Europe's suicide-by-sanctions continues — while the US celebrates

The EU’s push to fully decouple from remaining Russian energy imports represents the ultimate act of geopolitical vassalage — ensuring higher prices and the bloc’s structural dependence on US energy

I’ve written for UnHerd about the EU’s push to fully decouple from remaining Russian energy imports and how it represents the ultimate act of geopolitical vassalage — ensuring higher prices and the bloc’s structural dependence on US fossil fuels for decades to come:

By adopting sanctions that align with Trump’s demands [to fully decouple from Russian energy imports], Brussels is sacrificing what remains of its autonomy. This reveals the sheer irrationality of contemporary transatlantic politics. By pressing Trump to adopt a tougher stance against Moscow, effectively urging measures that will prolong the conflict, they have allowed Trump to frame his demands as a perverse quid pro quo: he will help European countries undermine their long-term economic and geopolitical interests, by further antagonising Russia, but only if they first inflict further damage on their own economies by halting all energy imports from Russia.

The result is a geopolitical paradox so twisted that it almost defies comprehension. European governments, trapped by their own rhetoric and by a dogmatic commitment to permanent confrontation with Moscow, have manoeuvred themselves into a position where Trump can present Europe’s economic self-harm and growing dependence on US energy as the price they must pay in order to accelerate their own strategic decline.

Overall, the EU’s energy policy since 2022 has been a textbook case of self-inflicted harm. By cutting itself off from cheap Russian supplies, it has handed the United States a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dominate Europe’s energy market. By embracing sanctions that have failed to weaken Russia but have devastated European industry, Brussels has turned the continent into a geopolitical pawn. Europe’s leaders claim to be defending values and solidarity; in reality, they are presiding over a process of deindustrialisation and decline, while continuing to dangerously escalate tensions with Russia. Unless there is a dramatic shift, the continent’s future will be one of stagnation and irrelevance — and, at worst, all-out war.

Read the article here. If you’re a paid subscriber and you can’t access the paywall write to me at thomasfazi82@gmail.com.

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Thomas Fazi

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Twitter: @battleforeurope

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