The Biden administration is also sharing hosting duties this year with the Netherlands, Costa Rica, South Korea and Zambia to emphasize the breadth of the democratic coalition. And it comes three weeks after the Netherlands joined hands with the U.S. to limit the export of advanced semiconductor technologies to China.
But solidifying alliances with countries in regions beyond Europe has proved just as difficult, if not more so.
The Solomon Islands — a longtime U.S. ally on strategically vital sealanes linking Australia with Hawaii — turned a deaf ear to Biden’s democracy rhetoric by inking a controversial security pact with Beijing in 2021.
Parts of Africa have also been a hard sell, particularly because so many countries there have benefited from China’s large infrastructure investments. While 27 African countries voted in favor of a March 2022 U.N. resolution against Russia’s aggression, 16 others — including South Africa — abstained from the vote while Eritrea voted against it.
In Latin America, Costa Rica is the sole country that joined U.S. sanctions against Russia. And the region’s Mercosur trade grouping denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request to speak to the body in July.
China is taking its own multipronged approach to courting the globe.
On Ukraine, Beijing is trying to show its friendlier side — but to both Russia and the West. Xi’s visit with Putin produced multiple “strategic cooperation” deals that included an increase in Russian gas sales to Beijing as well as agreements to expand cross-border transport links by building new bridges and roads.
At the same time, China has gone on a global public relations push to paint itself as the country advocating for peace in Ukraine. Beijing is marketing a 12-point potential peace plan. And Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang assured Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in a phone call earlier this month that Beijing wants “a constructive role” in ending the conflict.
China also hosted its very own International Forum on Democracy last week, claiming 300 participants from 100 countries. The group discussed “diverse forms of democracy, slamming monistic and hegemonic narratives on the subject,” Chinese state media reported.
“We uphold true multilateralism, work for a multi-polar world and greater democracy in international relations, and make global governance more just and equitable,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said earlier this month.
That rhetoric underscores Beijing’s shift from blanket rejection of criticism of its political system to a semantic redefinition of democracy and human rights.
“What the Chinese are trying to do is not fight against democracy and human rights and reject them — they’re trying to pick Biden’s pocket and co-opt them by defining them as what China does,” said Daniel Russel, Obama’s former assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Asked about the Biden administration’s democracy summit, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in D.C., Liu Pengyu, said the U.S. is “trying to divide the world into ‘democratic’ and ‘non-democratic’ camps based on its criteria, and openly provoke division and confrontation.”
As much as Beijing wants to keep trade lanes open with Europe, it is also getting more aggressive toward trading partners that turn against it. China imposed a trade embargo against Lithuania in 2021 after Taiwan set up a diplomatic office in the EU country. More recently, it threatened the Netherlands with possible retaliations for siding with the U.S. on semiconductors.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s marathon three-day visit to Moscow was hailed by the Kremlin as the dawn of a new age of “deeper” ties between the two countries, as Russia races to plug gaping holes left in its finances by Western energy sanctions.
But while Vladimir Putin insisted a new deal struck during the negotiations on Wednesday will ensure Russia can weather the consequences of its invasion of Ukraine, analysts and European lawmakers say he’s overestimating just how much Beijing can help him balance the books.
Prior to the full-blown invasion, Russia’s oil and gas sector accounted for almost half of its federal budget, but embargoes and restrictions imposed by Western countries have since created a multi-billion dollar deficit.
With the country’s ever-influential oligarchs estimated to be out of pocket to the tune of 20 percent of their wealth — and industry tycoon Oleg Deripaska warning the state could run out of money as soon as next year — Putin is seeking to reassure them he’s opened up a massive new market.
“Russian business is able to meet China’s growing demand for energy,” Putin declared Tuesday, ahead of an opulent state banquet.
But analysts and Ukrainian officials have been quick to point out that actually stepping up exports of oil and gas to China will be a technical challenge for Moscow, given most of its energy infrastructure runs to the West, not the East.
Putin on Wednesday announced a major new pipeline, Power-of-Siberia 2, that will carry 50 billion cubic meters of gas to China via Mongolia to fix that problem.
But “in reality, it’s pretty unclear what has actually been agreed,” said Jade McGlynn, a Russia expert at King’s College London. “When it comes to terms and pricing, Beijing drives a hard bargain at the best of times — right now they know Russia’s not got a strong hand.”
Details of the financing and construction of the project have not yet been revealed.
And with predictions of a financial downturn swirling, Beijing may not need more energy to power sluggish industries, McGlynn added.
Yuri Shafranik, a former energy minister under Boris Yeltsin who now heads Russia’s Union of Oil and Gas Producers, suggested China’s appetite for natural gas “will certainly increase” in the coming years, and pointed out that Beijing would not have signed a pipeline agreement if it didn’t need the resources.
But, if the Kremlin was hoping to replace Europe as a reliable customer, it may end up disappointed, said Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP who serves as chair of the Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defense.
“They chose to use energy to blackmail Europe even before the war,” she said. “Now, Russia has to find new markets and must accept terms and conditions imposed by others. China is taking advantage of the situation.”
In a bid to sweeten the terms, Putin invited all of Asia, Africa and Latin America to buy Russian oil and gas in China’s domestic currency, the renminbi, at the close of Xi’s speech on Tuesday. This came after Xi had already indicated at the China-Arab Summit in December in Riyadh that he would welcome the opportunity to trade oil and gas with Saudi Arabia on similar terms.
