sikorski’s words don’t seem so
outlandish. Indeed, Gazprom today is even more of a tool of Kremlin policy (and
source of revenue), with its gas deliveries repeatedly used for political
extortion, particularly to keep ex-Soviet republics like Ukraine in line.
The argument for Nord Stream 2 is that it will meet
the EU’s growing demand for gas. Yet the capacity of existing pipelines between
the EU and Russia is already more than double Europe’s current demand.
According to Gazprom’s own data, Russia in 2015 exported slightly more than 100
billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas to Western Europe – far below half of
existing capacity.
The EU’s consumption of natural gas does not justify
building a 55 bcm pipeline. In 2014,consumption fell 23%, to 387 bcm,
from its 2010 peak of 502 bcm, reaching its lowest level since 1995. Indeed,
Nord Stream’s capacity-utilization rate was just 43% in 2013, 65% in 2014 and
71% in 2015.
Some will argue that Europe’s consumption of gas will
grow. Really? Just seven West European countries (Germany being the biggest)
account for some 80% of total EU gas consumption, and all have strong
energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs. Unless Europe decides to waste
cheap natural gas, the decline in its consumption will continue. On the other
hand, doubling Nord Stream’s capacity to 110 bcm would in theory enable Europe
to import all of Russia’s gas, via Nord Stream alone.
That, of course, is the danger if Nord Stream 2 is
built. Within a very short time, both the Brotherhood and Yamal pipelines –
which link Russia with, respectively, Ukraine and Poland – will almost
certainly begin to collapse as businesses. Without the transit fees that are
the heart of their business, lack of maintenance will quickly lead to serious
decay. Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, and Ukraine – with their 100 million people –
will be stripped of an important source of revenue, which will weaken them
economically and make them more vulnerable to Kremlin pressure.
The only real winner is Russia, which will secure more
European money for a longer period of time. New Western investment in new
pipelines would commit Europe’s energy system to sticking with Russian natural
gas, and perhaps discourage the transition to efficient energy use.
Corporate and Russian propaganda would have the German
public believe that Nord Stream 2 is to be a kind of energy cordon sanitaire, insulating Germany from
the troubles of its eastern neighbors, even though they may be fellow EU
members. But Nord Stream 2 would make those troubles inevitable. A poorer
Ukraine would be an even easier victim of Russian aggression than it is today.
And the Kremlin’s hold on Belarus would be even tighter should Yamal close
down.
Moreover, Germans and other Europeans would not be
spared the consequences. By committing to buy more Russian gas than necessary,
and for a longer time, the EU would be helping to finance Russia’s military
build-up, which represents a direct threat to peace in Europe.
According to the Global Militarization Index of the Bonn
International Center for Conversion, Russia is among the most militarized
countries in the world. Some 37% of Russia’s federal budget in the first
quarter of 2016 was spent on the country’s military and security forces – and
the vast majority of that spending was financed by selling oil and gas to
Europeans.
So it is we Europeans who finance Russia’s wars in
Ukraine and Syria, its military occupation of Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia,
and Transnistria, and the provocative flights of Russian military aircraft in
the Baltic and elsewhere. The more Russian gas we burn, the more money Vladimir
Putin has for military modernization and “hybrid warfare,” when Russia augments
conventional forces with irregular troops and cyber weapons.
The question that Germany and its leaders must ask
themselves is whether they are serious about peace. If they are, it is
essential that they stop financing Russia’s armies – in or out of uniform.
But are Germans serious about
the EU, which has ensured seven decades of peace in what previously was by far
the most violent part of the world? Are they serious about fighting climate
change and defending the future of the planet? If so, they must surely burn
much less, not more, natural gas.
Nord Stream 2 stands against
everything that the German government says it values most: the survival of the
EU, peace in Europe, and the environment. German politicians would do well to
recall the words of another Kremlin ruler: “These capitalists,” Lenin reputedly
said, “will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
No comments:
Post a Comment