The news that a Ukrainian swim coach has been charged in Germany for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is the sort of absurdist theatre that would make even the most jaded observer of modern geopolitics raise an eyebrow. And yet, there is something darkly appropriate about it. The pipelines, which were meant to be a symbol of German-Russian energy co-dependency, have become a metaphor for Europe’s pathetic entanglement in a conflict it cannot win or abandon.
Now British oil giants watch nervously, no doubt remembering their own gas fields in the North Sea. But the real story here is not the arrest of a lone Ukrainian. It is the decadence of a continent that outsources its energy security to the very forces that seek to undermine it.
The Fall of Rome was preceded by a similar blindness. When your enemies are blowing up your infrastructure and you are left to charge their foot soldiers, you are already lost. The British oilmen should take note: the end of the gas age is coming, and it will not be polite.
