Over the past twenty years Western Europe has been indulging in an illusion where windmills and solar panels would hasten in a renewable energy revolution, and where we could abandon for good our reliance on fossil fuels. Led by the myopic and cultish greens, this led to polices which insisted that fossil fuels should be left in the ground without even testing whether wind and solar could fulfil our energy needs.
Irrationally, they also decided to shutter nuclear power plants; the most carbon neutral energy. Last December, Germany closed down three nuclear power generation plants and intends to close their last remaining three before the end of this year.
Many things possibly impacted Putin’s calculations on whether to invade The Ukraine, and these decisions on energy might well be amongst the most significant.
Fossil fuels were left in the ground in Europe, and exploration and licensing were hampered and denied by the political establishment’s acquiescence to the Greens, but we did not stop burning fossil fuels. Not in our cars and homes, and most significantly, not in the production of electricity. Those electric vechicles are actually still powered by fossil fuels.
We still consume fossil fuels, but because we have inexplicably pretended we don’t we need to, we get it from elsewhere. 35% of the gas requirements of Western Europe is supplied from Russia, as is 25% of our oil. Western Europe, despite the protestations of the delusional greens, is still dependent on the availability of fossil fuels and we must get it from somewhere.
This fact was likely a prime factor in the calculations Putin made when he weighed up the sanctions and retaliation he would face when invading Ukraine. Whether we like it or not, it appears he calculated correctly that the ideological pursuit of a green religion by the West has pushed the geopolitical consequences in his favour.
Putin has seen that, because of this delusional green agenda of the West, who for decades were intent on ignoring physics and basic economics, the consequences of sanctions will lie heavier on the population of Western Europe than on Russia.
This calculation was decades in the making, and Putin, who has a better understanding of international policy and history, than Ursula Van Der Leyden, Simon Coveney, or Olaf Scholz, knows the primary lever here is energy supply, and Russia holds the better hand.
Germany’s dependence on Russian gas, despite its heavy investment in the continually failing Energiewende renewables strategy, has only grown in the past decade. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was built to ensure the security of this gas flow. With tensions over Ukraine building, German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, halted the project but then backed off from this position saying that he wasn’t cancelling the pipeline indefinitely and might open it up later. In pops Biden and takes this off the table for the Germans by sanctioning the pipeline for definite.
Now Scholz has lost that bargaining chip, but he still has to get that gas from Russia. None of this will perturb Putin that much as it will just increase the price that Europe will have to pay for Russian gas and oil. European and American sanctions on Russia will contribute to the already massive problem of inflation, which we have because of another uncosted public policy –lengthty Covid-19 lockdowns.
Fuel price Inflation is not only felt when you fill your car with fuel. It is applied to everything that uses energy in production or transport, so inflated fuel prices are reflected in grocery prices, hospitality prices etc. Nothing is more endemically linked to the inflation index than fuel prices – except of course for interest rates, and oh boy is that a pandora’s box that the ECB and the FED don’t want to open.
In effect any sanctions on Russia will be paid by consumers in Western Europe and across the globe. It is very doubtful that voters want this, and so sanctions on Russia, like the sanctions they endured during the Crimean conflict, will be all performative and ineffectual and will be withdrawn over the following half decade.
In this turf war in Eastern Europe it is more than likely that the pubic supporters of NATO have a lot less tolerance for pain than the people of Russia do. Russians could do sanctions standing on their heads, but it is very unlikely that the voters of the West have the appetite for their consequences which come in the form of inflation. The White house have said as much and admitted that the sanctions they will contemplate are utterly toothless.
Here is US Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh admitting that maintaining the flow of Russian energy is their first priority.
BDW on Twitter: “Eight seconds that will live in infamy. https://t.co/pXABuqNIXT” / Twitter
Eight seconds that will live in infamy. pic.twitter.com/pXABuqNIXT
— BDW (@BryanDeanWright) February 24, 2022
The “flow of energy from Russia to the world” must not be disrupted says the White House. So what exactly are the penalties to Russia? Indeed, on this scale, it is not so easy to switch from one energy supplier to another. Some of the possibilities to make up the shortfall in Europe were Norway, Japan, Qatar, and Azerbaijan. However all of these are close to capacity in serving their existing markets and needs, and the president of Azerbaijan has just been in Moscow signing alliance treaties.
It appears that the West have very little tolerance for hardship. We may not even give up the market of luxury items for our “Western principles”. Italian and Belgium luxury goods business sectors, for example, are opposed to the sanctions. Those Gucci bags and diamond bracelets are essential for our democracy perhaps!
Perhaps excluding Russia from the SWIFT banking system will take a toll, or perhaps it will open an opportunity for Russia to do more financial transactions with China. With so much globalist money tied up in China, it looks like the West are impotent to make that count as a long term deterrent. If they are excluded from the SWITF system, Russia will feel an immediate hit, but will it just promote them to build new relationships and new Yuan tied financial systems?
German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is a perfect example of the dearth of talent in Western leadership. Our politicians are very good at mouthing off boilerplate progessive statements, and at cracking the skulls of workers when they step out of line – such as Justin Trudeau did. But when it comes to diplomacy and understanding geopolitics, they are complete failures. Whether we liked Merkel or not, at least she had talent and an understanding of geopolitics and economics. She would not have made the blunders Scholz did. All of which proves, it takes more than acting talents to lead.
The other great lesson we should learn from all of this is that the delusions of the green energy lobby are unsustainable. The illusion of renewables has been exposed for the sham it is. Putin waited his time, and has called its bluff. Western Europe is scrambling for energy and has found that Russia might be the only guys who can dig them out of the hole they are in. All of which leaves the unfortunate people of Ukraine the hostage to Western conceit and Western delusion.