The Oil Drum: Europe

As many of you have probably noticed, there has been an increasingly confrontational relationship between the West and Russia on the issue of gas deliveries to Europe. Over the past year, I have traced this increase in tensions not to Russia's behaviour, but to a clear policy choice made by the UK and the USA to demonize others (continental Europe, for not liberalizing enough, and Russia, for supposedly being an unreliable partner) in the face of their abrupt switch from gas self-sufficiency (counting Canada in the case of the US) to gas importer.

The belligerent rhetoric gained more volume in recent weeks with NATO, the military organisation, coming into the game, first to analyse the "threat", but now as well to offer ways to solve it. And over the holidays, a particularly aggressive article signed by Senator Lugar (outgoing chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee) was printed in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal in its editorial pages (sub. only link).

The New Threat to Europe

NATO, Lugar said, should resolve to treat "an attack using energy" the same way it would a land attack by conventional military forces

(...)

And, as Lugar pointed out: "The use of energy as an overt weapon is not a theoretical threat of the future. It is happening now."

This comes as close to saying that we're at war (in a new cold war, anyway) as can be found, and that we should use NATO to fight it - which is quite a significant policy step, I'd say...

Let me take you through the whole article.

Adapted from the European Tribune