Joe ♥ Vlad?
President’s gift to Moscow: Nord Stream 2
THE contradictions in President Biden’s Russia policy are coming into clear focus. While acting energetically to deter a major Kremlin invasion of Ukraine, the administration has been working overtime to send a gift to Moscow by trying to derail legislation that would stop the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in its tracks. What is going on?
On the one hand, Team Biden has reacted quickly and with strength to Russia’s mobilization of up to 100,000 troops, wellequipped with tanks, armored vehicles and artillery, within striking distance of Ukraine and Belarus’ border. Washington issued private and then public warnings to Moscow and reassurances to Kiev that it will work with European partners to impose punishing sanctions if the Kremlin substantially escalates its aggression — and even send more military assistance, including lethal weapons.
On the other hand, the administration has doubled down on its feckless May decision to waive the most powerful congressional sanctions on Nord Stream
2, the pipeline to bring gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic and North seas. This project would enable the Kremlin to stop sending that gas via Ukrainian pipelines and facilitate its use of energy as a weapon to punish Eastern European nations.
It’s an enormous geopolitical gift to a hostile Kremlin. While proclaiming pro forma opposition to Nord Stream 2, Team Biden has tried to justify this decision as a gesture to improve relations with Germany — but also used it to gain credit in Moscow by announcing it the day Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Last week, while Moscow was assembling its invasion-threatening force on Ukraine’s border, Blinken and energy envoy Amos Hochstein were on Capitol Hill lobbying the Senate to remove a House-attached amendment to the National Defense Appropriations Act that would impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2 without presidential waiver authority.
The addition couldn’t have come as a surprise because Nord Stream 2 opposition is strong on both sides of the aisle. But Team Biden is hoping party loyalty will trump US national-security interests and Senate Democrats will substitute a weak “reporting requirement” for the tough sanctions amendment. It is not clear if Senate Democrats will go along. The waiver is not just a foreignpolicy disaster, it’s a political liability. To publicly kill the House amendment at the behest of an administration with low approval ratings is not easy.
Democrats are in this unenviable position because Berlin has proven an uncooperative partner. The Biden administration has been signaling its willingness to accommodate Germany on Nord Stream 2 since January — when construction on the project, stalled by 2019 and 2020 congressional sanctions, resumed.
Months of talks, and the most the White House achieved was a very weak July joint statement saying “Germany will take action at the national level and press for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions, to limit Russia’s export capabilities to Europe” to “ensure that Russia will not misuse any pipeline, including Nord Stream 2, to achieve aggressive political ends by using energy as a weapon.”
Since that statement, Moscow began to do the inevitable: use gas as a political weapon.
As Europe’s gas supply tightened and prices spiraled up in late summer, the Kremlin chose not to sell more gas at higher prices, its usual practice. Instead, Putin helpfully suggested that more gas will flow once Nord Stream 2 is fully operational.
And what was Germany’s reaction to Moscow’s mischief ? Chancellor Angela Merkel saw no evil. Russia is not responsible for Europe’s higher gas prices was all she could muster. German officials who came to DC last week to lobby Senate staff brought a nonpaper with the same beside-thepoint assertion. They offered nothing stronger than a repetition of the feeble July statement on what they would do “if” Moscow plays politics with gas.
On Kremlin gas games, sadly, the administration has been only somewhat more forthcoming than the Germans. The closest it’s come to stating the obvious was Hochstein’s remark that Moscow has “come very close to the line of using [gas] as a weapon.” He cannot state the obvious because Blinken promised, after the storm of criticism following the May sanctions waiver, that America could reimpose sanctions if Moscow does, in fact, weaponize gas.
At the end of the day, Germany believes it holds an ace because allies do not sanction allies. This ignores that the company benefiting from Biden’s waiver, Nord Stream 2 AG, is Swiss. More important, it ignores that the greatest danger to US and trans-Atlantic interests Nord Stream 2 poses is that the project will enhance the Kremlin’s already considerable malign influence in Germany.
Why would Senate Democrats, who always spoke of the Moscow menace when Donald Trump held the White House, cave to an administration careening toward another foreign-policy cliff ?