The U.S.-led imperial warmongering against Russia is indulged by European political lackeys and clowns who are treating their own citizens with outrageous contempt.
The surging export of American fuel gas to Europe demonstrates the underlying motive for the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. It should be so obvious and brazen, yet Western media push the absurd charade of the U.S. and NATO “defending” Ukraine and “aiding” Europe.
US exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the European Union are on track this year to double the transatlantic trade volume for 2021. Media reports express admirable surprise at the “unexpected” surge in American supply and how it has exceeded what U.S. President Joe Biden had earlier promised to deliver to Europe in order to compensate for a fall in Russian exports. Cuts in Russian gas supplies have been largely due to European self-imposed restrictions purportedly to reprimand Russia over the war in Ukraine.
The United States has marginal energy trade relations with Russia, unlike the EU which up until recently relied on Russian gas and oil for about 50 and 25 percent of respective supplies. Those average figures belie much higher reliance among some EU members like Hungary on Russian hydrocarbons.
In any case, shutting out Russian gas and oil was thought to be a relatively pain-free call made by Washington, although in the integrated global economy the repercussions are hitting home with soaring U.S. inflation. The European governments have by and large dutifully gone along with the American madness to cut their noses off to spite their faces and in the process inflict extreme economic hardship on their citizens. Just wait until winter comes!
The war in Ukraine is but one of several NATO fronts against Russia, as our columnist Declan Hayes wrote this week. This is a historic long game of imperial conquest to subjugate Russia and steal its natural wealth, going back to the Nazi Third Reich in the 1940s and Napoleon in the early 1800s. Today, it’s all about control over the Eurasia heartland of the global economy and that involves eventual confrontation with China by the U.S. and its imperial lackeys in the EU and NATO. The current showdown with Russia is only a prelude to more war.
Part of the subjugation and tectonic imperial game plan is to knock out Russia as a strategic energy supplier to the rest of Europe. This explains the total continuity of the Republican Trump and Democratic Biden administrations in vehemently opposing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Years before the war in Ukraine finally erupted in February this year, Washington was arrogantly telling Germany and the European Union that the Nord Stream 2 project would not happen. That pipeline has indeed been shuttered despite being technically ready to go ahead as of last year to supply 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of additional gas to Europe.
The stupid European bureaucrats-in-chief like Ursula von der Leyen and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbok claim the cancellation of gas contracts with Russia is about defending Ukraine and the principles of democracy. Ukraine is the most corrupt and repressive regime in Europe, as our columnist Werner Rügemer surveys, chock-full of Nazi militias. The supposed chivalry of the EU is a travesty.
The supposed chivalry of the Americans “defending” Ukraine and “aiding” Europe with energy supplies is a double travesty and insult to common intelligence.
Ramping up American gas exports to Europe demonstrates that the war in Ukraine was always about the strategic objective of displacing Russia as the continent’s energy supplier. The fact that U.S. exports have shifted so quickly to the European Union in spite of problems with shipping logistics and long-term supply contracts shows that the shift was anticipated by the American planners. The war in Ukraine, induced by NATO military provocations toward Russia since the CIA-instigated coup in Kiev in 2014, has been driven by the strategic prize of the U.S. replacing Russia as an energy partner.
There are other related reasons, of course. Weaponizing Europe under Washington’s tutelage, pumping up the military-industrial complex at the (failing) heart of U.S. capitalism, galvanizing Europe and the rest of the world in a futile attempt to stave off the emergence of a multipolar world and antagonizing China. But one specific objective is for corporate America to muscle in on the world’s most lucrative energy market supplying Europe.
Risibly, too, you have supposedly environmentally concerned European governments trying to replace affordable and relatively clean Russian natural gas with significantly more expensive and dirty US LNG. The mining of American shale gas is environmentally brutal as is shipping it in bulk carriers across the Atlantic.
There is no way that U.S. gas can make up for Russia’s supply to the rest of Europe. It is estimated that the current surge in U.S. exports will reach a total of about 80 billion cubic meters this year. That only accounts for half of what Russia has been supplying (155 bcm).
To make up for the critical shortfall, European states are reopening coal mines which betrays their purported concern about mitigating climate change.
Even those desperate measures in addition to unrealistic claims about using renewable energy sources will mean that European citizens are facing deep hardship from freezing households and crippling fuel bills.
The U.S.-led imperial warmongering against Russia is indulged by European political lackeys and clowns who are treating their own citizens with outrageous contempt. Not only are European citizens expected to watch their governments squander tens of billions of euros of public taxes on weaponizing a Nazi regime in Ukraine, but they are also expected to don hair shirts to pay for American exports of shoddy gas supplies.
