Europe Has a Russian Problem

Vlad Putin has assembled (kind word, stolen and horded is more like it) Russia's oil and natural gas assets into a state-owned monopoly called Gazprom, so that he can nuture Western Europe's dependence on him as its energy supplier. This was helped along when Gerhard Schroeder's government passed the phase out of nuclear power generation (Germany has something like 19 nuclear power plants, and I don't recall reading of a German "Chernobyl" in the news in the last 30 years) for which Schroeder was given a lucrative do nothing job on a board somewhere within Gazprom's vast complex.

We have already seen that Putin will attempt to blackmail other countries where things don't seem to be going his way. Putin strategy is working too, and will work as long as Europeans go along and as long as the gas keeps flowing. And it WILL flow, even if that means creating shortages for Russians and the Russian economy. Essentially what Putin is doing here is restricting the freedom of the Russian domestic economy that could and should grow and provide an increasing standard of living for Russians in order to pursue the expansion of Russian political influence. The prosperity of actual Russians takes a back seat to his vision of reclaiming Russian dominance over the former Eastern Bloc.

In a sense Putin is, or strives to be, indistinguishable from Khushchev, Chernenko, Andropov and all the rest. It is obvious that he is no friend of democracy or of capitalism. Unfortunately he may turn out to be no friend of peace.