The outreach is a nod to the 1974 pact between then-U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Saudi kingdom to accept dollars in exchange for oil, which would in turn be spent on Western goods, assets and services. Non-Western nations have, however, been threatening to move away from dollar pricing in energy markets for years to no effect.
Still, Russia’s efforts to peel away from Western-dominated energy markets are unlikely to make much difference to its fortunes in the long run, according to Simone Tagliapietra, a research fellow at the Bruegel think tank.
“What we are seeing is it’s proving extremely difficult for Russia to diversify away from Europe, and they’ve been forced to become a junior partner of China,” Tagliapietra said. “After this, Moscow won’t be an oil and gas superpower as it was before, not just because of sanctions but also because of the green transition.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
It’s a question worthy of a great TV detective: can streamers like Netflix still guarantee a certain proportion of European content if the goalposts are suddenly moved to exclude hits like Sherlock and Doctor Who?
They may soon have to, as the European Commission is considering removing the U.K. from the list of countries recognized as providing “European” content, according to a policy paper seen by POLITICO. That would put broadcasters and streaming platforms in a tight spot, as the U.K. is among the biggest contributors to their European catalogs.
“The need to re-define the concept of European works has been raised in the context of Brexit. It is arguable that, since the U.K. is no longer a member of the EU, works originating in the U.K. should no longer be considered as European,” said the paper. It also raised the idea of cutting Switzerland from the scope of European works.
Under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, television and streaming must include a share of “European works” in their transmission schedules or on-demand catalogues. These are defined as programs originating in, and produced mainly by nationals of, EU countries or those that have ratified the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Transfrontier Television (ECTT), which includes neighbors such as the U.K., Turkey and Ukraine.
The Commission is now considering how to tighten these criteria.
In the approach laid out in the paper, dated December 2022, countries that have signed up to the ECTT should also have close ties with the EU and its internal market, singling out members of the European Economic Area, EU candidate countries, or potential candidates and sovereignties which signed agreements to use the euro like the Holy See and San Marino.
Move over, Fleabag
That would be bad news for broadcasters and streamers. The U.K. gobbled up about 28 percent of platforms’ European investments in 2021, compared to about 21 percent for German productions and 15 percent for French, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory.
“It is a wrong discussion, at a wrong time,” Sabine Verheyen, chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education, told POLITICO in response to the Commission document. She warned against excluding such an “important partner, even if they are not a member of the Union anymore.”
As early as June 2021, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT) warned against any move to exclude U.K. productions. “Despite Brexit, the audiovisual community continues to work hand in hand across the channel,” it said. “We should focus on building bridges, not burning them.”
In a reaction to the Commission paper, a spokesperson for the U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport said: “the U.K. remains committed to European works. We continue to support its contribution to cultural enrichment across Europe and to provide audiences access to content they know and love.”
The Commission hasn’t yet indicated how it might roll out the changes, and it hasn’t made a definitive proposition to exclude U.K. content; any such move would no doubt trigger opposition from industry. The EU is due to evaluate the audiovisual directive by the end of 2026.
A Commission spokesperson said in a statement that the EU executive “is currently undertaking a fact-finding exercise” to make sure European works benefit from a “diverse, fair and balanced market.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
On the pledges side, U.S. officials are assuring Europeans their companies will get access to some tax credits and subsidies from a landmark U.S. climate bill passed last year.
But Europe’s response has been ambivalent at best, with many countries hesitant to pull away from the profitable Chinese market — not least Germany, which has strong trade links.
The back-and-forth has laid bare the lingering divisions between the United States and European countries on how to address the growing economic power and military might of China.
“The Europeans have already experienced deep economic trauma because of cutting off Russia. They cannot imagine cutting off China,” said Heather Conley, a former State Department official overseeing European and Eurasian Affairs in the George W. Bush administration.
But as the U.S. pressure on Europe mounts and intelligence on China becomes more concerning, there are signs the American campaign could be bearing fruit. Germany has said it is reviewing whether it should continue to use equipment from China’s Huawei and ZTE; the Netherlands said Wednesday it will block the sale of advanced chips printers to China.
Conley argued that getting more from Europe requires a reimagining of U.S. policy priorities.
“This is where the United States has to create an alternative where we’re working to strengthen Europe and our allies in Asia,” said Conley, who’s now president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She argued that means designing legislation on technology, critical minerals and supply chains that keeps the needs of allies in mind — something recent U.S. legislation, with its emphasis on American industry, has not done.
European officials are hoping to make progress toward securing an agreement on EU access to the made-in-America subsidies program created by the Inflation Reduction Act. The two sides are now hashing out a special exemption that would give EU companies the same access to the incentives the U.S. is offering free-trade partners like Canada and Mexico. A final agreement is not expected this week, however, with any changes possibly needing a presidential executive order, given that there is no appetite in Washington to re-open the IRA.
In exchange, the EU is touting the idea of a critical raw materials “club” — a group of like-minded countries who would get together to combat China’s dominance in the field.
Europe in particular has a dearth of raw minerals such as lithium and cobalt — crucial materials that are components in everything from car batteries to solar panels. Von der Leyen focused heavily on the idea during a visit to Canada on Tuesday, suggesting that Canada could offer Europe badly-needed resources. “China produces 98 percent of Europe’s supplies of rare earths,” she said. “Europe needs to de-risk this dependency.”
