{"id":55025,"date":"2020-09-13T14:14:38","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55025"},"modified":"2020-09-13T14:14:38","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T19:14:38","slug":"cheap-mediterranean-natural-gas-could-spell-the-end-for-the-nato-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55025","title":{"rendered":"Cheap Mediterranean Natural Gas Could Spell the End for the NATO Alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cheap Mediterranean Natural Gas Could Spell the End for the NATO Alliance<\/a><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s a strange and unprecedented spectacle when countries like Israel, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, and others lay claims over the Mediterranean, while NATO scrambles to stave off an outright war, among its own members.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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T<\/span>he North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance in name alone. Recent events notwithstanding, the brewing conflict over territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean indicates that the military union between mostly Western countries is faltering.<\/p>\n

The current\u00a0Turkish-Greek tension<\/a>\u00a0is only one facet of a much larger conflict involving, aside from the two Mediterranean countries, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, France, Libya and other Mediterranean and European countries. Notably absent from the list are the United States and Russia; the latter, in particular, stands to gain or lose much economic leverage, depending on the outcome of the conflict.<\/p>\n

Conflicts of this nature tend to have historic roots \u2013 Turkey and Greece\u00a0fought<\/a>\u00a0a brief but consequential war in 1974. Of relevance to the current conflagration is an agreement\u00a0signed<\/a>\u00a0by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Greek and Cypriot counterparts, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Nicos Anastasiades, respectively, on January 2. The agreement envisages the establishment of the EastMed pipeline which, once finalized, is projected to flood Europe with Israeli natural gas, pumped mostly from the Leviathan Basin.<\/p>\n

Several European countries are keen on being part of, and profiting from, the project. But Europe\u2019s gain is not just economic but also geostrategic. Cheap Israeli gas will lessen Europe\u2019s\u00a0reliance<\/a>\u00a0on Russia\u2019s natural gas which arrives in Europe through two pipelines, Nord Stream and Gazprom, the latter extending through Turkey.<\/p>\n

Gazprom alone\u00a0supplies<\/a>\u00a0Europe with an estimated 40% of its natural gas needs, thus giving Russia significant economic and political leverage. Some European countries, especially France, have labored to liberate themselves from what they see as a Russian economic chokehold on their economies.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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Cheap Mediterranean Natural Gas Could Spell the End for the NATO Alliance It\u2019s a strange and unprecedented spectacle when countries like Israel, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, and others lay claims over the Mediterranean, while NATO scrambles to stave off an outright war, among its own members. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[250,281,1167,1049,484,4188,553,554,28940,818],"class_list":["post-55025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-egypt","tag-europe","tag-greece","tag-israel","tag-libya","tag-mediterranean","tag-nato","tag-natural-gas","tag-ramzy-baroud","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55026,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55025\/revisions\/55026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}