ENB Pub Note: This is the third article in a series from George, and much of this was covered in our first podcast. He is an international geopolitical and energy expert looking at energy from a global academic geopolitical perspective. Our first podcast was over 2 hours and felt like 5 minutes as it was tying a lot of questions that I was tracking. We are recording more episodes in greater detail on each of the areas. The other articles and podcast links are below.
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The Situation
The United States foreign policy planners have successfully separated their European allies from affordable energy sources by rapidly moving NATO Eastward to encircle all of the oil and natural gas pipelines emanating from Russia in order to keep them from infrastructurally integrating with Russia and ultimately allying with them economically, diplomatically and militarily.
The US foreign policy planners have successfully replaced affordable Russian oil and natural gas delivered by overland pipeline with Liquified Natural Gas shipped overseas that is roughly 30% more expensive.
Since energy costs are in every step of making every consumer good and service delivering them, the US has successfully driven up the costs of all goods and services yielding inflation, deindustrialization, job loss and standard of living decline of Europe.
The problem that the US policy planners face now is how to replace the cheap Russian oil and natural gas delivered by pipeline with something that is equally affordable prior to the next election cycle?
If the Europeans simply elect politicians to repair the Nordstream pipelines and return to purchasing Russian oil and natural gas by paying directly in Rubles, then the last 30 years of their effort, along with the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Ukrainian soldiers, will have backfired tremendously.
The Purpose of NATO is to keep the US in Europe, to keep Germany down in Europe and to keep Russia out of Europe. The policy path chosen could completely reverse that and put Russia in Europe, unite the German World and Central Slavic World in Europe, and push the US out of Europe.
The US foreign policy planners are acutely aware of this and are now desperately scrambling for solutions before anyone can figure out what is going on. The US policy planners have a history of: (1) destabilizing Iraq and essentially leaving Iran in charge, (2) destabilizing Syria and strengthening the position of Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and Southern Syria, (3) destabilizing Libya with no solutions to restabilize it, (4) left $80 billion dollars’ worth of weapons and training to the Taliban during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in order to return to Operation Cyclone and disrupt Russian and Chinese infrastructure projects in Central Asia.
The warhawks in Washington and London have recently been calling for Israel to attack Iran which conveniently offers a means of rerouting the natural gas rich Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea region pipelines away from China’s Silk Road network Westward to Armenia and Georgia instead to solve the European energy problem in a few years-time. However, time is running short as the US election cycle is already under way.
Significance
Two things are significant in Europe that are of concern for the US policy planners.
First is that the twin evils of inflation and deindustrialization will continue to rise in Western Europe and fueling mass protests in several countries.
Secondly, LNG by ocean going tanker is a sea power coping strategy to a land power advantage when placed in terms of post Mahan and Mackinder sea power and land power geopolitical strategies. There is simply no way LNG is a permanent solution.
Sooner or later the Europeans will figure out that inflation is rising steadily and their fiat currencies are losing value as their countries are deindustrializing, while job losses mount and living standards fall. Europe is in the fast lane on Hayak’s road to serfdom.
The US course of action to cut off its Western European allies from cheap Russian oil and natural gas by pipeline is not likely to avoid the loss of allies. If anything, moving the EU and NATO Eastward to surround Russia and Belarus to cut Germany off from affordable energy supplies will more than likely accelerate the US’ loss of allies instead.
All that needs to happen is for the Alternative for Deutschland Party comes to power in Germany and the US-European NATO alliance would essentially be finished. The natural gas by pipeline domino chain reaction will probably go into effect as soon as the Nordstream pipeline system is repaired and natural gas starts feeding the German automobile and petrochemical and agricultural industries again.
The US policy planners need a solution soon which will be the topic of the next article.
George’s First, Second and Interview Links:
Russian Natural Gas and Geopolitical Realignment—a reverse domino theory
The Geopolitical Problem of the US—a German-Russo-Japanese Connection
ENB #160 What is the United States afraid of? George McMillan, CEO of McMillian Associates, stopped by the Energy News Beat podcast. – UPDATE
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