By Horst Teubert and Dr. Peer Heinelt
The transatlantic power struggle for dominance in Eastern and Southeastern Europe is coming to a head – with an eye on rearming, supplying energy and rebuilding Ukraine.
While the EU Commission initially claimed leadership in rebuilding Ukraine, Washington now says Brussels lacks the “political and financial weight” to do so.
Instead, leadership should be with the United States.
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At the same time, the US is crushing an initiative in Poland pushed by Berlin to create a European air defense system and is in the process of establishing Poland as a center for the spread of US nuclear technology in Eastern and Southeastern Europe – at the expense of of the French nuclear industry.
Finally, they are beginning to transform Eastern and Southeastern Europe into another outlet for US fractional liquefied natural gas.
They are using the Three Seas Initiative, a regional project involving twelve states between the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea, initiated in 2015 at the suggestion of Washington, including Poland.
The initiative conflicts with German interests in the region.
THE START OF THE THREE SEAS
The power struggle between Washington and Berlin for the leading position in Eastern and Southeastern Europe has been going on for years.
The US can count on loyal cooperation partners, especially in Poland and the Baltic states.
Moreover, they rely to some extent on the Three Seas Initiative, a loose format of cooperation involving twelve countries between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas.
The initiative was formulated in 2013 and 2014 by the US-based Atlantic Council and a lobbying group of Eastern and Southeastern European energy companies.
It was officially launched in 2015 by the President of Poland Andrzej Duda and the President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.
It held its first summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia, at the end of August 2016.
The aim of the participating states is to complement the one-way east-west orientation in infrastructure and trade flows, which is focused on Germany, with new north-south connections between the coastal states of the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic Sea, as well. like the Black Sea.
This is to create new development perspectives that are at least potentially independent of the EU’s central power, the Federal Republic.
In June, at a summit in Riga, leaders of the Three Seas Initiative invited Ukraine to participate in their projects.
US LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS FOR EASTERN EUROPE
From the perspective of the United States, the Three Seas Initiative lends itself to strengthening US influence in Eastern and Southeastern Europe because it opposes the region’s dominant alignment with the EU’s central German power.
In the process, the United States is trying not only to transform the countries into sales markets for its liquid natural gas and thus bind them more closely to itself.
For example, the port in Klaipeda, Lithuania, is regularly supplied with US LPG.
Lithuania announced in early April 2022 that it was the first European country to completely withdraw from Russian gas supplies.
Latvia and Estonia also buy US liquefied natural gas from Lithuania.
Poland, which maintains its terminal in Świnoujście, can also import raw material via Lithuania.
In the south, on the other hand, tankers of US liquefied natural gas land at a terminal near the Croatian island of Krk, which has been in operation since early 2021 and is set to expand from a volume of 2.6 to 6.1 billion meters cubic natural gas. per year.
Croatia is also expanding the pipeline infrastructure that runs north of Krk. In principle, Hungary and Slovenia can also be supplied via Krk.
Selectively, this is already done by tanker trucks.
(The Three Seas Initiative is explained in 120 seconds)
US AIR DEFENSE INSTEAD OF EUROPEAN SKY DEFENSE
The United States is currently intensifying its cooperation with Poland in several areas – to the detriment of Germany and the EU.
An example is the plans for the construction of a common European air and missile defense system, which 15 European states, with significant participation from the Federal Republic of Germany, approved on October 13.
Supporters of the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) include the Baltic states and six other member states of the Three Seas Initiative.
Poland is not among them.
The reason is that Warsaw – already a loyal buyer of US war equipment for years and an extremely close partner of US military cooperation – has long been building up its own air defenses, which it does not want to integrate into ESSI.
Thus, the United States is building a defense system based on Patriot air defense batteries called Wisła.
A second system, called Narew, is being built in close cooperation between Poland and the United Kingdom.
In Berlin and Brussels, this is causing resentment in Warsaw. Poland’s exclusive cooperation with the US and the UK stands on the way to creating a unified European air defense system within the ESSI framework.
TRANSFORMER FOR NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY USS
Poland is also attracting attention because it is beginning close, possibly extensive, nuclear cooperation with the United States.
The background is that Warsaw wants to escape its massive dependence on coal-fired power plants by building nuclear power plants.
By the end of August, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki suggested during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron that the French company EDF could be awarded the contract to build the first power plant.
“In matters of nuclear power plants, France is a natural partner.”
However, over the weekend, Polish State Property Minister Jacek Sasin, after talks with US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in Washington, said it is now likely that US corporation Westinghouse will build the first, possibly second, Polish power plant. .
In addition, he said, Poland wants to become a “nuclear center for all of East-Central Europe” with the help of the US and act as a center for the expansion of nuclear energy.
The increasingly comprehensive alignment of the country with Washington provokes serious objections in this case.
According to media reports, the EU Commission is considering blocking Poland’s unilateral nuclear cooperation with the United States. Poland, of course, will again face, according to Warsaw, “the question of the borders of our sovereignty”.
AN AMERICAN OF GLOBAL STATUS
More disputes are now mounting over the reconstruction of Ukraine.
As early as May, the EU Commission had stated that it wanted to create a platform for the reconstruction of Ukraine together with Kiev and coordinate all international reconstruction efforts through it.
In September, a strategy document prepared by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in cooperation with US government agencies stated that “strong leadership” was essential for the project.
However, it was not the EU Commission that lacked the “necessary political and financial weight”, but only the G7.
The first reconstruction coordinator would have to be “an American of global stature.”
(European Sky Shield Initiative, ESSI)
This, in turn, has caused severe dissatisfaction in Brussels, where it is emphasized that Ukraine, after all, has been given the official status of a candidate for EU membership.
Earlier in the week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated in a newspaper article – almost as a compromise proposal – that “everyone must join forces in rebuilding Ukraine – the EU, the G7 and partners far beyond” ; The EU “has an important role” to play here.
The role of the EU in the reconstruction of Ukraine “is not one or the other”.
The dispute over who will lead the reconstruction effort — and thus lay the groundwork for Ukraine’s future direction — continued Tuesday at the Berlin Reconstruction Conference.
It was jointly organized by the EU and the G7 – a circumstance in which Scholz wanted to be understood to mean that “it will not be one or the other”, but all together.
Now it was about creating a structure that was “a mixture of many things.”
But this is not the end of the power struggle.
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