Project Porcupine
Assessing the fantasy of an EU military surge.
“An alliance with a powerful person is never safe.”—Phaedrus
The day after the historic debacle in the Oval Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received yet another round of “whatever-it-takes” assurances from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, and Russia claimed to have shot down three Ukranian drones from its airspace. Russia asserts that Ukraine aimed to hit a key compressor station on the TurkStream pipeline, one of two remaining active gas links between Russia and Europe. If destroyed, Europe would have plunged into a deep energy crisis. The diplomatic response was swift:
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, to use all means at his disposal to prevent future attacks and Fidan pledged to do so, the Russian foreign ministry said on its website. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, whose country receives Russian gas through Turkstream, said on Facebook that Lavrov had informed him of the attack by telephone. Szijjarto said the operation of Turkstream was critical to Hungary's energy security and called on the European Union to uphold guarantees that infrastructure linked to the 27-nation bloc would not come under attack.”
We warned of this vulnerability in our January Pro Tier presentation, Natural Gas Between Russia and Europe: History, Current Crisis, and Future Prospects (now unlocked for all subscribers here), and the attack underscores the live-wire risk of fighting wars by proxy: proxies can go rogue. This risk intensifies as the proxy realizes the war is lost, a reality that even Zelensky must be grappling with as he ping-pongs from one crisis meeting to the next. Zelensky’s thinly veiled threat that the US would soon “feel” the pain of the war, delivered to the US president for all the world to hear, leaves little doubt about the intended message behind the TurkStream mission.
With the US looking to wash its hands of the war, leaders of the European Union (EU) are gathering Thursday in Brussels to plot their next move. Coming on the heels of the summit held in London on Sunday, the EU is pushing forward on a historical proposal to replace the financial and military resources previously provided to Ukraine by the US. Not all European capitals are thrilled about it:
“The European Union is preparing for a military spending bonanza. But for governments, it's not only about the cash.
An emergency meeting of EU leaders on Thursday to figure out how to boost Europe’s security, amid United States President Donald Trump’s looming military disengagement from the continent, should be a chance to project a show of unity. But instead, it looks like a power grab is on the cards.
National capitals fear European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will exploit this crisis to extend Brussels' powers to new areas and strengthen her influence vis-à-vis national governments.”
The enthusiasm to create a multinational military comes on the heels of von der Leyen’s ambitious plans to reindustrialize the EU and establish a place of prominence in the AI arms race. Among the many problems with this vision, one is determinative: physics. That Europe is a drone attack away from yet another energy emergency is scandalous enough, but it is also testimony to the impossibility of converting platitudes into bombs. Brussels might refuse to acknowledge this fundamental truth, let alone confront it, but it is the sort of problem that cannot be wished away. The numbers are truly shocking, so let’s break them down.