RALPH SCHOELLHAMMER
Europe’s economies remain in trouble as growth falters, budget deficits explode, and price levels remain stubbornly elevated. Unsurprisingly, these troubles have increased tendencies to find scapegoats for the continent’s decline. One argument is that it is a US-led conspiracy, with Washington planning to turn Europe into a vassal and deny Brussels its deserved position on the global stage. The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — which may or may not have been executed by the United States — was a plan to destroy the German economy, and the war in Ukraine is a proxy war waged to weaken Europe and sow division between Russia and the EU.
Certainly, blaming others is always easier than admitting mistakes. While it is true that the US is profiting from becoming Europe’s main supplier of gas, the true question is why the old continent has to depend on anyone but its own constituent nations in the first place. The problem is not a US conspiracy against Europe, but instead the latter’s tendency to try and have its cake and eat it. Take, for example, European energy policy during the Cold War: while it was comfortable under American military protection, Western Europe relentlessly pursued pipeline projects with the Soviet Union — much to the chagrin of the US, which feared the “Soviet oil offensive”. To put it differently, current US LNG policy is just the mirror image of the Soviet oil and gas policy which Moscow pursued for decades.
The true gamechanger occurred towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century, when the US underwent its shale revolution and Europe began to embark on its “energy transition” by focusing primarily on renewables. Nobody feared fracking more than Vladimir Putin, who called shale gas “barbaric” and who realised that Russia’s days as the continent’s main energy-provider would end if the Europeans obtained this new technology. Yet — luckily for him — instead of becoming energy-independent, almost all major European economies banned fracking outright.
More than that, there was an additional movement to outlaw another energy form which could have brought further security and independence: the anti-nuclear environmentalists, who pushed for the end of nuclear power in Europe. According to their worldview, the future of Europe would be based on wind and solar without any need for fossil fuels or nuclear fission. Moscow, Washington, and Beijing must have been stunned by the suicidal direction of Europe: instead of becoming energy-independent and thereby strategically autonomous, the Europeans trapped themselves to be either dependent on Russia or the United States for most of their fossil fuels (especially gas) and on China for solar panels and wind turbines.
Decade after decade, Europe has increased policies that make its economy dependent on others. While these other countries have certainly taken advantage, nobody forced Europe into the arrangement. Closing the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands, the fracking ban, the decades-long demonisation of nuclear power, entirely unrealistic “energy transitions” which promised wind and solar miracles, destroying the car industry with internal combustion engine bans, “carbon border adjustment mechanisms” that create layer after layer of red tape for companies, making them ever less competitive — all of these policies and more were chosen, not forced upon Europe.
Unless this reality is understood in Europe’s capitals, and if politicians do not stop taking the easy way out by blaming others, the old continent will continue to decline.
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