When AMERICA imposed economic sanctions on Russia and banned imports of all Russia natural gas, it expected its EU allies to follow suit en bloc and en masse immediately.
The fact is that when a country imposes economic sanctions on any other country it does so knowing fully well that while the other country will suffer the most from such sanctions, there is however going to be some amount of economic pain and hardship inevitably entailed by its actions and which its own people will have to bear too.
For many of the countries in Europe banning Russian gas imports is not as easy it is for the USA. Russian gas imports in percentage terms of America’s total natural gas imports is piddling. Whereas, many a European country’s gas imports from Russia ranges between 60% to 100% of its total natural gas imports! If they went ahead and banned Russian gas at America’s bidding, they would freeze to death in the European Arctic winter and their mid-sized economies would all grunt and grind to a halt too.
The extent of dependence on Russia gas imports varies from country to country in Europe. Such skewness is starkly portrayed in this illuminating chart below :
In the above info-chart, the Russian gas imports of each of the charted 37 different countries of the world are shown as differently sized globules across the X-axis. On the Y-axis is shown what percentage of each of the 37 countries’ total natural gas imports happens to be from Russia.
The chart shows a predominance of globules which are turquoise-blue coloured. They number 25 out of the 37 counties charted and they all represent European countries. The globules in yellow colour are countries in Asia. And there is only one globule coloured orange and that is AMERICA .
Take a good look at all the turquoise globules .
You will see that the distribution of these European globules on the chart fall within 3 distinct class or “caste” range-interval bands viz. :
Caste A include those countries whose Russian gas-imports to total gas-imports is below 10% ;
In Caste B are countries whose Russia-gas imports to total gas-imports ratio is between 40-to-60%; if Turkey whose Russian gas imports is 52% of total gas imports were to be admitted into the EU it would also fall into this Caste group.
And the third class group or “Caste C ” of countries includes those whose Russian-gas import dependence is almost complete and anywhere between 70% and 100%.
The higher the ratio is of Russia gas-imports to total gas-imports, the more pain and hardship a country will have to suffer in imposing sanctions on Russia…. And conversely, the lower the ratio is , the less will be economic pain.
Now, into “Caste A” European countries fall the following : Belgium, France, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Spain and Sweden . Before BREXIT happened, the UK too belonged to this high-Caste group of European countries. These countries will suffer the least pain and adversity in banning gas imports from Russia.
In “Caste B” European countries fall the following : Italy, Greece, Romania, Hungary Slovenia and Finland. These countries will certainly suffer hardship when they ban Russian gas imports but in the long term will be able to wean themselves off Russian gas imports when they begin sourcing from other gas-exporting countries of the world.
And in the last “Caste C” group of European countries fall the following : Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Czechia, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Norway, Macedonia, Slovakia and Serbia. If Ukraine had been a European country it too would probably have fallen into this 3rd Caste. These countries will probably suffer the severest pain and hardship if compelled to ban Russian gas imports. Their economies will become energy insecure . They will be left to deal with energy supply deficits and will end up being at the mercy of pricing in the global energy-supply markets.
If you look at the Caste A countries you will recognise that most of them have a coastline or are situated near the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean.
And likewise, you will notice that Countries in the Caste B European countries (with only a very few exceptions) have either a coast alongside or very proximate with the Mediterranean Sea.
Caste C European Countries are majorly all contiguous or near-contiguous with the Baltic Sea and/or the Arctic Sea.
So, on the basis of the above classification we can say that there is a clear Caste distinction inter alia amongst the 25 European countries:
There is the Atlantic Caste (Brahmin & Kshatriya) ; it could be said to be predominantly of Anglo-Franco-Germanic Saxon ethnicity.
Then there is the Mediterranean Caste (Vaishya); it is predominantly of Graeco-Roman-Turko-Semitic ethnicity.
And finally, there is the Baltic/Arctic Caste (Shudra) which is predominantly of Slavic-Nordic-Tartar ethnicity.
The Atlantic Caste is the heftiest contributor to the total EU GDP. The Mediterranean Caste is definitely many rungs below the Atlantic Brahmins in the ranking of country-wise GDP-size. And the Baltic-Arctic Castes contribute but a minor proportion of the overall EU GDP.
In terms of demographics, (unlike the population distribution in the old archetypal Indian Caste system where Brahmins and Kshatriyas castes are outnumbered by Shudras and Vaishyas), ) it is Atlantic Europe that outnumbers the Mediterranean and Baltic-Arctic Caste populations.
In terms of military (Kshatriya) strength too, again, the Atlantic Caste reigns supreme over the Mediterranean and Baltic-Arctic Caste countries.
Culturally, the Atlantic Caste of European countries (much like the old Indian Brahmin Caste) regards itself superior to any that might be claimed by the Mediterranean or Baltic-Arctic Caste countries. (With the sole exception perhaps of Italy and Greece).
All things considered above, it is clear that Europe is a sort of caste-hierarchical system where geopolitical power is held overwhelmingly in the hands of Atlantic Europe that can quite easily jerk Mediterranean and Baltic-Arctic Europe around by the nose or tail as it wishes. There is an imperceptible Caste discrimination prevailing within this Caste system with EU’s levers of financial and legislative power concentrated in the hands of Atlantic-European Caste countries dominating the EU Commission, EU Parliament and EU Central Bank.
Such caste discrimination often becomes all too obvious, in fact …. (1) the Greek Debt crisis (2010) , (2) the continued refusal to admit Turkey into the EU, (3) the refusal to give asylum to Immigration-seeking refugees coming in waves from North Africa and Turkey landing on European mainland in Italy and France (by the end of 2016, nearly 5.2 million refugees and migrants reached European shores, undertaking treacherous journeys from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries torn apart by war and persecution) …, all of which were, until recently, the most egregious examples in history of European Caste-oppression.
Today, the Ukraine conflict is the latest manifestation of the European Caste discrimination in operation. The Atlantic Europeans do not wish to admit Ukraine into Europe only to join and then further swell the numbers of the Caste C Europeans! Ukraine happens to be a clear outlier caste … since it is neither Atlantic nor Mediterranean nor Baltic-Arctic! It is contiguous to the Black Sea which happens to be outside the pale of Europe and is part in fact of “mleccha” country … i.e. “Barbarian Russia”!
So long as Ukraine served the Atlantic Brahmins of Europe … for whose principal geopolitical interests the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in the first place … as a bulwark and/or beachhead against Russia, it was being patronised and cloyingly strung along as a “wannabe Caste C “shudhra” European”.
The moment however the big ugly Barbarian “mleccha” across the border, Russia, growled, flexed and rose up violently to dash Ukraine’s pretensions and ambitions, the USA, NATO and the EU now simply turned tail and tacitly acknowledged that the farthest limits of their frontiers has been reached in Eurasia. They have now left Ukraine to decide for itself… all on its own … what its real caste identity is and will be.
Sudarshan Madabushi