U.S. Blocks Russian Efforts to Expand Power

Former allies U.S. and Germany are now being torn apart by the issue of energy routes. After the war in Georgia, European countries intensified their efforts to ensure access to hydrocarbons that originate in Russian territory. Meanwhile the U.S. has attempted to limit Russia’s efforts to have more power on the continent, claiming that Russia only seeks leverage to blackmail European governments.

The Americans have started to put pressure on the Nord Stream project, a pipeline that ends in Germany by going under the Baltic Sea, reports Russian publication Kommersant. Nord Stream AG, the company running the project, needs permission from all the countries through which the pipeline will cross, but Finland, Denmark and Sweden keep finding reasons to delay construction.

The troublesome article

A few days ago, Washingtons representative in Sweden asked the authorities not to agree on the construction of the pipeline. In an article called “Say NO to unsafe Russian energy” published on September 10th in the Svenska Dagbladet Newspaper, Wood reminded the Swedish that Nord Stream will not go through Baltic States or Poland, who are its potential consumers and that it is the result of a special understanding between Russian officials and Germany. The South Caucasus crisis has shown Europe and the U.S that they must not depend on Russia for their energy, wrote Wood, and the “EU should speak in one voice in order to fight off the power of the Russian energy weapon,” according to Bloomberg. Wood also asked Europeans to re-evaluate another Gazprom project, South Stream, which would connect South Europe to Russia by going through the Black Sea, a project that is in serious competition with the Nabucco project (of which Romania is also part of), that would by-pass Russia.

Irritated because of all the interfering

Two days after the article that stressed American efforts to press Scandinavian states to decline the Russian gas-pipe project, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier sent an official protest to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. The head of German diplomacy declared he was “irritated” by all the statements made by the American ambassador in Sweden, seeing them as a very unusual and unwanted interference in Germany’s affairs. As if this protest wasn’t enough, the German government reinforced its support for the Russian project. “We said very clearly that we supported this project out of political reasons”, said Ulrich Wilhelm, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Wilhelm also declared that the pipeline, which will go through the Baltic Sea and has as its project manager, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, is needed to provide the EU with energy consistency.

In return Russia commented on the American intervention through the website of its embassy in Stockholm: “It appears that the U.S. is ignoring the old diplomatic rule according to which one does not comment on a third country from your residence. We have no intention to enter a dispute with the U.S. on the territory of a different country. Unlike our partners, we do not want to look diplomatically unethical.”