The Schumann Declaration started the realization of a geopolitical miracle as the EU is. Today, the offer of cooperation US President Obama is making to the EU in economy and energy sectors might ensure western civilization's security in a new globalized world
Sixty-three years ago an extraordinary idea allowed Europe peace and democracy. Now, another courageous intuition might ensure Europe energy security and freedom.
On May 9 1950, French Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Schumann declared the necessity to build a united Europe to guarantee the old continent, and the rest of the world with it, peace and democracy.
Schumann's statement was just the beginning of the most important political fact in the second half of the XX century: the formation of the European Union, born thanks to the definitive end of an history of hate ad struggles among the European States and the European peoples.
In an official statement, issued on behalf of US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the build of the EU was an important event also for the history of the United States of America.
The EU and the USA together, as stressed Mr. Kerry, have acted during all the second half of the XX century, and the first ten years of the XXI century, in order to spread democracy, and defend it worldwide.
Kerry's statement is strictly filed with the US political tradition of the International Liberal Democracy: a conception formulated by President Woodrow Wilson in the late 10s, which stresses that how much diffused is democracy in the world, how much the USA can foster their national security.
Wilson's conception moved the USA spreading democracy worldwide, promoting and defending it at any cost, even by military actions when necessary, as in Europe during World War Two.
The International Liberal Democratic conception were followed not only by his fonder, but also by other US Presidents, both democrats and republican, as Jimmy Carter, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
In his note, Mr. Kerry also reminded the need to cooperate with the EU, in order to form the USA-EU Free Trade Area: a project President Obama and the EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso already discussed last January.
If realized, the project will create new job opportunities, and will also erase several customs between the two banks of the Atlantic Ocean.
Moreover, the USA-EU Free Trade Area will also permit the western civilization to unify and challenge the so called 'rising powers': China and Russia. These countries, which are not democratic systems, aim to decrease the role of USA and EU in world economy, and reduce the western civilization to a marginal role in world economics.
In addition to the USA-EU Free Trade Area, USA and EU can unify also in what concerns shale gas trade.
According to EIA datas, thanks to shale gas exploitation, the USA are becoming the first gas world exporter in 2018, overcoming Russia, Iran, Algeria, Qatar and Norway.
As an expected approval to export shale gas to those countries which does not have a Free Trade Agreement with the USA will be soon issued by the Department of Energy, the USA will strengthen their position in Asia.
In particular, the USA are going to become the first exporter of gas in India, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, where energy companies already signed contracts to buy US shale from 2016.
In Europe, US shale export could allow the Old Continent to decrease a strong dependence on Russia and Algeria's supplies, on which the EU depends for almost the 80% of gas total continental imports.
US shale bonanza allows the USA to keep shale prices quite low: even if shipped from far, US shale will be for the EU cheeper than natural gas bought from Russia and Algeria, piped to the Old Continent via old aged pipelines and new infrastructures realized by Moscow to avoid EU energy independence from the Kremlin.
The importance of US Shale Revolution was already understood by the UK and Spain, which signed agreement to buy gas from the USA as soon as it will be permitted by US law.
Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Croatia also expressed interest in US shale gas, in order to increase LNG imports and diversify their national gas supplies.
In Italy, a strong anti-American lobby is providing a medatic war against US shale gas exports to Europe, arguing that drilling operations to extract shale gas are dangerous for the environment.
The resignation from US shale gas imports may condemn Europe to an ethernal dependence on Russia and Algeria: non-democratic regimes which use energy to maintain their geopolitical influence in the world and subjugate neighbour countries, as Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in the case of Russia.
Both USA-EU Free Trade Area and US shale gas export are opportunities Europe must take to maintain the Old Continent an important player in world geopolitics.
Without a strong alliance with the USA, Europe is condemned to a marginal role, and to a strong dependence on autocracies, which Mr Schumann, also by his famous Declaration, aimed to defeat, in order to guarantee the world peace and liberty.
Matteo Cazzulani is an independent energy analyst and HR activist in Eastern Europe. He is supporting gas supplies diversification in Europe, and leading a campaign to liberate former Ukraine's PM Yulia Tymoshenko from a political reclusion. He also supported the processes of democratization in Eastern Europe and acted to keep alive the memory of Anna Politkovskaya: the Russian journalist murdered after she denunciated HR violations in Chechnya by the Russian Army
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Matteo Cazzulani
Freelance Journalist
m.cazzulani@gazeta.pl
http://matteocazzulani.wordpress.com
http://matteocazzulaniinternational.wordpress.com
9.5.13
