White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Limbaugh Wouldn’t Like Costa Rica

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One is stirred to thank Rush Limbaugh. He has told us that if health-care reform is passed, he is going to pack his prejudices and leave the country, presumably in five years when the provisions of the hated “Obamacare” begin to bite.

Limbaugh’s putative destination: Costa Rica. Bravo. The man has taste. Democratic for decades, Costa Rica is the jewel of Latin America. It is in its way a paradise. Straddling the Central American isthmus between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, Costa Rica offers the most extraordinary diversity of fauna and flora, mountain and valley. Even the beaches are diverse, from the white sands of the Caribbean to the black volcanic sands of the Pacific.

But is this the place for Limbaugh, as he escapes the creeping socialism he fears is around the corner, if the Democrats can get their act together and pass a health-care bill? Sadly for Limbaugh, he may have to find peace elsewhere. Costa Rica will be too full of jarring realities for the Loud One.

Consider, with one-tenth of the U.S. per-capita income, Costa Rica manages to provide adequate health care to most of its 4.5 million people, and they have, at 79 years, a longer life expectancy than do Americans.

Worse for Limbaugh, the government funds the health-care system — although he will be able to buy private insurance that he can use in one of two private hospitals. To see all those healthy, long-lived people enjoying freedom, despite a massive government option, could be injurious to Limbaugh’s health.

Limbaugh’s affection for drug companies may also be challenged, making his exile life a living hell. Drugs can cost up to 80 percent less than they do states-side.

But there other disquieting things that Limbaugh’s research overlooked. General Limbaugh was a staunch believer in the therapy of invasion, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a favorite of Dick Cheney; and while the latter was vice president and warmonger in chief.

So what is a man like Limbaugh to do in a country that has no army? Not one person with a rifle.

So what great service has Limbaugh’s possible defection done? It has forced us to look around the world for a new home for our greatest broadcaster and to see how far state medicine has gone in rotting the fiber of otherwise great nations.

Limbaugh made everyone look, from the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to La Prensa. Looking for a new home for Limbaugh is the pastime of the moment — and it is not easy.

Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Iceland are out, out, out, out. We cannot send a national treasure to these infamous places, struggling under the yoke of socialist medicine. Much of the rest of Latin America leans toward government provided medicine, even if delivery is spotty.

Our man needs a home of limited government, widespread gun ownership and medicine for those who can afford it. Limbaugh must turn his eyes from mamby-pamby nanny states like Costa Rica to robust lands, where people do not expect the government to provide answers and do not look to it.

Somalia quickly rises to the top of the heap. No government, no regulation, universal gun ownership and no socialized medicine.

Then, there is Iraq. Pasha Limbaugh might fit right in. He has done more than his bit for the Iraqis, bringing them the wonders of democracy and cruise missiles. He could report back to Dick Cheney regularly on what has been wrought there. A one-man truth squad, checking on the mainstream media and its penchant for negative news.

Nah. Limbaugh is a rich man with no known linguistic skills. He would be happier in London. There, he could handle the notorious National Health Service — which the Brits love to hate — by listing its failings in a blog. No need to mention that any politician who suggests repealing it would be thrown into outer darkness.

No worries. Limbaugh knows the power of a horrifying anecdote. Britain frowns on gun ownership, but then exiles must assimilate.

Breath easy, Costa Rica.

How Russia Coerces Europe

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No building in Moscow so much says “Soviet Union” as the headquarters of Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly. It is more foreboding than the Lubyanka, the former headquarters and torture emporium of the KGB. The romantic charm of the czarist era, epitomized by the Kremlin itself, is wholly absent. Like the state monopoly itself, the structure is gigantic, threatening and very hard to get into.

It is set back from the road, and there are layers of security a visitor has to negotiate to see an official. It is easier to get into the Kremlin, No. 10 Downing Street or the White House than it is to get into Gazprom HQ. I know because I have gotten into all of them. No wonder old KGB hand Vladimir Putin loves the gas company.

As president, and now as prime minister, Putin grew Gazprom and its oil counterpart, Rosneft, not to be normal companies but agents of political implementation. Between them, they were tasked to gobble up the pieces of Yukos when its luckless founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was thrown in jail.

But even more than Rosneft, it is Gazprom that has emerged as the right hand of Russian policy in Europe.

At the moment, in the dead of winter, it is Gazprom that has cut off supplies of gas to more than 12 European countries. Ostensibly, the argument is over the price paid for gas by Ukraine, the transshipper of gas to all of Europe. But the Russian political agenda is not concealed. Putin, and the siloviki (the men of power around Putin and President Dimitry Medvedev) are angered by the defiance of former members of the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine. Despite its large Russian-speaking minority (about 40 percent) it has talked of joining NATO and the European Union–a red rag to Russia. Russia is angry at the West, in general, for trying to route new pipelines from Central Asia through Georgia, avoiding Russia. It is also mad at the West for recognizing Kosovo, and has responded by buying the Serbian gas fields.

Russian gas, which now makes up 30 percent of Europe’s need, does not look such a good idea–particularly to Germany, where pressure from the Green party led to the retreat from nuclear and the push for gas turbines. Before Germany turned its back on nuclear, it was a leader in the development of promising pebble bed technology. Now, sadly, Germany depends on Russia for nearly 40 percent of its gas supplies.

The gas crisis is worst in countries like Bulgaria, where there is very little gas storage and demand is in real time. But it is also affecting Italy and Southern Europe. Having closed their coal-fired power plants and shelved their nuclear plans, those countries now feel the full pain of the Russian bear’s embrace: gas droughts and electric shortages are leaving their populations cold and hungry in the dark.

So dependent has Europe become on Russian energy that every step to ameliorate the situation is a possible irritant to Moscow. If the pipelines bypass Russia, or the hub in Ukraine, that is a provocation. If new gas comes by ship from North Africa, that is an excuse for Russia to try and price its pipeline gas at the higher price of liquefied natural gas.

Belatedly, Britain and Finland commissioned new nuclear power plants. But Germany, whose former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took a lucrative job with Gazprom, has chosen to increase its energy dependence on Russia.

Most observers believe that the current crisis will not last. Most likely, it will conclude with a jump in the price of gas, and some satisfaction in the Kremlin that Europe has been taught a lesson. But that lesson may have to be repeated over issues far from energy–such as the expansion of NATO and the European Union.

While the Russians appear to take some satisfaction in upsetting Western Europe, it is their Soviet-era satellites that most annoy them. Why, they wonder, can’t all of Eastern Europe remain suitably deferential, like Belarus and Armenia? Both toady to Moscow.

For the rest of Europe, the message is clear: build more gas storage, arrange more imports and diversify away from gas turbines.

For our part, we can help our friends and allies by thinking through our own actions, from the European missile shield to the willy-nilly expansion of NATO. This is a European problem. But if Europe has to make geopolitical compromises with Russia, it becomes problem for the Western alliance. That is us.