In terms of Europe’s geopolitical influence, this has not boded well. In many of these « emerging nations », political leadership, media commentariat and populace question why they pay the price for forced errors of another bloc. As long ago as June, India’s Foreign Minister Dr. Subramaniam Jaishankar took on European think-tanks and polity head-on at the GLOBSEC Forum held in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava in the wake of repeated calls for India to « repudiate » its ties with Russia:
Europe has been silent on many issues. Europe didn’t speak on many issues in Asia… somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problem but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.
Since then and given the shift in energy supplies, India’s energy imports from Russia has seen a rapid increase, with talks now ongoing between Russia, Iran, India and various ASEAN nations to start denominating energy trades (as well as trade in general) in domestic currencies instead of the US Dollar or the Euro.
The economy is a multi-factor interlocking network of inputs and outputs, both qualitative and quantitative. The lack of long-term vision in the energy sector and the resulting pressure on geopolitical ties via increasing hardships on populations entirely uninvolved in the conflict might have been « rationalized » if energy was the only factor awry in Europe’s economic rubric. However, this is not the case. For almost two years now, European consumers have been under considerable pressure, as exemplified by plunging consumer confidence in Germany.