An EU official stressed this is a shared objective. “Both sides want a green transition. Both sides want to keep in check non-market economies,” said the official, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in an interview that goal “is as important for us as it is for the EU or any of our other partners.”
U.S. officials denied that Biden is linking friendlier U.S. trade policies with expectations of European action on China.
“The EU makes its own decisions,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson said. “There is unprecedented alignment between the U.S. and Europe on concerns posed by the People’s Republic of China, and we continue to coordinate with them on that.”
A senior official from the State Department stressed that getting Europeans on board with a tougher approach to China has been a focus of the Biden administration from its start, and that the administration believes the Europeans are much closer to the U.S. point of view now than before.
“This isn’t something we woke up to two weeks ago,” the official said. “The Europeans are with us. We’re working on this together precisely because we now have this convergence that we previously did not.”
Another U.S. official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues, said the administration isn’t “looking at it as a transactional thing. ‘You take China seriously and we give you X.’”
“Instead, we are in some ways relying on our approach to the Ukraine war: Sharing intel, engaging in a steady back and forth dialogue, and warning about an overreliance or dependencies on any country, whether it is Russia or China,” the official said.
Any moves Europe does make could still fall far short of what the Biden administration wants in terms of isolating China economically.
“They are betting that Europe will really step up and materially contribute to confronting China. Yet the leaders of Europe’s largest economies are openly saying they are not interested in decoupling and by extension, meaningful sanctions on China in the event of conflict,” said Elbridge Colby, a former Defense Department official who has advocated a more hawkish U.S. policy on China. “So if the Biden administration thinks that their policy on Europe is working in light of the China challenge, there’s a huge disconnect.”
Von der Leyen said as recently as January at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the EU wants to “de-risk” but not “de-couple” from China. But there are signs that EU policy toward China is hardening. EU officials have signaled in recent weeks that the bloc is prepared to sanction China if Beijing crosses their red line and provides weapons to Russia.
U.S. diplomats from London to Vienna to Berlin have shared China-related intelligence with their European counterparts to try to convince them that Beijing is considering sending weapons and to take a tougher economic and political stance on the country.
The new intelligence, which has been briefed to U.S. officials in the last month, indicates that China is considering sending drones, ammunition and other small arms to Moscow in an attempt to aid its effort in Ukraine. The intelligence also touches on the extent to which Russia is running low on certain weapons and ammunition and is becoming increasingly desperate for foreign help. Moscow has in recent months brokered deals with Iran and North Korea to help prop up its battlefield operations. U.S. officials are concerned that Beijing could be next.
It’s possible that U.S. officials are sharing different levels of intelligence with different countries or institutions. A country like Britain, which is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, for instance, is likely to have more access than others not in that club.
One European diplomat said “yep” when asked by POLITICO if the U.S. is offering evidence to back up its claims that China is mulling sending weapons to Russia. A U.S. diplomat said the reactions among European officials has been one of “concern” because they take American intelligence seriously — especially after the U.S. correctly warned of Russia’s impending full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Von der Leyen spurred confusion on Sunday by saying the United States had offered “no evidence” so far about China’s suspected considerations.
But a spokesperson for von der Leyen stressed Tuesday that she was talking about the body she leads — the European Commission. That doesn’t preclude U.S. intelligence-sharing with individual European member states.
At the same Sunday press conference with von der Leyen, Germany’s Scholz declared that China had offered assurances that it would not send weapons to Russia.
In the diplomatic conversations with their European counterparts, U.S. officials have raised the potential for additional future sanctions on Chinese entities already thought to be violating existing U.S. sanctions related to Russia, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the matter.
If China decides to provide lethal weapons to Russia — Europe’s main geopolitical foe on the continent — it’s likely that the EU would respond forcefully, said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“This isn’t really about China for the Europeans. This is about Russia,” Bergmann said. “I don’t think the United States would have to do much of a sales job to convince Europe to respond.
Doug Palmer contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Marvelous Europe has finally unveiled the release date for Europe of TRINITY TRIGGERAction RPG developed by Three Rings. The title will be available starting from May 16 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. At the moment it is already possible to pre-order it in physical edition through some selected retailers at introductory price of €49.99while information for the digital edition will be released at a later time.
Waiting for more information we leave you with a new trailer dedicated to TRINITY TRIGGER, reminding you that if you want to know more about the game you can find many details in our previous article. Good vision.
Source: Marvelous Europe
#TRINITY #TRIGGER #release #date #Europe
Marvelous Europe<\/strong> has finally unveiled the release date for Europe of TRINITY TRIGGER<\/strong>Action RPG developed by Three Rings<\/strong>. The title will be available starting from May 16 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch<\/strong>. At the moment it is already possible to pre-order it in physical edition through some selected retailers at introductory price of \u20ac49.99<\/strong>while information for the digital edition will be released at a later time.<\/p>\n
Waiting for more information we leave you with a new trailer dedicated to TRINITY TRIGGER<\/strong>, reminding you that if you want to know more about the game you can find many details in our previous article. Good vision.<\/p>\n
Source: Marvelous Europe<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>
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#TRINITY #TRIGGER #release #date #Europe
( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
“We will have the best framework in the world in which companies can develop,” said Stefan Berger, the conservative German lawmaker who shepherded the EU crypto rulebook that will come into force in the second half of 2024. “We will have everything that you need for a workable market.”
