National Interest: US must 'punish Algiers', EU shouldn't rely on them

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As an Arab country with energy resources, could Algeria become a balancing ground for the United States with Algiers' friendly neighbors? 

An article written in The National Interest argues that the United States, after the incumbent war in Ukraine and the energy wars in Europe, should not rely on Algeria for energy. However, the approach to reasoning why Europe should not rely on Algiers comes close to what we see as an Israeli tantrum. 

Alex Grinberg, an Israeli intelligence officer, argues that Algeria has growing ties with US rivals, like Iran and Russia, with economic and military contracts running between them - the ties raise concerns in the eyes of Washington, such that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Algeria in April 2022 to address Algiers' relationship with Russia in an attempt to dissuade them from further bilateral developments. This did not work.

Read next: Moscow welcomes Algiers' desire to join BRICS

Last month, Russia and Algeria conducted joint military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea. 

This month, December, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune will be signing an arms deal worth more than $12 billion in a coming visit to Russia. This comes after Republican Representative Lisa McClain wrote to Blinken last year telling him to sanction Algeria for purchasing weapons from Russia worth $7 billion in 2022. Algeria's sovereign decisions violated the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. With this being said, Algeria is one of the Russian military's most important clients, and is actually becoming the African country with the most military spending. 

Interestingly, Algeria has a growing importance to southern Europe because of its natural gas supplies, as it is going to become the biggest gas supplier to Italy in 2023.

'Algeria cannot go unpunished'

Pushing imperialist rhetoric, Grinberg writes, "the United States and Europe must hold the government in Algeria accountable for its actions before it’s too late," entailing interventionist and aggressive approaches in dealing with Algiers for making sovereign decisions which, actually, do not threaten Washington's national security. 

"Algeria’s military shopping spree cannot go unpunished," Grinberg wrote. "The arms deals violate U.S. laws, and Washington should implement sanctions immediately."

Algerian energy is pivotal to European security today, as it supplies almost 49% of Spain's imported gas, flowing through 2 pipelines Medgaz and GME. In July this year, Sonatrach - an Algerian energy company - signed a $4 billion oil and gas deal with 2 major European energy companies, ENI, which is Italian, and Total, which is French. 

Read next: Sonatrach, Eni announce start of production in oil field

The National Interest speculates a brow-raising conspiracy, that with the fact that Sonatrach is a state-owned corporation, the "Algerian regime" could use the company "as a geopolitical tool." The author argues that when Spain decided to support Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara, Algeria recalled its ambassador from Spain and Sonatrach hiked gas prices flowing into Spain. Grinberg says nothing about Spain's intervention in Algerian border security.

The writer went on to slam Algiers, saying that since the country's "independence" - actually, a liberation - from France in 1962, Algeria is a "dictatorship" ruled by a "junta of generals" with a "corrupt and inefficient economy, denying liberties to its citizens and flouting human rights."

It's worth noting that Grinberg is an Israeli officer serving the intelligence sector of the Israeli military, which continuously kills, subjugates, incarcerates, and illegally annexes land.