Biden Blinks

July 8, 2021

Vladimir Putin rides roughshod over Joe Biden -- America’s President Nice. This followed Biden’s Big Blunder or his decision in March to waive Congressional sanctions designed to stop Putin’s $11-billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany. That’s when Vlad sensed weakness and by April he was mustering 100,000 troops and missiles along Ukraine’s border. Biden then asked Putin to de-escalate and invited him to a summit.

Not surprisingly, Vlad has doubled down ever since: Major ransomware attacks have been unleashed against the U.S. from Russian territory before and after the summit; Putin is sabotaging America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan by forging ties with the Taliban, and he has escalated his military mobilization against Ukraine. Today, Russian warships ply the Black Sea, illegally entering Ukrainian waters, and are poised to blockade the country’s shipping in order to bring its economy to its knees. Biden has done nothing to chasten or contain Putin and another summit would be pointless.

At home, pressure builds on Biden regarding the pipeline as well as for him to follow through on his warning to Putin that the United States would hold Moscow responsible for cyber-attacks from Russia even if they cannot be directly linked to the Kremlin. Dithering over retaliation and as the pipeline nears completion, Congress has begun to dig in its heels.

Why did Biden waive Congress’s sanctions against the pipeline given that it represents an existential threat to Ukraine and that he described the project as a “bad deal for Europe”? He listened to his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a crew of wonks and appeasers in the State Department. They believe the pipeline will mend fences with European allies, notably Germany, a position that has completely backfired. Now the only happy Euros are German industrialists who will receive huge price discounts from Russia’s Gazprom when the pipeline opens. Also happy is Putin who will soon enjoy a stranglehold on energy prices and politics in former Soviet satellites in Central and Eastern Europe. He will then drive Azerbaijan’s Southern pipeline out of business in Europe and is already at war with Azeris and backs Armenia in a territorial dispute.

Biden’s pipeline decision is inexplicable, but not Blinken’s. In 1987, he wrote an undergraduate monograph at Harvard entitled Ally versus Ally: America, Europe, and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis and argued that it was strategically more important to please European allies, that wanted Soviet energy than to impede a Soviet energy intrusion. This wrong-headed notion obviously informs Blinken, witness the fact that the paper is actually featured in Blinken’s Wikipedia entry.

But it was never smart to allow the Kremlin to earn cash flow from oil and gas to enable it to maraud and plunder and abuse human rights all over the place. And it was never smart to allow Putin to build a pipeline to replace Ukraine’s functioning transit system simply so he can hold it hostage then invade again — or to advise Biden to rebuke Congress and its sanctions. Ever since doing so, Biden’s State Department nominees have been blocked by sanctions co-sponsor Senator Ted Cruz in the Senate and will be until sanctions are imposed.

In early July, a House of Representatives panel unanimously passed an amendment to prevent Biden from waiving these Nord Stream 2 sanctions. “These sanctions are mandatory, not discretionary,” said Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat.

Loud opposition on both sides of the Atlantic has forced the United States and Germany to hold discreet talks to find ways to avert the potential dangers of a pipeline that shouldn’t be built in the first place. Blinken said discussions are to “ensure that Russia cannot use energy as a coercive tool directed at Ukraine or anyone else.”

This was completely brainless. Didn’t Blinken and the State Department “experts” realize that “coercion” was the raison d’etre behind all of Putin’s pipelines? And don’t they understand that having to hold talks to prevent major threats after completion proves why the pipeline shouldn’t be completed?

Consider the remedies the big powers are discussing: Requiring Germany to compensate Ukraine for lost gas transit fees; requiring Germany to build alternative energy capability for Ukraine; and/or requiring Germany to force Russia to continue gas shipments through Ukraine. Another suggestion is to create a “snapback” mechanism to allow Germany to immediately halt gas deliveries from Russia if Ukraine is attacked or coerced. Not surprisingly, Germany fiercely opposes that, based on the fantasy that Russia is a good-faith partner. How bloody naive.

Even if Putin agrees to such an arrangement, it will be as binding as was the Munich Agreement in 1938 which paved the way for the invasion of Central and Eastern Europe by the Nazis.

Ominously, Putin has also just given Europe a taste of what his new energy hegemony will look like. Weeks ago, Gazprom dramatically reduced gas volumes passing through the Ukrainian transit system, forcing prices to soar across Europe and putting pressure on Germany to overcome all obstacles against Putin’s pipeline. Now gas inventories across Europe are at their lowest level in a decade. “The injection of gas into underground storage facilities is at a minimum, which leaves no doubt that Europe will meet the new winter season with half-empty underground storage facilities,” warned Interfax-Ukraine.

This gambit should be reason enough to stop the project. One would have thought that President Biden would have known better, given his experience in foreign policy after decades in Congress and the White House and his respect for bipartisan collaborations. But foreign policy has never been Washington’s metier, which is why America has been condemned to repeat the history it’s never read.

Now Biden’s foreign policy team has concocted a Russian game plan based on appeasement, ignoring cyber-attacks, and Blinken’s 1987 term paper on pipelines fused with the opinions of diplomats and academics housed in the State Department’s Ivory Tower. These decisions are not simply miscalculations. They threaten to unravel Europe, imperil Ukraine, and feed the beast.

America’s President must enact two measures: Prohibit Putin from weaponizing energy in Europe then swiftly and severely punish him for crossing the red line drawn against cyber-attacks.

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