In a historic speech to the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, on February 27, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a radical change in the country’s defense posture and power policies in reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Adage that nothing concentrates the human brain more than the noose of the executioner. The invasion of Russia is the largest attack by the state-to-state army in Europe since World War II, marking a turning point in the continent’s history, according to Scholz.
The radical change in German politics
In a drastic change from Angela Merkel’s relaxed policy of conduct on U. S. aid to NATO, the new German chancellor pledged to increase military spending to more than 2% of GDP. that were “more or less simplified” Merkel’s 16-year reign, as the leader of her army pointed out: the largest military spender in Europe with defense spending particularly higher than that of the United Kingdom and France. An Irish political commentator tweeted: “Germany is necessarily doing what Donald Trump has demanded they do, to widespread ridicule, during the 4 years of his presidency. I know it infuriates other people to hear it, but Trump was right about very important things.
In a radical replacement for the Timor-Leste of the Merkel years, Scholz agreed to deliver weapons, adding anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles, to Ukraine directly and through third countries. Sanctions opposed to Russia, coordinating with the G7 bloc to exclude major Russian banks from the INTERNATIONAL SWIFT payment formula and preventing the Russian central bank from backing the ruble with its gigantic foreign replacement reserves.
Scholz’s announcement of a change in German energy policy is equally surprising. Germany relies too heavily on Russia for its energy supply, which accounts for 60% of its fuel imports, as well as 50% of its coal and 35% of its oil. The Merkel government, which aimed for increasingly close economic relations with Moscow and a pacifist foreign policy, did not notice the heavy reliance on Russian fuel as a key source of energy security vulnerability. His government strongly supported the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have doubled Russia’s shipments of herbal fuel to Germany. By transporting fuel under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, Nord Stream 2 bypasses Ukraine and other Eastern European countries that supply major routes for existing Russian fuel materials arriving in Europe.
Last November, former European Council President Donald Tusk said approval of the Nord Stream 2 fuel pipeline from Russia was outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “biggest mistake” in comments backing former President Donald Trump’s warnings that he was imposing sanctions on the pipeline. In July 2021, President Joe Biden, in his continued zeal to overturn all decisions made during Trump’s previous administration, waived those sanctions to “fix” relations with merkel’s government. On February 22, in reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity of Scholz independence, he suspended the certification procedure for the Nord Stream 2 fuel pipeline completed in two separate regions in eastern Ukraine. This followed a while later through the Biden administration, which reimposed U. S. sanctions. UU. al pipeline.
Perhaps in an even more striking shift from Germany’s fashionable force policy, which points to an immediate transition from fossil fuels and reliance on renewables for all of the country’s desires for strength, Economy Minister Robert Halbeck said there are “no taboos in deliberations” related to features to expand operations of the country’s coal and nuclear power plants. or in the importation of gas. herbal liquefied (LNG). Halbeck is a member of the Green Party that has ensured that the EU’s policy of strength is subordinated to the net-zero emissions purpose for Europe until 2050.
In the shift in Germany’s energy policy, the government is now contemplating measures to make the operation of its coal-fired power plants bigger beyond 2030. The country had committed in the past to phase out coal altogether by that date. Dependent on Russian fuel imports, Halbeck also does not rule out the option of extending the life of its remaining 3 nuclear power plants. The country is now accelerating plans to build two LNG terminals to diversify its dependence on Russian fuel imports. Significant garage capacity, the largest in the EU, at around 23 billion cubic meters (bcm) and now plans to expand it to 2 bcm and intends to introduce regulations to meet certain minimum garage needs for personal businesses.
Biden’s inconsistent power policies
While a modicum of power realism descended on Germany after Russia’s surprise invasion of Ukraine, it would seem that Biden’s management — which joined Europe in the climate crusade after taking office and placed the “fight against climate change” in the most sensible of the country’s national security considerations — continues to pursue an incoherent power policy that borders on the ridiculous.
After canceling the Keystone XL pipeline to ship more than 800,000 barrels of oil in one day from Canada to U. S. refineries on the Gulf Coast on his first day in office, President Biden revoked U. S. sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 fuel pipeline, as already mentioned. After issuing a series of executive orders in the first weeks of his presidency that halted oil and fuel rents on federal lands and in Alaska’s Arctic Refuge, necessarily waging a regulatory war against U. S. oil and fuel production. In the U. S. , the Biden presidency continues to implore OPEC to increase oil production as fuel costs in the U. S. rise. The U. S. has reached multi-year highs and has increased. it approached $4. 00 per gallon. The OPEC group, whose saudi axis, has rejected those U. S. demands, at most recently last week.
In what can possibly be described as masochism of power, driven by its obsession with replacing the climate, the Biden administration continues to favor the interests of countries like Russia and Iran over those of its supposed allies. On February 18, at a strange time, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) revised its policy for approving fuel pipelines and export terminals, which will have a negative effect on the already complicated procedure of authorizing and building new LNG export services in the United States. Under the law, FERC will have to ensure that projects are in the public interest and will not have a significant impact on the environment, but that it now includes greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental analysis.
In another case of inconsistency in energy policy that further strengthens Russia’s power influence in Europe, Biden’s management withdrew its aid for the allocation of the Eastern Mediterranean pipeline in January and thus eliminated it. It did so without consulting its closest allies in the Mediterranean region, Israel, Greece and Cyprus. The “EastMed” pipeline, designed to carry herbal fuel from the marine fields of Israel and Cyprus through Greece to Italy and Bulgaria, was subsidized through Mike Pompeo, a former U. S. secretary of state. He was in office when he was in office. Therefore, another indispensable source of diversification of Europe’s herbal fuel source has been vetoed by President Biden.
But the inconsistency of U. S. energy policyUU. se exemplified most productively through John Kerry, President Biden’s weather envoy. Putin would “stay the course” in the fight against the climate on the day Russia unleashed the invasion of Ukraine.
Geopolitical realism and power realism
Author and power commentator Rupert Darwall concisely states that geopolitical realism requires power realism. Attentive observers of realpolitik and power issues with an understanding of fundamental economics like President Putin have no illusions. the erratic powers of wind and sun would be enough to fuel the fashionable civilization, President Putin doing his best to expand Russia’s fossil fuel resources.
In late 2020, Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, with a career that included positions at the Federal Environment Agency in Berlin and as Minister of Energy and Environment in the state of Hamburg, bluntly claimed in an interview on German television that meteorological science “politicized. “, “exaggerated” and full of “fantasy” and “fairy tales”. He predicted that Europe “will only achieve [climate policy] goals if they destroy European industries. “to the broader global debate that takes a stand on climate science. “He went on to call Europe’s recent push to achieve even stricter emissions relief targets a folly akin to Soviet core plans that are doomed to impressive failure.
Perhaps it takes a Putin with the noose of the executioner to the Germans for Professor Vahrenholt to be right.