Western Professor: Our unity will face its greatest test this winter
With the advance and depletion of gas reserves, a number of European countries may change their policy of supporting Ukraine.
David Bach, professor of strategy and political economy at the Swiss business school IMD, writes about this in an article published by the Kyiv magazine Novoye Vremya, as reported by PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Western unity will face its biggest test this winter if European gas supplies run dry and sky-high energy prices accelerate the expected slide into recession. Individual European governments may well hesitate to support Ukraine if faced with angry and frozen voters,” Bach said.
According to him, back in 2014, only about 20% of gas in the EU was Russian, but by the beginning of 2022 it was almost 40%.
“Despite loud warnings from Washington, Germany, the continent’s largest economy, has actually increased its dependence following Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Berlin saw Russian gas as cheaper and more sustainable than alternatives.
Greater trust was also consistent with Germany's five-decade-old foreign policy doctrine toward the Soviet Union/Russia, called Wandel durch Handel: change through trade. Although such a philosophy appears dangerously naive in retrospect, until recently it also guided US policy toward China. This created dependencies that are essentially quite similar to each other,” the professor notes.
Western Professor: This Winter, Our Unity Will Face Its Biggest Test