París. Place de la République, 16 abril 2022. Foto JPQ.

Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande, Emmanuel Macron, interlocutores de Putin, arquitectos privilegiados de la construcción política de Europa, desde hace treinta años, ah …

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«Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression runs on the money Russia gets by selling fossil fuels to Europe. And while Ukraine has, incredibly, repelled Russia’s attempt to seize Kyiv, Putin won’t be definitively stopped until Europe ends its energy dependence.

Which means that Germany — whose political and business leaders insist that they can’t do without Russian natural gas, even though many of its own economists disagree — has in effect become Putin’s prime enabler. This is shameful; it is also incredibly hypocritical given recent German history.
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As some readers may remember, early last decade much of southern Europe faced a crisis as lending dried up, sending interest rates on government debt soaring. German officials were quick to blame these countries for their own plight, insisting, with much moralizing, that they were in trouble because they had been fiscally irresponsible and now needed to pay the price.

As it turns out, this diagnosis was mostly wrong. Much of the surge in southern European interest rates reflected a market panic rather than fundamentals; borrowing costs plunged, even for Greece, after the president of the European Central Bank said three words — “whatever it takes” — suggesting that the bank would, if necessary, step in to buy the debt of troubled economies.

Yet Germany took the lead in demanding that debtor nations impose extreme austerity measures, especially spending cuts, no matter how large the economic costs. And those costs were immense: Between 2009 and 2013 the Greek economy shrank by 21 percent while the unemployment rate rose to 27 percent.

But while Germany was willing to impose economic and social catastrophe on countries it claimed had been irresponsible in their borrowing, it has been unwilling to impose far smaller costs on itself despite the undeniable irresponsibility of its past energy policies.

I’m not sure how to quantify this, but my sense is that Germany received far more and clearer warning about its feckless reliance on Russian gas than Greece ever did about its pre-crisis borrowing. Yet it seems as if Germany’s famous eagerness to treat economic policy as a morality play applies only to other countries.

To be fair, Germany has moved on from its initial unwillingness to help Ukraine at all; Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany claims, although the Germans deny it, that he was told there was no point in sending weapons because his government would collapse in hours. And maybe, maybe, the realization that refusing to shut off the flow of Russian gas makes Germany de facto complicit in mass murder will finally be enough to induce real action…». New York Times, 7 abril 2022, Paul Krugman, How Germany Became Putin’s Enabler.

Raphael Glucksmann, 29 abril 2022, Depuis l’invasion de l’Ukraine, les pays européens ont importé pour 44 milliards d’euros de gaz, pétrole et charbon de Russie, soit deux fois plus que l’année dernière sur la même période. L’Europe finance donc la guerre de Poutine. Cette honte doit cesser. L’embargo, maintenant.

«Las guerras son caras y Rusia ha aumentado en los últimos años su gasto militar, que ascendió a 61.700 millones de dólares estadounidenses en 2020. Ese mismo año, solo los países de la UE compraron gas, petróleo y carbón a Rusia por el equivalente a 67.000 millones de dólares. [ .. ]Según la Agencia Internacional de la Energía, este dinero representó casi la mitad del presupuesto estatal ruso en 2021. Europa sigue pagando hasta 22.000 millones de euros mensuales a empresas rusas por productos energéticos y la atención se centra principalmente en Alemania. [ .. ] «No dejamos de ser conscientes de que todos los días del año estamos pagando a Rusia unos 1.000 millones de euros por importar su energía que sirven para bombardear hospitales y centrales nucleares», ha declarado Natalia Fabra, catedrática de Economía de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, «no podemos prescindir, pero tampoco tenemos que dejar de denunciar que estamos contribuyendo a financiar la guerra y lo llevamos haciendo especialmente desde el año pasado, cuando Rusia comenzó a retirar su gas de los almacenamientos en Europa, contribuyendo a la subida de precios». ABC, 30 abril 2022, Rosalía Sánchez, La UE financia la guerra de Rusia con 22.000 millones de euros al mes.

Las negritas son mías.

Gerhard Schröder, acorralado por su lucrativa relación con Putin.

Ucrania, la guerra … Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, Macron, “ciegos”, “sordos” e inaudibles ante el imperialismo de Putin.

Ucrania, la guerra … ¿Ganará o perderá Putin? ¿Europa?

Ucrania, la guerra … Zelenski en España, Caína.

Europa (s).

Ucrania.

Alemania.

Francia.

Rusia.

Seguridad & Defensa.

Fotografía.