Germany is Not Laughing Now

From Doug Sheridan on LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/sheridandoug/

Ross Clark writes in the Telegraph, there's a clip doing the rounds of a German delegation sniggering as Donald Trump warned at the UN in 2018 that Germany will become "totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”

Do many Germans today find that statement funny? We doubt it. Now that the flow of Russian gas to Germany has been cut off completely, the world can see just how foolish it was to invest so much faith in gas pipelines from an aggressive, expansionist dictatorship against which Germany and Europe might one day wage economic war.

Maybe one could argue relying on imports of Russian gas was a reasonable policy up until 2014, when Putin invaded and annexed Crimea. But the contract for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was not signed until the following year, when the West was already waging a sanctions campaign against Russia. And Russian tanks were amassing on the Ukrainian border in early 2022 when Germany decommissioned three of its remaining nuclear power stations.

Germany is in this position because it allowed green dogma to rule over economic and political reality. Hubristically, Germany has set itself a legally-binding target to go net-zero by 2045 (a full five years ahead of the UK’s misguided and unrealistic target). So, how is it going? In July, the German gov't was moved to pass legislation to reopen up to 20 mothballed coal-fired power stations as it scrambles to avoid blackouts this winter.

Germany, however, does not appear to expect to pay the price of its foolish energy policies by itself. Rather, all EU countries are expected to bear the burden, agreeing in July to reduce their gas usage by 15% this winter. The anger is already evident— note the protests in the Czech Republic over the weekend.

We can’t blame Germany for not having more in the way of world-class oil and gas reserves. We can blame Germany, on the other hand, for failing to develop what reserves it does have. It's still-greater failing, however, is its refusal to take into account energy security when setting national policy. It could have constructed facilities to import LNG from the US and Qatar. These are now hurriedly being built, but not in time to save Germans from crisis this winter. 

To Sum It Up: Germany’s energy policy stands out as the biggest, steamiest stinker in all of Europe. And that's saying something. By making itself reliant on Russian gas, Europe’s industrial powerhouse has managed to reduce itself to an instrument of Putin’s aggression. Thanks to Germany, Europe’s sanctions against Russia have become weapons of mutually-assured economic destruction.