EU Appetite for Ukraine Defense Soured by Self-Inflicted Gas Pains

Whereas President Biden may be right in reportedly warning Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky of a likelihood that Russia will invade his country sometime this winter, there is no cause for America to supplant North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) prime responsibility for Western European defenses against Russian territorial ambitions.

NATO was created in 1949 by the U.S., Canada, and several EU countries expressly for this reason: to provide collective security against then-Soviet Union expansionism following the Second World War.

Since that time, acting through the NATO Response Force (NRF) the alliance has been reluctant to use its muscle, even failing to reinforce the Baltic states, Poland, or Romania in response to Russia’s Crimea invasion which annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

Germany, a dominant EU economic power and notable NATO skinflint (only 1.5% GDP for military), is deeply compromised in resisting NRF Ukraine support by self-inflicted dependency on Russian energy … about 40% of its natural gas.

Berlin, a major arms exporter to Egypt, refuses to supply Ukraine with weapons and is actively preventing Estonia from doing so.

Meanwhile, Britain has airlifted antitank weapons to Ukraine and conducted Ukraine-related intelligence-gathering flights which have had to be routed around Germany to avoid having to request embarrassing overflight permission from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s new government.

Germany has sabotaged itself to become even more dependent on Russian gas by already shutting down nuclear plants in December, with three more to be mothballed this year.

This is occurring as coal plant shutdowns across Europe have left populations more dependent on natural gas — including as backup for heavily subsidized intermittent solar and wind. Gas prices have soared 600% following a lag in wind production last summer, and conditions can only become worse as Europe now enters winter with little reserve storage.

Add to this that a hot war in Ukraine could provoke a Russian gas embargo which will starve households of heating fuel, force manufacturing shutdowns, further disrupt commodity supply chains and potentially necessitate energy rationing.

The EU has every bad reason to worry that Russia will use its energy life support supply leverage to Moscow's influence ... a lesson Ukraine learned the hard way when Gazprom cut off its gas supply for 13 days during a 2009 dispute with painful effects extending to Poland and other European countries.

Paradoxically, although Europe’s gas reserves are smaller than Russia’s, they may have as much technically recoverable shale gas as the U.S. which their governments won’t allow to be developed. As former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in 2014, Russia “engages actively” with green groups “working against shale gas, obviously to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”

Ironically as well, Moscow is already exploited this European gas pain by slowing deliveries, which in turn will drive up requirements and pricing for more coal use.

None of this was necessary. The Trump administration had pressed Germany to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals to diversify its gas supply, as Poland, the Netherlands and Lithuania have done.

Instead, German LNG terminals became ensnarled in permitting delays, and one company last year decided to turn an LNG project into “a green hydrogen hub,” including an import terminal for ammonia and an electrolysis plant.

After inexplicably cancelling the U.S.-Canadian Keystone XL pipeline during his first day in office, then lifting Trump administration sanctions on the trans-Baltic Nord Stream 2 which will allow Russia to deliver natural gas Germany, the Biden administration is now scrambling to locate spare gas to rescue Europe from President Putin’s tender mercies.

Although Biden says he now backs a return to U.S. Nord Stream 2 sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, and new Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration has signaled that an escalation of the crisis could cause Germany to agree not to license its use, a cold dark European winter may change that calculus.

This official messaging on Germany’s part is ambiguously mixed. When asked about suspending Nord Stream 2, Chancellor Scholz’s defense minister responded, “We should not drag [Nord Stream 2] into this conflict.”

Apparently to bolster European NATO resolve in Ukraine's defense, VOA News reports a senior U.S. official stating, "We've been working to identify additional volumes of non-Russian natural gas from various areas of the world from North Africa and the Middle East to Asia and the United States."

As reported in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. LNG exports are nearly maxed out, with many cargo ships already headed to Europe. However, more capacity which is expected to come online later this year will make America the world’s top LNG exporter.

Qatar and Australia, also major LNG producers, may be able to boost European emergency supplies, but nevertheless, not enough to prevent Russia from imposing severe winter heating energy shortages for intervention against a Ukraine offensive.

And while White House strategists may calculate that the Kremlin may not wish to forego European oil and gas revenue over a Ukraine dispute, Russia has other very willing energy clients, including Beijing.

Gazprom is also building gas pipelines to China, and it is not in Western interests that as Europe becomes more dependent on Russia for gas, Russia is becoming less dependent on Europe for money.

It gets even worse.

Observing opportunities for collaborative ambitions reflected by the Biden administration’s dysfunctional U.S. Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and dismal home poll numbers, Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have recently agreed to cooperate in supporting each other’s expansionist agendas … Russia in Ukraine, and China in Taiwan.

This tightening alliance between our most dangerous global adversaries certainly isn't what most of us hoped for when presidential candidate Biden promised to be a "uniter."

And since then, Joe has given both Ukraine and our NATO allies strong reasons to worry.