When hell freezes

Last week the world was heating on. Israel attacked Gaza in an operation that right now counts in more than a thousand the number of casualties; but there weren't Israeli bombs the only ones moving around. Still in the region, Lebanese militias launched several rockets against the north of Israel. Twice. Meanwhile, Russia announced a new deal to contribute as Government Aid with MIG-29 combat fighters to the development of Lebanon.

On the other hand, Israel saw how a supply of American arms was delayed to avoid a direct relation with the ongoing offensive. It doesn't matter; it will arrive with the new administration. By the way, military authorities in Obamaland -although it isn't still officially Obamaland- just passed their first test in a nuclear security inspection for a long time -pheeew, finally! It was about time, seriously-, after the mistakes detected a few months ago with the momentaneal miss of the track of a few bombs...

It's only about time too that the Royal Navy nuclear submarines start failing, now that from now on will be running on Windows XP. Can you imagine a blue screen just when they are about to abort a missile launch in a training? The Kursk incident is going to be ridiculous against this.

Anyway, as I was saying, even though the hell Gaza is living in, and against the predictions of Al Gore, like if Earth wanted to give some ground to the ones that drill her, Europe suffers this year one of the worst winters in decades. And if that wasn't enough, the gas supply has been cut off, although Durao Barroso says he paid the bill.

The origin of the problem is in the edge of geographical Europe, in Ukraine. Across this country travels the majority of the gas supply for Eastern Europe, and some of the gas for Germany, France and Italy. Russia started saying that Ukraine hadn't paid the bill; the Ukrainians response they did. Then the Eastern bear says that will not supply more gas to Ukraine until all the debt (including interest rates) is paid; and the OTAN aspirant threatens with kidnapp Europe's gas. Arguing about the price, mutual accusations of robbery... At the end, Gazprom decided to cut the gas supply across Ukraine increasing the supply through Belarus.

But the result was an alarming descend in the flow of gas in the pipelines in Europe. Some countries like Bulgaria or the ex-Yugoslavian republics saw a decreasement of more than 90%. Add this to the extremely severe conditions of the rigorous winter and you have almost a disaster (Slovakia decided to apply the emergency state). So now that Europe was directly affected, the EU did something. Not much, but enough to force Russia to start negotiations with Ukraine again. It's more than what Georgia got last summer.

There are, however, two interesting lectures from this episode (still going on). These are that a) Europe has the same power over Russia than the la UN over Israel, and b) that Europe must get as soon as possible new energy suppliers and invest more in other energy sources, specially renewable energy sources and nuclear energy.

About the first point is clear that the political power of Europe is minimum. Not only is not able to put order inside its own borders, but also is inefficient while managing crisis abroad. The only weapons Europe has are the diplomacy (obsolete as the Europe's vision in a world dominated by military superpowers) and the economy. And that later one, in a world immerse in a financial breakdown, applying protectionism measures, is not very effective either.

The EU is only an economic union, not military nor political. And that's precisely its weakness. Add that to an excessive dependency on American technology and we just kill European influence in the world (out from the Third World of ex-colonies) Maybe, just when the teenager that is now the European military and technological industry reaches its maturity and politically stays together in a more solid structure, only then we could start talking about a return of the power to the old world. Some steps are being made in that way (like the new positioning system, Galileo), but are still too few.

And about the second point, the necessity of diversify the insource of energy supply is something on sight from a long time ago. Who only has an exit is caught. North African gas looks like a better alternative than Russia. The gas there is cheap, good and closer, going directly from the provider into European borders (Greece, Italy, Spain). No intermediaries, no pain.

But that's not enough. It's necessary as well to invest in new renewable energy, new technologies and nuclear energy. An investment now in those fields means gaining an outstanding position in the market for the future (and control over it), when the oil reserves start to fail.

Last measures adopted by Europe are in that way. More benefits to I+D, more restrictions to contaminant products (from cars to TVs) and incentives of all kind to the companies developing cheaper and greener products. It is much more than what you can see in other parts of the world.

But still is needed more.



Correction: In my last post I identified the photo as the explosion of a cluster bomb when it is in fact a White Phosphorus shell.


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