UKRAINE, ENERGY AND EUROPE'S FUTURE

 

(February 17, 2025)

Visibly, despite understandable Anglospherian loyalties, the UK-based The Economist can not evade the simple truth of the energy situation that is currently prevailing in continental Europe.

The Ukrainian invasion created an anti-Russian mood all over the European continent, with a "Let's Get Out Of Russia As Soon As Possible" rush to decouple the continent from a suddenly hostile giant neighbor. The Russian president instantly became the very embodiement of the bogeyman in the eyes of the population of the Anglospherian world. Evil-Putin had to be teached a lesson.

Otherwise, who knows, the world might be on the verge of entering a new dark age of tyranny. Democracy was imperiled, civilization was at stake, and the Magna Carta had to be saved from the hordes of subhuman barbarians lurking in the wide steppes of the Asiatic vastness. OMG.

One more time, war drums began beating all around my usually quiet valley... Anglophone tribes are always quick to mobilize against a common enemy. With them, amoktime and warmadness are never far away under the surface, even in usually placid Britain, or in the English-speaking part of the Canadian kingdom, and even more so in the case of our quite powerful (and occasionally scary) giant neighbor to the south.

Now, after almost three whole years of intense warfare, the Ukrainian conflict is clearly entering its endgame. There are strong similarities between that war and the Western front of World War I: quick and fast moves at first, then a long period of killings along static positions, with endless trenches, artillery battles, aerial bombardments, fortified lines and underground strong points (le fort de Douaumont, le fort de Vaux, etc., forming an armored shield all around the small city of Verdun, came immediately to mind), all of that nightmare being followed at the very end by another short time of frantic movements.

Something similar will probably happen with that conflict. The Russian government simply has to wait long enough, and eventually, the Ukrainian resistance will start to collapse, out of sheer exhaustion, till everything broke loose all of a sudden. If any NATO troops enter Ukraine at that time or before, it will inevitably bring an instant escalation toward the unthinkable.

The total loss of Ukraine is almost unavoidable at this point in time. Will it happen this spring, this summer, this fall, or even next winter? It is plainly irrelevant. It is a moot point. The Union européenne must wake up from its Ukrainian-induced, years-long coma. What really matters is what will happen next, all over Europe.

Already, even though England is at peace and has been at peace for a very long time, some old people overthere are freezing to death in their homes come wintertime, all alone, in the very place that saw the creation of the Industrial Revolution a few centuries back. That has been happening lately, "in real time," as the young people like to say, even though the United Kingdom is now a pillar of the G7 group of rich Western countries.

Is that normal? It isn't. It can not be seen as normal, can not be thought of as being normal. The end of that war will bring an immediate reduction of political tensions, opening the way for more relaxed thinking.

Why pay more to obtain American natural gas when a more affordable source is to be found nearby? In a larger sense: why closing the economic door to the Middle Kingdom when the United States is in the process of starting a global trading war it just can not win in the end?

There is even worse: Why trust an Imperial Presidency led by a real estate magnate who thinks the Palestinian conundrum may be solved by a Monopoly-like twist, helped by a close ally trying to clean his sorry reputation with gallons of blood?

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/16/will-europe-return-to-putins-gas

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PLUS:  @charles.millar3 (X-Twitter)