The expression “every cloud has a silver lining” is a common one, meaning there is usually a positive element to draw from a wider negative. And so it is with the crisis in the Crimea. Europe — including Ukraine — could lose a national territorial battle with Russia but gain an international shipping victory.
How so? Well, the Kremlin has long been accused of using energy as a political weapon: threatening to cut off gas to what it sees as satellite states in the Baltic or around the Black Sea that move in a political direction disapproved of in Moscow.
Now