It’s an argument that no U.S. policymaker is in a position to make, with American politicians at odds over whether to embrace or discourage the growth of crypto and regulators taking matters into their own hands. The collapse of the digital asset exchange FTX only complicated matters, revealing widespread industry mismanagement and taking down its former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, once a major crypto player in Washington. Lobbyists and sympathetic lawmakers stateside are trying to keep pressure on Congress by warning that the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world without a clearer set of rules.
At stake is America’s reputation as a promoter of innovation and a global hub for finance. While the crypto world has lost political clout in recent months, the advancement of the EU is providing fresh motivation for industry allies in Congress to press ahead with their agenda.
“The European Union’s ahead of us. Switzerland’s ahead of us. Australia’s ahead of us,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, a Republican Bitcoin advocate who has drafted a comprehensive crypto regulation bill. “England’s ahead of us. So it’s not just second- and third-world countries.”
The contrast with the EU is clear because the U.S. regulation of the industry rests on a melange of state-level rules and licensing that operates alongside federal financial safeguards designed for old-school banks, traditional stock trading and commodity exchanges.
Despite the inconsistencies, crypto has flourished for years in the U.S. system — thanks to friendly state-level approaches and little intervention from Washington.
But the sector is beginning to face a sweeping crackdown by federal agencies that have lost patience with what they see as flagrant flaunting of traditional financial regulations on investments and lending.
“We’re feeling a crypto carpet-bombing moment, where they seem to be trying to throw whatever they can within their authority — or potentially exceeding their authority — and we think that’s shortsighted,” said Kristin Smith, CEO of the Washington-based Blockchain Association. “We think it’s bad for U.S. competitiveness.”
The EU’s openness toward crypto is a striking turnaround: the Europeans crafted their new rules after essentially freezing out the industry when Facebook, now known as Meta, announced its Libra digital currency in 2019.
European officials — prompted by fears of big tech minting private money — effectively stopped the project from launching.
That episode prompted lawmakers to draft industry-specific regulations before similar crypto products could take hold on the continent.
The Markets in Crypto-Assets law that EU policymakers came up with, dubbed MiCA, sets strict rules for stablecoins, a type of digital asset like the now-defunct Libra that’s anchored to a national currency or other established financial product. It also creates investor safeguards, capital requirements and corporate governance rules for the broader crypto market. Aides to U.S. lawmakers were in Brussels in recent days to talk with EU officials about the new law.
“Europe is clearly outpacing the U.S. by establishing holistic regulatory frameworks for the cryptoasset industry,” said Susan Friedman, international policy counsel at Ripple, a digital currency firm that’s mounting a legal challenge against an enforcement action brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission “We fully expect Europe to become a natural hub for responsible participants going forward.”
To be sure, some European officials are concerned that the new law isn’t sufficient to head off another debacle at a global crypto company like FTX. They want to layer on additional safeguards.
“MiCA is a positive step in the right direction, but it is certainly not perfect or complete,” said Ernest Urtasun, Spain’s left-leaning Green parliamentarian who helped write the rulebook. “More work needs to be done to respond to the regulatory and supervisory challenges we are seeing today.”
Mark Hays, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, said parts of the EU regime may be more permissive in the eyes of the crypto industry compared to “the straightforward effort underway in the United States to simply apply the rules that exist.”
“The tension between the European Commission, the Council and the parliament means that EU rules are especially complicated, and that’s an environment in which industry lobbyists thrive,” Hays said.
In the U.S., the pressure from the crypto industry is falling flat with its skeptics in Congress, who are unfazed by the prospect of Europe taking market share. And some top crypto firm players say the EU still isn’t a welcoming place to operate.
“Crypto, it’s not like it provides that many jobs,” Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a digital currency critic, said in an interview. “Companies always threaten to offshore when they’re gaming the system.”
Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer and head of global policy at stablecoin issuer Circle, said he would take the U.S. regulatory ambiguity “over the near five years of hurry up and wait the Europeans have embarked on” while drafting and implementing their new law.
Disparte speaks from experience. He was one of the leaders of Facebook’s Libra project, which EU officials stopped from getting off the ground.
“You might not like that America is stuck in a fintech constitutional crisis that protects and preserves the states as the laboratories of fintech innovation in the country,” he said. “But that’s a powerful feature and not a bug.”
Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
U.S. companies provided 50 percent of Europe’s liquefied natural gas supplies in 2022, along with 12 percent of its oil. Russian oil and gas shipments to the continent have shriveled by half, beset by boycotts, sanctions and an EU price cap. Global oil and gas trade routes have been redrawn and renewable energy development has received a massive financial and political shot in the arm.
The turnabout has put a new spotlight on the United States’ role as the world’s biggest energy producer, whose foothold in Asia has also strengthened in the past year. At the same time, the EU and the Biden administration are working more closely together to develop the next generation of clean energy — one that doesn’t include Russia — a transition that will lean heavily on U.S. fossil fuel in the coming few years.
“Europe’s energy divorce from Russia is nearly complete,” said Andrew Lipow, president of oil industry and market consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates. “We’re seeing a permanent change as far as how Europe gets its energy in the future. One result is the United States and European energy policy are going to be more closely intertwined.”
Europe’s reaction against its largest energy supplier’s attempt to remake the map has sent shockwaves through global markets. These were felt most acutely on the continent, where electricity and natural gas prices surged as much as 15-fold, prompting governments to spend more than $800 billion to ease consumers’ financial burdens.
