Nord Stream: Not Just a Pipeline

46 Bendik Solum Whist
Baltic States, by contrast, have only been members of the EU since 2004,
and Kasekamp (interview) illustrates this difference in stating that: ‘We
see the same pipeline from the opposite ends. The Estonians see where it
is coming from, and the Finns look at where it is going. …We see Russia;
they see Germany’s needs.’
In light of the above, it seems fair to claim that the North Sea analogy is
somewhat inaccurate. Indeed, Nord Stream and Langeled are equally long
sub-sea gas pipelines, but the environmental, geopolitical and historical
context in which they appear are very different. Furthermore, with regard
to the likeliness of hastened decisions resulting from political pressures,
this should not merely be analysed from a foreign policy point of view. In
the final subchapter it will be discussed how domestic politics has
influenced the environmental debate about Nord Stream in some of the
Baltic littoral states, and whether there has been a politicisation of the
environmental issues, as suggested by Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov
(Reuters 2007a).
6.3 Politicisation and the Role of Domestic Politics
The environmentalists mentioned above were primarily concerned about
external pressure from Russia and Germany, but the restraining effect of
domestic politics should not be forgotten. Surely, no Finnish government
would gain from an environmental catastrophe caused by a project it had
explicitly supported. A crucial aspect of democratic governance is that
politicians are awarded and punished for their policies in national
elections – a point, which Wahlbäck has also made about Sweden:
It does not require much imagination to envisage the scene in the
Baltic Sea in the summer of 2010 if big pipe-laying barges are
scurrying up and down the seabed and defacing the waters along
the coast of Sweden’s favourite vacation island, Gotland, while the
media are busy measuring the increasing phosphor and heavy
metal content of the waters. No Swedish government could survive
in September [election] after such a summer. (Wahlbäck, cited in
Dresen 2006).
It may, of course, be that this scenario applies more to Sweden than to
Finland, considering that the latter has not witnessed such a heated and
political debate about the pipeline. In Sweden, the opposition parties have
indeed made it their task to criticise the government for not taking a clear
stand on the pipeline issue. On 26 November 2006, for instance, leader of
the Swedish opposition Mona Sahlin (Social Democrat) warned against
potential environmental risks of Nord Stream, and claimed that accepting
it would be ‘a tacit acceptance of increased emission levels and serious
environmental problems for the Baltic Sea’ (SvD 2007f). On the following
day, the editorial of Svenska Dagbladet noted that when Sahlin was a
minister in the previous Swedish government, she did little to oppose the
planned gas pipeline, ‘but now, while leading the opposition, her job is to
be a menace to the current government’ (SvD 2007g). Sahlin’s argument
about CO2 emissions is particularly interesting. Indeed, natural gas is a
fossil fuel and not emission free, but it is important to remember that this
particular pipeline debate is not a question of if, but how, Germany will
get natural gas from Russia. If the gas were not to be sent, then the