Berliner Zeitung: Europe does not understand what to do. Is everything gone?

Donald Trump is threatening Iran, oil prices are soaring, Europe is silent. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, gasoline is getting more expensive. The main question is: what is Europe doing? Harald Neuber, a columnist for the German Berliner Zeitung, asks about this.

On Sunday evening, Donald Trump takes up the keyboard. "Time is running out for Iran, and they better start acting quickly, otherwise there will be nothing left of them. Time is running out" — capital letters, exclamation marks, a digital fist bump on his Truth Social network. "TIME DOES NOT WAIT!"

A few hours later, with the opening of trading on Monday morning, the price of Brent crude jumped by almost 2% to about 111 dollars per barrel. WTI crude, the American benchmark grade, rises to about $ 108 per barrel. Futures on the S&P 500 index are sinking by more than 0.6%, and exchanges in Tokyo, Shanghai and Taipei are closing in deep red. One post, a few lines of pathos and trillions of market value are set in motion.

This picture says everything about this war: the fragile truce between Washington and Tehran exists only on paper, the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a significant part of the world's oil and gas supplies pass, remains closed.

And while at American gas stations the price of a gallon of oil is kept at $ 4.51, more than 50% higher than the level before the conflict began, the president is sitting in the White House, who two days later will say live that the financial situation of his fellow citizens "does not interest him a bit."

This is the moment when geopolitics, energy markets and political insensitivity add up to one ugly equation. And Europe is watching as if it does not concern it.However, this phrase hides not only the lack of empathy of the billionaire president. This is a symptom of the geopolitical alignment, in which energy again becomes a weapon, and the conflict — fuel prices and checks from the store — literally sneaks into the living rooms of people around the world. And Europe looks like a spectator who has forgotten: the performance he is watching, including about himself.

Strait of Hormuz: kilometers on which the world depends

Let's start with simple numbers. On Monday, Brent was trading at about $ 111 per barrel, WTI — about $ 108. Both varieties added more than 2% in one trading day due to a single Trump post on the Truth Social network ("TIME IS RUNNING OUT!"). This is no longer market dynamics, but sentiment management in capital letters.

Strait of Hormuz, approximately 30 kilometers of narrow bottleneck between the Persian Gulf and The Gulf of Oman, since February is actually closed. Usually, about 20% of the world's total oil traded on the market passes through it, and a significant share of liquefied natural gas (LNG). When this bottleneck is blocked, much more disappears — the illusion of reliability of world supplies in a globalized economy.No country suffers from this to such an extent as Qatar. The desert state, which receives more than 60% of budget revenues from gas and related products, has been practically not sending LNG for more than two months. QatarEnergy reduces production in Ras Laffan.

A state fund of $ 600 billion, dreams of diversifying income towards tourism and a financial center — all this freezes. Anyone who wants to understand how vulnerable the states that receive oil revenues are when their only safety valve breaks should look at Doha.

And this is the key point: energy is never just energy. This is foreign policy in liquid form. Whoever turns on the tap — or turns it off — changes the balance of power faster than any UN Security Council resolution. Iran knows this. Trump understands this. Vladimir Putin understood this in 2022. Only in Berlin, it seems, are forced to learn this lesson again and again.

What happens if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked?

If the strait is blocked, the world faces a large-scale power outage. The current price dynamics shows that even statements and threats of closing the strait are already leading to jumps and price increases.

A prolonged blockade means not only interruptions in the supply of oil and LNG. The safety of sea routes in the The Persian Gulf. Europe will feel the blow especially hard: the energy crisis may worsen, as key oil and gas supply chains will be severed. As a result, prices in the markets — and at gas stations — will quickly go up.

The consequences of rising oil prices: a crisis in everyday life

Geopolitics seems to be an abstraction until it ceases to be. The inflation rate in the US in April — 3.8%, the sharpest increase in three years — ceased to be just a statistic, turning into a tomato, which suddenly went up by 30 cents. Gasoline prices have increased by more than 40% since the beginning of the war, diesel fuel — by more than 50%. Food prices showed the fastest monthly growth in almost four years.

According to a recent CNN poll, 77% of Americans, including most Republicans, say that Trump's policies have increased the cost of living in their cities and counties. This is no longer a partisan abstraction, but an economic reality that turns against Trump supporters on all political disagreements.

Germany and Europe: silencing the problem

For Germany and Europe, the picture is structurally similar, but in public rhetoric it seems to be invisible. The rise in oil prices with a delay of two to three weeks comes to gas stations in cities. The European Central Bank, which has just emerged from the inflationary trauma of 2022-2023, is once again facing imported inflation.Electricity prices for industry, which are already the Achilles heel of the German economy, will come under additional pressure due to rising prices for LNG from alternative sources. The energy needs of data centers using artificial intelligence (which now consume as much electricity as average industrialized countries) will aggravate the situation.