The rapid reshuffling in oil and overseas gas shipments began after the February 2022 invasion and continued through the imposition of price caps on Russian shipments imposed late last year and earlier this month — shifts that will be felt for years.
“The energy world has changed,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said last week at an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the invasion’s aftermath. “It has changed in the here and now.”
“It’s astonishing what’s happened,” Assistant Energy Secretary Andrew Light said at the same hearing. “This energy struggle will continue. It changes the world.”
U.S. fossil fuel exports, particularly liquefied natural gas, played a huge role in keeping the European alliance together over the past year, said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and author of “The New Map,” a book examining the geopolitics of energy. Putin had hoped to use gas as a weapon to shatter European support for Ukraine, he said, a miscalculation that so far hasn’t come to fruition.
“The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that U.S. LNG exports are not only of economic energy importance,” Yergin said in an interview. “They’ve also now taken on a strategic importance. U.S. LNG has become one of the foundations of U.S. and European energy security, part of the replacement for Russian gas and has even become part of the arsenal of NATO.”
The U.S. supplied Europe with half of its LNG supply last year and is expected to cement its position as a steady source of the fuel to Germany and other EU member states. Enough export facilities, particularly around the Gulf Coast, are slated to open in the next three years to nearly double export volumes to 20 percent of overall U.S. natural gas output.
Frank Fannon, a former State Department first assistant secretary for energy resources under the Trump administration, said the decision by U.S. companies to structure their multi-year delivery contracts to allow buyers to ship the gas wherever they wanted played a major role in overcoming Russia’s switching off its pipelines. That market innovation allowed European buyers to persuade the Asian companies that held the gas contracts to reroute them toward the EU — for a price.
“I would find it unimaginable there would be a chance of weathering the storm in Europe but for American LNG,” said Fannon, who is now managing director of energy and geopolitical advisory firm Fannon Global Advisors. “It’s absolutely inconceivable. It isn’t just the volumes of U.S. gas, but also the way that American companies have transformed the market.”
Russia’s loss of major markets for its natural gas will continue to hurt Putin’s geopolitical influence and could have further implications for Russia, Fannon added. Moscow last year agreed to ship more natural gas to China, which is becoming one of its biggest customers for energy — a fact that may give Beijing more leverage over a Russia that’s increasingly isolated from the West, Fannon said.
“Russia is on its way to becoming a client state of China,” Fannon said.
In addition to the surge in gas shipments to Europe — from the U.S. as well other producers, such as Qatar — this year’s mild winter will probably help prevent a repeat of the spike in gas prices seen last year, when the benchmark in the Netherlands spiked to levels more than ten times the U.S. price. Europe’s storage started this year at more than 80 percent full, making it far easier to top them off by the time temperatures turn colder this fall.
By itself, the United States’ relatively recent role as the world’s largest gas exporter doesn’t necessarily add geopolitical clout to the White House, said Ira Joseph, global fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. That’s because unlike its counterparts in the Middle East and other energy powerhouses, the U.S. government doesn’t have direct control over its oil and gas export industry.
While the Biden administration publicly said it was pressing allies to divert their LNG cargoes to Europe, it’s unlikely companies in Japan or elsewhere needed much persuading given how much money could be made selling their supplies of U.S. gas to desperate European companies, Joseph said.
“U.S. LNG is going to Europe because they’re paying a higher price,” Joseph said. “It’s not a natural gas Marshall Plan here. There’s no American Inc. exporting LNG.”
In the oil market, U.S. crude exports rose by more than 10 percent for the first 11 months of 2022 compared with the same period of 2021, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Shipments hit record highs in the final quarter of the year.
Some of the increase came as global economies gained steam after pandemic supply chain disruptions began to ease. What has changed, analysts said, was that the United States was becoming a supplier of choice for European and Asian countries that were stepping away from Russia.
At the same time, Exxon Mobil and other major U.S. oil companies are still loath to invest their bumper profits in new oil field projects, instead preferring to return money to shareholders. That’s a signal that even with Russia’s withdrawal from Europe’s oil markets, the good times for U.S. oil may eventually fade, said Morgan Bazilian, public policy professor at the Colorado School of Mines.
“It’s sort of changed the scale of that American energy landscape,” Bazilian said. “Will it last? You’re seeing more financial responsibility, but that will not translate to a lot more oil and gas.”
The future looks brighter for U.S. LNG exports, which actually fell in 2022 after having risen for years. An explosion in June forced Freeport LNG, the Texas company that is the country’s second-largest LNG exporter, to shut down, eliminating 20 percent of U.S. gas shipments abroad. Freeport started shipping out gas in limited quantities earlier this year.
Europe’s growing demand for LNG has caused Germany and other EU countries to spend billions on new natural gas import terminals. That should feed demand for more U.S. natural gas at least in the short term, analysts said.
Where LNG may have a bigger influence in Europe is in reinforcing the more traditional role the United States has had in Europe — that of military protector, said Matt Gertken, senior vice president for geopolitical strategy at BCA Research.
“Increased European reliance on liquefied natural gas entails increased reliance on maritime trade and supply line security, wherein the U.S. Navy plays an indispensable role for Europe,” he said.
Still, an increased flow of oil and gas east across the Atlantic may be a relatively short-term phenomenon, analysts said. Instead, Europe is accelerating development of renewable energy in a way that could lead to less need for U.S. oil and gas in the not-too-distant future.
