European Italy...
Sanctions continue to exacerbate the results of decades of misguided neo liberal policies, and are set to turn the world upside down. While Europeans continue on their yearly tradition of hammering their nuts, the Americans are smart enough to not follow through with their own sanctions. The treasury, which had already set in place a mechanism to circumvent the financial sanctions, has now issued a new directive to deal with rising prices of agricultural commodities.
This is in stark contrast to the expected new European Union directive designed to cut Potash imports from Russia and Belarus. This once again highlights the inability of the EU to deal with a crisis, something that should’ve been obvious decades ago. Maybe now that citizens will be struggling to buy basic amenities, they will stop the yearly torture that is supporting the European Union.
Russia’s fault:
Politicians from the Eurozone owe Putin a debt of gratitude as they continue to offload their failures (sometimes successfully, see Italy and the Partito Democratico) onto Putin. And yet it was the Bocconi-Oxbridge-SciencesPo educated elite that:
Launched the deindustrialization of Europe in the name of “free trade”; cheap goods from China,
Embarked on a ideological war against Nuclear in favor of solar panels and cheap Russian Oil&Gas,
Decided expanding Nato to the East was a brilliant idea,
Corrupted the education system by politicizing it and allowing the creation of networks to guarantee friends&family good jobs (Énarque…etc),
Destroyed the European Unification by making the EU nothing more than a bureaucratic control tool,
Socialized the losses of large financial institutions to protect their monopolies,
Wasted billions of dollars in pointless interventionism all over the world.
And it’s this same elite that has now decided to poor fuel into the fire known as Ukraine in the hopes of covering up the populist anger that is mounting over their previous failures. To understand how detached they are from reality one must look no further than the journalists who’s job is to hold them accountable (by telling the truth). Here’s one from the BBC explaining why Ukrainians are wrong and Putin is in fact to blame for everything; nostalgia of starving in the Soviet Union…
from the BBC Live Reporting
And if that is not enough to make you laugh watch this brilliant EU bureaucrat telling the world of their grand strategy to placate Putin, “Take that Putin”
The Italian Failure:
The Spanish government has spent the last few years trying to fill part of the whole left by the Italian disengagement from the MED. One of the key objectives was to transform Spain into a hub for European gas. That strategy had two pillars, Algeria and LNG. As luck would have it the Spanish blundered by backing Morocco’s claim over the Western Sahara instead of maintaining strategic ambiguity. Unfortunately, the Italians no longer have a Mattei; preferring to be a weak peripheral state over one that defends its own interests.
Setting aside the fact that of the ten most populous nations on earth only the United States of America voted in favor, I would like to draw your attention to Algeria voting against kicking Russia out of the Human Rights Council.
The Anglo-Saxons, always a step ahead of their EU peers, have started publishing stories (Financial Times, Bloomberg) touting the soon to be signed deal between Italy and Algeria that will guarantee independence from Russian Gas. This is designed to create a false sense of security, hoping the various EU states will continue on piling sanctions they (Financial Times) admit hurt the EU more.
The reason this new deal will not guarantee independence is that gas isn’t the issue, transporting it is. There is a limit to how much gas can be piped in a pipeline. The TransMed is currently operating below max capacity but even at max capacity Algerian gas cannot replace Russian gas. Most surprising is that back in February of this year, Sonatrach’s CEO had offered the Italians to pump more gas in the pipeline. Why wasn’t Draghi immediately flown into Algeria? Why are we still discussing the EastMed? The Americans have made very clear will never happen (because Erdogan doesn’t want it). Why are we not discussing Libya, the GALSI and the Trans-Saharan gas pipelines. Why are we not making it clear to Wall Street and the City that gas is a stop gap solution, to be replaced by the environmentally friendly hydrogen that will meet ESG guidelines, giving companies like ENI more room to maneuver. Why does Italy, a country with some of the best entrepreneurs have the worst managers on earth?
Worst of all, what is the point of a Union if everyone tries to find a solution for themselves? The Italians with Algeria, the Germans with Qatar, the French with the USA. Why not leverage the combined powers of these economies to get better deals? Maybe it’s time to accept that Thatcher was right and embrace her vision of a single European market. An entity that facilitates trade and rejects the failed political project that is the European Union.
Buy Med…
ps: There needs to be a serious conversation on the reductio ad Hitlerum we’re seeing, specifically designed to stop any debate with regards to Putin happening. While the East develops a strategy to expand its area of influence, our leaders are engaged in obscurantism…
“For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” Henry Kissinger1