Gas, Carrot and Stick Approach: Nord Stream 2, European Union, Transatlantic Partnership and African Alternatives

Abstract

With the successful completion of the first string of Nord Stream 2, June 2021, the long-delayed pipeline project finally comes on stream. Nord Stream 2 pipeline sucks in diverse interests, generates controversies, provokes criticisms, and creates uncertainties among its many stakeholders. From Russia to the Baltic region to the EU, the US and Africa, the pipeline offers different realities; illusion, vulnerability, pragmatic nationalism, political conservatism, and economic development prospect. But, why is Nord Stream 2 intensely controversial? What strategic calculations and interests inform stakeholders’ engagements with the pipeline project? This study seeks to provide a critical contextualisation of Nord Stream 2 in a thorough synthesis of extant literature. The paper argues that Nord Stream 2 is a geo-political and geo-economic energy infrastructure, with the different stakeholders involved in the project deploying a continuum of instruments and approaches in furtherance of a foreign policy issue. The study concludes that Nord Stream 2 will have strategic implication for EU’s energy policy, significantly frustrate transatlantic partnership, and undermine the prospect of increased Africa’s gas export to Europe.