It has added some LNG import terminals to bring in more gas, but it is also investing heavily in hydrogen infrastructure, electric vehicles and a new generation of small, modular nuclear plants — the sorts of projects that the Biden administration has been pushing in the United States. Carbon capture technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — heavily promoted in Biden’s climate law — are also expected to find fertile ground in Europe.
Countries in the European Union had planned even before the war to shift away from oil and gas in the long term. But Putin’s decision last year to turn off the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines has convinced European leaders to “supercharge” their move toward manufacturing as much of their own energy as possible, said Maroš Šefčovič, the commission’s vice president.
“It has accelerated all our efforts in getting as much as possible from indigenous European [energy] sources, which are renewables,” Šefčovič said in an interview.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
WARSAW — Eleven months ago, President Joe Biden came to Poland to denounce a war he’d hoped to avoid. On Tuesday, he returned having fully embraced the mantle of wartime leader, boasting of a U.S.-led Western response that blunted Vladimir Putin’s invasion and slowed the march of global authoritarianism.
Having stood in sunny and free Kyiv the day before — nearly a year after the war began — Biden in Warsaw was steeled for a fight he intends to see through while in the Oval Office. He may not be commanding troops in this battle, but he is acting like democracy’s civilian general, commanding an alliance strung together by geography, fear and necessity.
“NATO is more united and more unified than ever before,” Biden said. “The democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker. The autocrats of the world have grown weaker, not stronger.”
The feeling behind those words reflected the long-held views of a devout transatlanticist, a man who was 3 years old when World War II ended. Biden grew up in an era of American military and economic domination bolstered by partners across the Atlantic. The mission to safeguard Europe from tyranny since the 1940s has expanded worldwide, leading the United States to defend the “rules-based international order” it created against those opposed to free markets and free societies.
A fortification of that order, maintained through the sanctity of alliances, is central to the president’s entire foreign policy. And the war in Ukraine for Biden is a test of whether the U.S. is, in some respects, the nation of yesteryear. Can it stand for something, inspire and lead? Can it still be a force for good? Can it prolong global democracy’s flickering flame?
The president held that the answers to those questions were yes, yes and yes.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?”
“One year later, we know the answer: We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the alliance, Biden also announced the United States will host the NATO summit next year.
Hours before the speech, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Biden wanted to stand in Europe to affirm “what is at stake here is more than just the success and survival of the nation of Ukraine, but the rules-based international order, the fundamental principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and the fundamental values of independence, democracy, freedom that matter so much to everyday American people.”
“The president has believed passionately in the themes … for decades,” Sullivan said, applying them now at what Biden terms “an inflection point in history.”
Biden’s allies say he struck the right notes both in Ukraine and Poland. “The president’s address makes clear to Russia and other aggressors watching how steep the price will be for those who threaten freedom and democracy,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee’s Europe panel.
Despite the somber reason for his visit to Kyiv — the one-year anniversary of Russian troops, tanks, warplanes and missiles crossing into Ukraine — Biden displayed a joyous bounce as he wandered through the city. He stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even as air-raid sirens blared throughout the capital, a reminder that Russia still holds 20 percent of Ukraine and threatens nearly all of it with its weapons, terrorizing civilians daily. It was the first time a modern-day president traveled to a warzone the U.S. military didn’t control.
Biden’s lifted spirit drew from the symbolism of his lengthy and clandestine journey on “Rail Force One.” He was there as a physical representation of America’s continued commitment to Ukraine — “as long as it takes,” is his mantra — and rebuke to Putin. The Kremlin boss has unleashed war criminals, mercenaries and conscripts to unseat Zekenskyy, the same man with whom Biden was coordinating, congratulating and consoling.
The images beamed around the world were meant to deliver one message: These were two presidents on America’s Presidents’ Day showing a thug what true leadership looked like. It was, after all, only a year ago when Biden, also standing outside Warsaw’s Royal Palace, said that Putin “cannot remain in power.”
This year, with the palace garden surroundings lit up in blue and yellow and in front of a roaring crowd waving American, Polish and Ukrainian flags, Biden reported that “Kyiv stands strong, it stands proud and it stands free.”
But with the pageantry ending, and the drama receding, what remains are questions about how Biden can repeat his performance in the year ahead. The fear from within and outside the administration is that a weakened Russia could still deal Biden a setback as the brutal war of attrition drags on.
Putin, for all his struggles, hit similar notes of confidence, including during his State of the Union speech Tuesday which he moved up to pre-rebut Biden’s Warsaw address. “Step by step, we will accomplish all our tasks carefully and consistently,” he said before falsely accusing the West of starting the war. “We are using force to stop it.” He spiked tensions further by suspending the last-remaining nuclear treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the same one he and Biden extended for five years in 2021.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s decision “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
With no end in sight, and no peace deal Ukraine could likely accept, Biden needs European allies to hold strong for months, maybe years. Officials from this continent say they were lucky the winter season was relatively mild, allowing Europeans to withstand high energy prices and cold snaps. But another 365 days of shivers and thinning wallets could see continental voters turn against their governments.
One of Biden’s audiences was back home: the bipartisan congressional coalition supporting Kyiv has largely held, though isolationist voices in the GOP have grown louder. And, as Biden’s likely reelection bid approaches, polls suggest Americans are cooling on sending money to Kyiv. Biden also aimed, subtly, at Beijing. He suggested China should not increase its aid to Moscow, again framing the generational struggle between democracies and autocracies.
