The Gas War

[phantom power]

The first war of the Twenty-first Century has been declared. One country has just cut another's energy supply because it won't bow to its demands. Russia, the world's premier gas producer, has just pushed the button on the energy weapon. In the middle of winter, Vladimir Putin has turned off the spigot that allowed 50 million Ukrainians to warm themselves and that powered their economy.

With accelerated global development and the surge of giant consumers like China and India, raw materials have become weapons of mass economic deterrence, if not destruction. A new geopolitics is forming that places producing countries like Russia in a position of strength and that forces net buyer countries like China to develop a diplomacy of secured supply with, for example, Africa and the Middle East.

Moscow demands that Ukraine begin paying the market price (the one paid by Western Europeans) for its gas now and that it benefit no longer from the exemptions once reserved for Comecon countries. This demand is not illegitimate, but it intervenes with excessive brutality, and Ukraine is right to ask for a staggering of increases over time. Above all, this demand arises a year after the "Orange Revolution" in Kiev that saw the election of pro-Western Viktor Yuchtchenko to power. Therefore, one cannot fail to detect a desire on Vladimir Putin's part to punish a former satellite that is breaking away.

(...)

Energy independence is becoming crucial again, as it was in the 1970s. The gas war tolls Mr. Putin's determination, but more generally a warning and a reminder that we must urgently re-launch a European policy to secure energy.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/010206H.shtml