THE NEW THREAT TO EUOROPE

Washington Post
Jackson Diehl
December 26, 2006

This year began with a European energy crisis
caused by Russia's cutoff of gas supplies to
Ukraine, where a democratic government not to the
liking of Vladimir Putin had taken power. Because
Russian gas passes through Ukraine on its way to
Western Europe, the pressure also dropped in
Paris and Vienna and Rome -- and Europeans
suddenly realized they were dependent for
electricity and warmth on an autocracy that was
prepared to use energy as a tool of imperialism.

It looks like the year will end the same way.
Georgia and Azerbaijan, two other Russian
neighbors that have chosen not to kowtow to
Putin, are scrambling to find gas supplies by
Jan. 1 to make up for Russian cutbacks or to
avoid a huge and predatory price increase. So,
oddly, is Belarus, which until now has been a
Kremlin client -- but which has resisted a
Russian demand that it turn over ownership of a
key gas transit pipeline. Western energy
companies that have invested in Russia are
meanwhile reeling from a crude campaign of
bullying designed to force them to give up
majority stakes in oil and gas fields to
Kremlin-controlled companies. Shell has already
caved, allowing Gazprom to take a 50 percent
stake in a huge offshore gas field.

It would be nice to report that in the
intervening months Western governments have taken
steps to ensure that Russia, which supplies
anywhere between 30 and 100 percent of the gas
consumed by European Union countries as well as
much of their oil, is not able to use this
leverage for political or economic extortion.
Sadly, the opposite is true: Though "energy
security" has become a favorite topic for
discussion at E.U. and transatlantic summits,
next to nothing has been done about it.

That's partly because solutions aren't easy.
Weakening Russia's hold over European energy
supplies requires measures that would be costly
and difficult, such as building new terminals for
importing liquefied natural gas or new pipelines
to carry oil and gas from Central Asia and the Caucasus to Europe.

There's a less excusable problem, however: the
failure of European Union governments to agree on
either a common energy strategy or a policy for
responding to Russia's growing aggressiveness.
Some politicians, like German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, propose a new Ostpolitik
that would entice Russian cooperation with offers
of economic and strategic partnership. Others say
the E.U. should refuse to renew an expiring
economic pact with Russia unless it stops trying
to monopolize European energy supplies.

Though it has a vital stake, the United States
has been mostly missing from the discussion.
That's one reason a recent speech by Sen. Richard
Lugar (R-Ind.), the outgoing chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was
intriguing. Lugar has been a pioneer of some of
the most farsighted U.S. policies toward the
countries of the former Soviet Union, including
the Nunn-Lugar program for securing and
dismantling nuclear weapons and materials.

Now he's proposing that the NATO alliance
formally adopt "energy security" as one of its
central missions. NATO, he told a German Marshall
Fund conference alongside the recent NATO summit
in Riga, Latvia, is "used to thinking in terms of
conventional warfare between nations. But energy
could become the weapon of choice for those who possess it.

"A natural gas shutdown to a European country in
the middle of winter," he added, "could cause
death and economic loss on the scale of a military attack."

NATO, Lugar said, should resolve to treat "an
attack using energy" the same way it would a land
attack by conventional military forces -- that
is, an attack on one country would compel a
response by all. That doesn't mean military
action, he said; "rather, it means the alliance
must commit itself to preparing for and
responding to attempts to use the energy weapon against its fellow members."

Lugar pointed out that NATO used to hold
exercises to prepare for the logistical and
supply challenge of responding to a Soviet
attack. A new exercise, he said, "should focus on
how the Alliance would supply a beleaguered
member with the energy resources needed to
withstand geo-strategic blackmail." This wouldn't
be easy, he acknowledged: In fact, "the energy
threat is more difficult to prepare for than a
ground war in Central Europe." Guarding against
an energy cutoff by Russia will mean massive
investments in new supply lines and reserve
supplies, as well as the means to distribute them in a crisis.

That sounds daunting at a time when NATO has its
hands full trying to fight a war in Afghanistan.
But the energy threat goes to the alliance's
historic purpose: defending democratic Europe
from attack by the autocratic and belligerent
power on its Eastern frontier. 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."