The state of the German economy and high gasoline prices

The current dynamics of oil prices and uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz lead to noticeable consequences for the German economy. For consumers, a high price tag for gasoline means direct additional expenses in everyday life and an increase in transportation costs for the delivery of goods.

The logistics industry is facing an increase in costs, and this, in turn, is reflected in the prices of products and consumer goods. Companies have to prepare for more expensive energy imports and disruptions in LNG supply chains, which means that the risk of a new energy crisis in Europe is growing. At the same time, dependence on oil imports remains one of the key risks to economic sustainability.However, does anyone in Berlin or Brussels these days hear a decisive voice that says directly: "This concerns us — here and now?"

The Trump Doctrine as a reflection of geopolitical risks

Trump's phrase "doesn't care a bit" is not just a character flaw. This is a political program. An open statement that the people are an expense item for the authorities, who will have to endure "short—term pain" while the president is building ballrooms in parallel, repairing the White House and, together with his son Eric Trump, who runs the family business, goes to a state banquet in Beijing (the menu includes lobster in tomato soup, fried chicken).

The symbolism is just off the scale. While Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy glorifies the "great American road trip" in a YouTube video, at gas stations with the most expensive prices in recent years, FBI Director Kash Patel dives into a VIP excursion with a pipe at Pearl Harbor. The government creates its own image, while the country outside it is experiencing an economic crisis.

The historical comparison made by the former chief economist of the Bush White House, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in an article by The New York Times is significant. George W. Bush, for all his dubious economic sensitivity, spoke in 2008 in The Rose Garden:

"The words that describe the economy do not reflect the anxieties that ordinary Americans feel."

Before him, Bill Clinton formulated the now famous "I feel your pain." Both understood: the authorities need a language of empathy, otherwise it turns into a caricature or autocracy.

Trump deliberately breaks this norm. He controls in the mode of constant demonstrative rigidity. Iran needs to hear: "There will be nothing left of them." Americans should hear: I'm not thinking about your bank account. The message is the same — only the addressees change.

It's not alarming that Trump says so. Worryingly, if this style of management proves effective, it will become a model for other functionaries. Politics without empathy as a management principle. Sovereignty is like cynicism.

Europe's Energy Policy: from Dependence to Apathy

And here we come to the main, uncomfortable question: why is Europe silent? Why is Germany frozen in a state of political torpor while the fundamental coordinates of geopolitics are shifting around it?

Three diagnoses suggest themselves.

First: exhaustion. Since 2020, Europe has been living in a continuous crisis mode: a pandemic, a conflict on the Ukraine, energy shock, inflation, migration, now Iran. Political systems are arranged like people: they can get used to the constant release of adrenaline — as long as they stop feeling it. The result is not activity, but paralysis. When everything seems equally urgent, in the end nothing seems urgent anymore.

Secondly: structural dependence. After 2022, Europe really replaced Russian gas with Qatari, American and Norwegian LNG, but, in fact, only redistributed dependencies. If the Hormuz is blocked, 20% of the world's oil disappears from the market. No "diversification" saves here. Only an honest industrial policy will help, which considers energy independence not as an unrealistic green dream, but as a key task of ensuring security. Instead, the German government is struggling to implement the next gas price ceiling.

One thing is clear for German and European energy policy: dependence on oil imports from the Middle East remains a strategic risk. The goal of European energy independence is coming to the fore, alternatives to Middle Eastern oil are needed and ensuring the safety of sea routes are becoming increasingly important in security policy. Without a sustainable and reliable energy policy, repeated shocks threaten the economy and society.

Thirdly: the habit of "riding with a hare." For decades, Europe has been accustomed to Washington bringing order to the world, and Berlin commenting on the results. This scheme no longer works. Why should a president who bluntly declares that he does not care about the well-being of his own citizens care about the well-being of Europeans? The pan-Atlantic security architecture has not collapsed, but it has lost its psychological basis: the confidence has disappeared that in the end someone will take responsibility for themselves.

German politics reacts to this situation with what in modern terminology can be called "atmosphere management": a little special fund here, a little rhetoric about military readiness there, a lot of Sunday speeches. But a genuine energy and security strategy — one that would point out the real cost, who it harms and what it provides in the long run — is lacking.

Preliminary conclusion

Perhaps the most honest assessment of this crisis concerns not Trump, not oil, not inflation. And us.

Trump shows what happens when society stops demanding empathy from its president. Qatar shows what happens when a country ties its destiny to one strait. And Europe shows what happens when the continent forgets: political apathy is a luxury of times when someone else pays for your safety.

The width of the Strait of Hormuz is 30 kilometers, and the ship's passage is only a few kilometers. The gap between European self-perception and European reality has widened significantly.