Once again U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategic miscalculation is coming with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO’s pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe’s energy security.
The past several years saw the East Mediterranean turning into a slow-fuse time bomb sitting over rich hydrocarbons claimed questionably by Turkey as a stand-alone regional force versus an alliance of Greece, Cyprus and Israel.
In this tug-of-war, Turkey threatened to take military action if the alliance of rival countries went ahead with its plans to bypass Turkey and transport an annual 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe with a planned underwater pipeline. Turkey alleges that any such pipeline would violate its sovereignty over the Mediterranean and proposes, instead, unsurprisingly, a less costly pipeline carrying natural gas to Europe through Turkish territory.
