20.05.2015
Russia Turkey and the New Greek Sirtaki
"...Now EU bureaucrats in Brussels have new gas pains as Putin puts a Greek cherry atop Moscow’s Turkish geopolitical deal on gas.If the Russia cash advance to Tsipras comes to pass, not only will Athens be able to dance a Sirtaki. This time it will be a dance in which the role of Zorba is played by a Russian, Vladimir Putin, not the Mexican, Anthony Quinn.
Wolfgang Schaüble, Angela Merkel, EU
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker all will have three options.
They can decide to stand on the sidelines and clap to the sensuous
rhythms of the new Sirtaki. They can join in the dance by refusing
Washington blackmail on renewing EU economic sanctions against Russia.
Or they can go on to boycott the dance and sink deeper into a new crisis
of the Euro...."
The European Union has an uncanny knack for shooting itself in the foot these days. Under strong pressure from a Russo-phobic Washington administration and various Russo-phobic EU governments, Brussels last year decided to take steps to block the bilateral agreements between Russia’s state Gazprom and EU countries such as Greece and Bulgaria to buy gas from a new Russian pipeline that was to have been called South Stream, the southern counterpart to the Gazprom-Germany North Stream line.
For the neoconservatives in the Obama
State Department and Pentagon, that would have forged far too strong
EU-Russia economic ties that would significantly weaken America’s
ability to blackmail the EU. The EU Commission is brazenly violating all
legal precepts by trying to enforce, retroactively, new laws that they
claim Gazprom has violated. Further they forced the weak government of
Bulgaria last year to back out of their Gazprom contract.
Washington’s Russo-phobes were gloating
as they fantasized about getting a nuclear deal with Russia’s ally Iran
that could woo Teheran to double-cross Moscow and sell Iranian gas from
South Pars, the world’s largest gas field, via another pipeline through
to Iran’s city of Bazargan at the border with Turkey where it would
transit Turkey on to Greece and Italy.
Unlike the failed US Nabucco gas project
which lacked gas, the Persian Pipeline, were Iran to be foolish enough
to let Washington control it, would have gas, lots of it to weaken
Russia’s hold on EU gas markets that were previously supplied via
Gazprom via older Ukraine pipelines.
Putin calls EU bluff
As we noted at the time last December,
Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the EU by surprise when he
announced cancellation of the South Stream Gazprom EU project during a
visit in Turkey with President Erdogan. There Putin proposed instead an
alternative that would pipe Russia’s gas through Turkey to the door of
EU member Greece. There different EU states could “take it or leave it.”
The advantage for Gazprom and Russia is that they would not be
responsible for construction of the needed EU pipelines.
When he announced the decision, he
stated bluntly, “If Europe doesn’t want to realize this, then it means
it won’t be realized. We will redirect the flow of our energy resources
to other regions of the world. We couldn’t get necessary permissions
from Bulgaria, so we cannot continue with the project. We can’t make all
the investment just to be stopped at the Bulgarian border. Of course,
this is the choice of our friends in Europe.”
South Stream would have provided secure delivery to southern EU
countries including Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Croatia and also
Serbia. It would avoid the current transit pipelines running through
Ukraine.
Now less than six months later Russia
and Turkey have completed the landmark deal to begin deliveries of
Gazprom Russian gas via a new “Turkish Stream” pipeline into and across
Turkey through a pipeline now in construction. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller
announced on May 7 that, “An agreement has been made on the beginning
of exploitation and deliveries of [Russian] gas along the Turkish Stream
in December 2016.” The statement came following Miller’s meeting
earlier in the day with Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister
Taner Yıldız. The new pipeline will travel through Turkey to a gas hub
on the Turkish-Greek border for further distribution to European customers.
A geopolitical cherry on top
And only minutes after the successful
Russia-Turkish agreement, Putin, reported to be a master chess player,
made a master geopolitical chess move into the European Union disaster
that is called the Eurozone.
Greek news outlet, Capital.gr, reported
that the very same day Miller’s Turkey Gazprom deal was finalized, Putin
had an apparently very cordial phone chat with Greek Prime Minister,
Alexis Tsipras. After the talk, Putin’s office released a statement that
Putin had told Tsipras that Russia would be willing to extend money to
Greece in return for Greek participation in the Turkish Stream project
into the EU. The Kremlin statement said, “In that context, the Russian
side confirmed its willingness to consider the issue of extending
financing to state and private companies that will cooperate in the project.”
In Tsipras’ April 8 meeting with Putin Russia denied it had made a deal on energy; that all changed on May 7 after Turkey finalized Turkish Stream
After Tsipras’ talks with Putin in
Moscow on April 8, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, issued a denial
of Der Spiegel reports that the two had come to an agreement in which
Moscow would advance the cash-desperate Greek government with an
immediate €5 billion cash advance from Russia based on expected future
profits linked to the pipeline. The Greek energy minister said at the
time that Athens would repay Moscow after 2019, when the pipeline is
expected to start operating.
That was on April 8. Flash forward to
May 7 and the finalization of the Russia-Turkish Stream deal, and it
seems now that there is also a Russia-Greece deal to advance Athens the
sizeable cash sum, just before Athens must come up with large sums to
repay IMF and EU loans in order to get more senseless EU and ECB
“support.” The difference was clearly the finalization of the Turkish
Stream. Now EU bureaucrats in Brussels have new gas pains as Putin puts a
Greek cherry atop Moscow’s Turkish geopolitical deal on gas.
If the Russia cash advance to Tsipras
comes to pass, not only will Athens be able to dance a Sirtaki. This
time it will be a dance in which the role of Zorba is played by a
Russian, Vladimir Putin, not the Mexican, Anthony Quinn.
Wolfgang Schaüble, Angela Merkel, EU
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker all will have three options.
They can decide to stand on the sidelines and clap to the sensuous
rhythms of the new Sirtaki. They can join in the dance by refusing
Washington blackmail on renewing EU economic sanctions against Russia.
Or they can go on to boycott the dance and sink deeper into a new crisis
of the Euro.
The ongoing panic selloff in German bond
markets over recent days suggests it might be wise for the Berlin
government to consider an entire new choreography for its European Grand
Strategy. The old Atlantic NATO dance is rapidly becoming a Danse
Macabre for Germany and for Europe. Putin’s Sirtaki would be far more
fun for Europe and the world.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk
consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton
University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics,
exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/20/russia-turkey-and-the-new-greek-sirtaki/
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/20/russia-turkey-and-the-new-greek-sirtaki/