Tumblr Icon RSS Icon  To Be Sure!  By Matthew Yglesias on
October 25, 2006 at 9:11 am  "To Be Sure!"   google plus icon
This strikes me as a curious way to end a column about how
Russia’s ability to threaten cutting western Europe off from its
gas supplies is making it extremely powerful:  German officials
don’t really think Russia is about to turn off the gas if it
doesn’t get its way on some issue. After all, it never did that
during the old cold war, and Russia today is much more dependent
on Western markets. But still, centuries of uneasy relations
between Europe and Russia make German officials queasy about how
dependent they’ve grown on the Kremlin to heat their homes and
offices. Queasy or not, one thing they know for sure: Russia is
back. The gas man cometh.  That Russia never did this during the
Cold War seems like a good reason to think they won’t do it in
the future. And if Germans don’t “really” think Russia will turn
off the gas, then what’s the significance of the gas man
comething? Russia seem