Opening remarks at the Athens Energy Summit 2024 by Roudi Baroudi
We live in a time of deep – and deepening – uncertainty. In far too many parts of the world, including right here in the Mediterranean, we are living in an era of chaos. Instead of the peace and stability proven time and again to foster stronger economies and greater human development, armed conflict and threats thereof are holding back the hopes of dreams of millions and millions of people.
Our forebears lived through even more chaotic times in the last century, when two world wars claimed some 100 million lives worldwide. So terrible was the experience of WWI that when it ended, dozens of nation-states banded together to form the League of Nations, whose purpose was to keep the peace. Sadly, the world’s first intergovernmental organization failed to accomplish its goals, but the impetus remained strong enough so that in June 1945, as WWII was nearing its end, about 50 countries gathered in San Francisco to establish the United Nations.
The UN is not perfect, of course, but its goals and foundation were far more expansive than those of its predecessor. The UN Charter called on all member-states to find better ways to resolve their differences, imploring them to rely first on dialogue and diplomacy, to exhaust all non-violent avenues before resorting to armed conflict. It was a hopeful document, one aimed at erasing the notion that might makes right, and at doing away with the predatory wars by which the strong have historically slaughtered and dispossessed the weak.
In 1949, the UN went even further by promulgating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a powerful statement of intent designed to deter the kinds of atrocities that made World War II such a shameful chapter of human history.
For decades these and other UN standards have helped to prevent the outbreak of a third world war, but recent years have witnessed a marked deterioration on the international stage. Despite great strides in things like fighting disease and reducing mass poverty, we have been ignoring too many lessons from the past and straying from the path laid down by the Charter. On one hand, for the first time in history, advances in technology and transportation have created a truly global market, helping to alleviate or even eliminate poverty in much of the developing world. On the other, the same factors have contributed to rising economic dislocation across Europe and North America, abrogating the social contracts that underpin democratic institutions such as free and fair elections and independent judiciaries.
Likewise, our species has made great strides in learning how to manipulate the physical world around us, but at a terrible cost. Various industrial processes and short-sighted policies have led to air and water pollution virtually everywhere, and now scientists warn that we are running out of time: if we don’t sharply reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, we will soon face climate change on a scale that makes much of our planet uninhabitable. The EU Green Deal of 2020 aims to set Europe on a path of decarbonization that reaches Net Zero by 2050, but there are no guarantees that this goal will be achieved, one reason is that funds aren’t there, or that other jurisdictions will design and implement similar programs.
Something else is going on, too. For most of the period since World War II, the international community has relied on a rules-based order to prevent the outbreak and spread of armed conflict. Increasingly, however, that order – the center of which consists of the United Nations and institutions like the International Court of Justice – is under assault. Some governments that have never accepted the rules continue to casually ignore or even openly defy them, and some peoples who have waited in vain for their deliverance from occupation and oppression are running out of patience.
Together, these and other quandaries pose an unprecedented threat to what we regard as modern life. Economic inequality is causing citizens of free societies to walk away from democracy, climate change is driving a rise in catastrophic weather patterns, and the peace that many of us regard as a default value grow more fragile by the day.
There are multiple lessons here for those interested in resolving other regional disputes, including those between Türkiye and Greece, Türkiye and Cyprus, and Türkiye and Syria. For one thing, they all stem from the severely flawed manner in which the region was carved up after World War I. For another, conventional diplomacy has failed utterly to resolve the disputes in question, and this failure has caused mistrust, enmity, and hopelessness to be handed down from one generation to another.
Ladies and gentlemen:
There must be another way. Surely there is a method by which we can re-establish the same common ground enshrined in the wake of World Wars I and II, recall the same common interests and identify new ones, and work together to achieve common goals, just as the UN Charter implores us to.
A way in which we might develop the mutual trust which alone can create a safer, happier, and better world for our children and grandchildren.
And what if that method also helped to fill shared needs, provide similar benefits, and address likeminded concerns?