But it is unclear if the West’s arsenal of democracy can keep up with demand. At the Munich Security Conference, held days before Biden’s trip, European leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron echoed that their weapons-production lines weren’t humming along as desired for Ukraine’s and their own security. Macron implored Europe “to invest more in defense. If we want peace, we need the means to achieve it.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), part of the U.S. congressional delegation to the conference, worried about America’s ability to fill at least part of that gap. “The burn rate is very unsustainable,” he said in an interview there, as Ukrainian troops “are firing more munitions than we can produce. We can’t create, in the short term, a larger pipeline. The industrial base cannot do it.”
“The way we fix that is we actually train them on fire and maneuver and advanced tactics that use substantially less ammunition to achieve the same or greater result,” the House Armed Services Committee member and veteran said.
This week also featured some slight cracks in American and European rhetoric regarding Russia. The Biden administration repeats that it seeks Moscow’s “strategic defeat,” depleting it of the resources to sustain a modern economy, an equipped military and system of kleptocracy that keeps Putin in control. But in an interview with a French newspaper this week, Macron called on the West to help Ukraine win the war but not “crush” Russia. That followed his comments last year that Moscow should not be “humiliated over its invasion.”
Tending to America’s vast and varied allies is paramount for Biden, though there have been missteps along the way. Some allies raged then, and still do now, about his withdrawal from Afghanistan, and France was irate after being cut out of a nuclear submarine deal with Australia.
But what the president showcased in Poland was lockstep support for the transatlantic bond that undergirds his defense of Ukrainian and global democracy from behind the Resolute Desk.
“The stakes are eternal,” said Biden. “The choice between chaos and stability, between building and destroying, between hope and fear, between democracy that lifts up the human spirit and the brutal hand of the dictator that crushes it.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The feeling behind those words reflected the long-held views of a devout transatlanticist, a man who was 3 years old when World War II ended. Biden grew up in an era of American military and economic domination bolstered by partners across the Atlantic. The mission to safeguard Europe from tyranny since the 1940s has expanded worldwide, leading the United States to defend the “rules-based international order” it created against those opposed to free markets and free societies.
A fortification of that order, maintained through the sanctity of alliances, is central to the president’s entire foreign policy. And the war in Ukraine for Biden is a test of whether the U.S. is, in some respects, the nation of yesteryear. Can it stand for something, inspire and lead? Can it still be a force for good? Can it prolong global democracy’s flickering flame?
The president held that the answers to those questions were yes, yes and yes.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?”
“One year later, we know the answer: We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the alliance, Biden also announced the United States will host the NATO summit next year.
Hours before the speech, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Biden wanted to stand in Europe to affirm “what is at stake here is more than just the success and survival of the nation of Ukraine, but the rules-based international order, the fundamental principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and the fundamental values of independence, democracy, freedom that matter so much to everyday American people.”
“The president has believed passionately in the themes … for decades,” Sullivan said, applying them now at what Biden terms “an inflection point in history.”
Biden’s allies say he struck the right notes both in Ukraine and Poland. “The president’s address makes clear to Russia and other aggressors watching how steep the price will be for those who threaten freedom and democracy,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee’s Europe panel.
Despite the somber reason for his visit to Kyiv — the one-year anniversary of Russian troops, tanks, warplanes and missiles crossing into Ukraine — Biden displayed a joyous bounce as he wandered through the city. He stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even as air-raid sirens blared throughout the capital, a reminder that Russia still holds 20 percent of Ukraine and threatens nearly all of it with its weapons, terrorizing civilians daily. It was the first time a modern-day president traveled to a warzone the U.S. military didn’t control.
Biden’s lifted spirit drew from the symbolism of his lengthy and clandestine journey on “Rail Force One.” He was there as a physical representation of America’s continued commitment to Ukraine — “as long as it takes,” is his mantra — and rebuke to Putin. The Kremlin boss has unleashed war criminals, mercenaries and conscripts to unseat Zekenskyy, the same man with whom Biden was coordinating, congratulating and consoling.
The images beamed around the world were meant to deliver one message: These were two presidents on America’s Presidents’ Day showing a thug what true leadership looked like. It was, after all, only a year ago when Biden, also standing outside Warsaw’s Royal Palace, said that Putin “cannot remain in power.”
This year, with the palace garden surroundings lit up in blue and yellow and in front of a roaring crowd waving American, Polish and Ukrainian flags, Biden reported that “Kyiv stands strong, it stands proud and it stands free.”
But with the pageantry ending, and the drama receding, what remains are questions about how Biden can repeat his performance in the year ahead. The fear from within and outside the administration is that a weakened Russia could still deal Biden a setback as the brutal war of attrition drags on.
Putin, for all his struggles, hit similar notes of confidence, including during his State of the Union speech Tuesday which he moved up to pre-rebut Biden’s Warsaw address. “Step by step, we will accomplish all our tasks carefully and consistently,” he said before falsely accusing the West of starting the war. “We are using force to stop it.” He spiked tensions further by suspending the last-remaining nuclear treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the same one he and Biden extended for five years in 2021.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s decision “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
With no end in sight, and no peace deal Ukraine could likely accept, Biden needs European allies to hold strong for months, maybe years. Officials from this continent say they were lucky the winter season was relatively mild, allowing Europeans to withstand high energy prices and cold snaps. But another 365 days of shivers and thinning wallets could see continental voters turn against their governments.
