How G. Schroeder, Moron EU Bureaucrats Ignored GWB + Hooked Themselves to the Russian Energy Teat

Gatestone Institute ('EU Creates a Mess Yet Again') ^ | 04 October 2014 | Peter Martino

[Reaganite Republican]

With the predictable consequences...

The EU's dependency on Russian gas is a direct result of the EU's own catastrophic energy policies in the past. It seems that Europe, having made itself almost totally dependent on Russian gas and oil during the past decade, now wants the US to come and save it from self-inflicted disaster.

The Ukrainians by now should have come to realize that with friends like the EU….The fallout is everywhere, from a maimed Ukraine with hundreds of dead, to the West entangled in a trade war with Russia, with sanctions going back and forth.

While the West is fighting a war with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the European Union is bringing the relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine into an ever greater mess. The free trade agreement between the US and the EU, the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), is likely to become the next victim of the Ukrainian conflict.

Last week, European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht warned that TTIP is at risk of never being agreed upon. He blamed the debacle on Washington's and Berlin's failure to provide political leadership. The real stumbling block, however, is De Gucht's own European Commission in Brussels. It insists that TTIP include an energy chapter in which Washington guarantees the Europeans unlimited access to US energy and raw materials in case Russia limits its oil and gas supplies to Europe.

The EU's dependency on Russian gas is huge. Countries such as the Baltics and Finland are 100% dependent on Russian gas. Even Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, is dependent on Russian gas for over 40% of its supply.

This crisis is the direct result of the EU's own catastrophic energy policies in the past. Exactly one decade ago, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs foolishly created the conditions that permit Moscow to use gas as an economic weapon to maximum effect.

In 2006, an exasperated Bush administration -which saw the present situation coming- warned the Europeans "about the use of energy to exert political pressure." 

Europe's conceited political leaders, however, did nothing to reduce Europe's dependency on Russian gas. On the contrary, they began to close down their own nuclear plants, with the disastrous result that the Kremlin currently provides more than a quarter of the energy needed in Western Europe. 

They also allowed Russia to build gas and oil pipelines directly to Germany, bypassing Eastern Europe. The latter, as critics in both Western Europe and America predicted would allow Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to demand the same price for oil and gas from Russia's former satellites as from Germany, thereby putting the squeeze on countries that the Kremlin perceives as gravitating too much to the West...

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[Reaganite Republican]

***ping***

[Olog-hai]

The dependence was approved by just about all of the EU elites. Anything to create a “beneficial crisis” so that the “masses” would not object to the elites taking more power for themselves.

[Zhang Fei]

Heck, Thatcher ignored Reagan. The theory was that trade with the Russians would improve their table manners, much as Nixon, back in the 1970’s, hoped trade with China would do the same. They were both wrong. All trade with the Russians and the Chinese has done is legitimize their irredentist and revanchist regimes via multi-decade economic booms, while giving them the resources to embark on massive military expansions. They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind.

[Krosan]

Schröder is something worse than a moron. He is a traitor. After his term as a chancellor ended he quickly got a job in Gazprom board.

[Reaganite Republican]

I was just talking to my wife, we were wondering what he got previously too- he’s a real piece of work, I HATE the German left- they’re the worst

[Reaganite Republican]

At least the Chinese could compete with us on a number of business levels in the medium term if they had to

The Russians have never developed anything that could wean them off their dependence on conquest, dipolomatic/strategic manipulation, and other various scams

Still just a Saudi Arabia with trees, 23 years after communism left

That’s why they’re so seething with jealousy of the Baltics’, Poland’s, and even the Czechs’ prosperity since they left the Neanderthal Russians in the dust economically, socially, and morally a LONG time ago

[txrefugee]

With the Euros convinced that global warming is upon us, they shouldn’t need any oil or gas.

[IDFbunny]

European dependence on Russian gas is the reason for the mad drive to replace Assad. Assad won’t allow a Qatari pipeline through his territory to supply Europe and bypass the Russians.

[minnesota_bound]

I agree with that BUT... obama supports the terrorists and they do not like the west so will take over Syria and europe will not get the pipeline.