SITUATION: Russia has succeeded in getting funding for the Nord Stream gas pipeline (formerly North European Gas Pipeline, NEGP), which will go under the Baltic Sea to Germany. It obtained environmental approvals from the littoral states concerned rather easily and earlier this year began to lay the pipes undersea.
ANALYSIS: The deal is another indicator of ever-growing German-Russian cooperation and reorientation of German diplomacy, even as this takes place against the interests of Germany’s EU partners.
• Russia obtained funding from European financial institutions with surprising ease. It was accomplished through Germany’s lobbying of the EU to include the pipeline as a “project of European interest” within one of the Trans-European Energy Network corridors. That designation was then regarded as a political seal of approval. Once it was accomplished, the littoral states of the Baltic Sea, through whose waters the pipeline must run, treated their national approval of the rights-of-way as a purely administrative issue and issued the requisite permits in due course. Full article at: Nord Stream Pipeline
Germany's infatuation with Russia's resources has been the economic backbone of 20th century European politics. There is a lot more to the relationship between the two countries than most realize. I'm not saying the deal won't ultimately get done, but there have been many different flirtations between the two sides over the past century and a lot further back then that, in fact. These scenarios have almost uniformly ended in disaster for the same repeating reasons. Hopefully, this time will be different...but I wouldn't bet on it.
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