One of Biden’s audiences was back home: the bipartisan congressional coalition supporting Kyiv has largely held, though isolationist voices in the GOP have grown louder. And, as Biden’s likely reelection bid approaches, polls suggest Americans are cooling on sending money to Kyiv. Biden also aimed, subtly, at Beijing. He suggested China should not increase its aid to Moscow, again framing the generational struggle between democracies and autocracies.
But it is unclear if the West’s arsenal of democracy can keep up with demand. At the Munich Security Conference, held days before Biden’s trip, European leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron echoed that their weapons-production lines weren’t humming along as desired for Ukraine’s and their own security. Macron implored Europe “to invest more in defense. If we want peace, we need the means to achieve it.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), part of the U.S. congressional delegation to the conference, worried about America’s ability to fill at least part of that gap. “The burn rate is very unsustainable,” he said in an interview there, as Ukrainian troops “are firing more munitions than we can produce. We can’t create, in the short term, a larger pipeline. The industrial base cannot do it.”
“The way we fix that is we actually train them on fire and maneuver and advanced tactics that use substantially less ammunition to achieve the same or greater result,” the House Armed Services Committee member and veteran said.
This week also featured some slight cracks in American and European rhetoric regarding Russia. The Biden administration repeats that it seeks Moscow’s “strategic defeat,” depleting it of the resources to sustain a modern economy, an equipped military and system of kleptocracy that keeps Putin in control. But in an interview with a French newspaper this week, Macron called on the West to help Ukraine win the war but not “crush” Russia. That followed his comments last year that Moscow should not be “humiliated over its invasion.”
Tending to America’s vast and varied allies is paramount for Biden, though there have been missteps along the way. Some allies raged then, and still do now, about his withdrawal from Afghanistan, and France was irate after being cut out of a nuclear submarine deal with Australia.
But what the president showcased in Poland was lockstep support for the transatlantic bond that undergirds his defense of Ukrainian and global democracy from behind the Resolute Desk.
“The stakes are eternal,” said Biden. “The choice between chaos and stability, between building and destroying, between hope and fear, between democracy that lifts up the human spirit and the brutal hand of the dictator that crushes it.”
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#Europe #Biden #pitch #democracys #general
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The yellow-and-blue flag of Ukraine has become a powerful symbol for millions of people across the Western world who want to express their solidarity with the victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Adopted officially in 1992, the year after Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union, the banner represents the country’s pride in its status as Europe’s bread basket — just picture endless wheat fields under blue skies.
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the colors were displayed on some of Europe’s most famous landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower to the Brandenburg Gate.
Over the course of the year since, the flag has spread to all corners of the Continent and beyond, in the hands of protesters, on official government buildings in London and Washington, and in the windows of private homes and cars.
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin | John Mcdougall/AFP via Getty ImagesEuropean Commission headquarters | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP via Getty ImagesMunich’s television tower | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Eiffel Tower | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
The flag not only came to signify Ukraine’s brave resistance in a war that ended decades of peace in Europe — it quickly became the hallmark of European unity in the face of the biggest state-backed threat to the Continent’s security this century.
On a visit to Kyiv in January, Charles Michel, the European Council’s president, captured the point.
“With the Maidan uprising, 22 years after gaining your independence, you, Ukrainians said: We are European,” Michel said. “So today, I have come to Ukraine to tell you: We are all Ukrainian.”
Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty ImagesNancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris and Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesJulien De Rosa/AFP via Getty ImagesBulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images
Beyond political symbols, Putin’s invasion triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Within weeks, European governments rushed to welcome in millions of Ukrainians, skipping administrative procedures at a speed that caused some to raise eyebrows.
Benedicte Simonart was one of the founders of a Brussels-based NGO BEforUkraine, whose logo features the Belgian and Ukrainian flags side by side. She was “struck” by the solidarity of those early days. “It was unbelievable: People kept coming to us, they were so eager to help,” she said.
“We felt very close to the Ukrainians,” she added. “Ukraine is the door to Europe, it’s almost as if it was our home.”
As the war has dragged on, European resolve has remained stable at a political level and in surveys of public opinion. The question is how long this will last if the conflict continues.
“One year ago, Europe came together very strongly and very supportively,” said Erik Jones, director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
“I’m very interested to see what this is going to do over the longer term in the way Europeans think about themselves,” Jones added. “As we approach this one-year anniversary, I think it’s really important to ask: Do we have the same power as a community to support Ukraine through what may be a very long conflict?”
For now at least, Europe and Ukraine seem closer than ever. Ukrainians, through the voice of their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, make no secret of their desire to join the EU — the sooner, the better.
And the powerful symbolism of the flag continues to color European towns and cities, a gesture that’s welcomed by Ukrainians who are now living in Europe.
“The flag is very important: it’s the symbol of Ukraine, and we need to keep displaying it, to talk about it, to remind people,” said Artem Datsii. “Because the war goes on.”
Datsii, 21, is a student at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where he moved before the war. He has not seen his parents, who live in Kyiv, for a year, but they speak regularly over the phone.
“At home, everyone is afraid that something will happen on the 24th,” Datsii said, referring to the invasion’s one-year marker. “The Russians love anniversaries.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