For all these reasons, I believe we have an answer to the question before this panel: “Can energy cooperation be the foundation for peace in the Eastern Mediterranean?”
That answer is “yes”, and for several very valid reasons.
For one thing, energy is – or should be – a universal commodity. Modern lifestyles are impossible without it, making easy and affordable access to it something very close to a human right. This is especially true in the Eastern Med, and particularly during the era of climate change, because:
a) rising temperatures are straining and even overwhelming electricity grids across the region;
b) rising populations require ever-increasing amounts of energy;
c) economic development, especially in have-not countries, also depends on adequate energy supplies;
d) all or most of the East Med countries are either already producing offshore natural gas or on the cusp of doing so;
e) as a cleaner, lower-emission alternative to oil and (especially) coal, natural gas is widely considered a necessary bridge fuel that will keep power plants operating, economies humming, and homes heated and cooled until such time as renewables, batteries, and other emerging technologies can handle the entire load on their own;
f) this means that East Med countries have a brief opportunity, not only to meet their own energy needs, but also to earn crucial export revenues, whether the gas in question is sold via pipeline to or as liquified natural gas (LNG) delivered by specialized oceangoing transport ships.
From a business perspective, the common ground for such cooperation is very much available in Cyprus. Its location makes it a logical hub for all of its neighbors and their respective partners, as well as a logical starting point for an undersea pipeline to the Eurasian landmass; its land prices and availability make it the logical site for an LNG plant; and its status as an EU member provides easy access to one of the world’s most lucrative energy markets.
Imagine the implications if Greece and Türkiye, for example, were to jointly develop an offshore wind farm straddling their maritime border and providing electricity to homes and business in both countries. Or if Greece, Türkiye, and Cyprus became de facto – or de jure – partners in a pipeline carrying East Med gas to consumers in Türkiye, Bulgaria, Romania, and Italy. Imagine a future in which Israeli and Lebanese gas companies, were similarly – but independently – reliant on the same Cypriot LNG plant for 10-20%, or even more, of their respective countries’ GDPs. Think about a tomorrow that included a jointly constructed offshore windfarm straddling the maritime boundary between Türkiye and Syria. Picture how different the region would be if all of its countries were plugged into the same electricity interconnection and jointly owned regasification plants, making each reliant on all the others for backup energy supplies. These are just some of the cooperative steps that could impart more diverse energy baskets and greater energy security to all participants.
The takeaway here is that instead of accepting certain ideas as permanently impossible, we ought to be thinking ahead and laying the groundwork. For Greece and Türkiye – as for other pairs of coastal states in the region – a good starting point would be to emulate the Maritime Boundary Agreement agreed to by Lebanon and Israel in 2022. On a more general level, using dialogue and diplomacy to expand energy cooperation would benefit not just the countries of the East Med but also the entire European Union and much of its surrounding “neighborhood”. That level of promise more than merits the attention of Brussels, the allocation of support resources, and even the designation of a dedicated point-person tasked with facilitating the necessary contacts and negotiations.
Interdependence is a proven means of conflict prevention, causing would-be belligerents to think long and hard about various means of adventurism. But the possibilities of genuine peace are incalculably greater than the mere absence of war. Inevitably, the forms of cooperation I have just described – and possibly many others – would feel awkward at first, but over time, they also could not fail to humanize “the other” in many ways, and for many different sets of eyes.
The fact that they would also contribute to fighting climate change would bring the various partnerships to another level, too. That would not only set a worthwhile example for countries in other parts of the world, but also give each of them a real stake in the East Mediterranean experiment.
Ladies and gentlemen,
As a species, this is how we need to be thinking if we want to get where we need to go. Instead of allowing ourselves to be discouraged by the presence of obstacles, we need to be investigating new routes that go around them, strengthen the rule of law – especially human rights law – as a basis for the international system, and promote lasting peace among all nations. Only then can we declare victory over what the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns called “man’s inhumanity to man”.
