From 19Fortyfive:
Much ink has already been spilled lamenting the end of the post-Cold War era of American hegemony and the emergent strategic competition with Russia and China. Moscow has been described as a manipulative alien power, which, since at least the invasion of Crimea, has been seen as subverting American democracy and world stability. But this telling severely undersells how much the burden of the current state of affairs falls squarely on the West’s shoulders. Russia could not have achieved what it has without a healthy mix of complacency and wishful thinking on our part. The latest example of this has been Washington’s decision to lift sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
From the start, the Biden administration maintained a tough line on Russia, highlighting Putin’s continued military and political pressure on Ukraine, his support for the Lukashenka regime, and its brutal crackdown on Belarusian pro-democracy movement, and Russia’s facilitation of cyber-attacks on America and its allies. Taken alongside other moves, including shoring up NATO’s defenses, reassuring America’s allies along the Eastern flank and supporting our partners, and even issuing a joint communique after NATO’s latest summit in June that spoke of the allies’ enduring intent to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, one could be forgiven for assuming the administration was pursuing a coherent, tough line against Moscow.
Then a sudden policy shift occurred: following a summit between President Biden and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, the U.S. State Department announced that the administration was dropping its objections to the final consummation of the Nord Stream 2 deal between Berlin and Moscow, allowing for the completion of another underwater pipeline that will carry Russian natural gas along the Baltic seabed to Germany, bypassing Ukraine and transit countries along NATO’s Eastern flank. Last Wednesday, the State Department and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a joint communique concerning the U.S. – Germany NS2 agreement, according to which the United States would end sanctioning Nord Stream 2, while Germany would invest in Ukrainian projects to help the country transition to green energy. It also declared that Berlin stood ready to impose sanctions on Russia in the event of Putin’s hostile actions against Ukraine. Later on, Merkel spoke with Putin on the telephone; reportedly, the Nord Stream 2 agreement was one of the topics.
In practical terms, the U.S.-German summit decision on Nord Stream 2 means that Washington will not sanction the $11 billion pipeline project, allowing it to be completed, despite staunch opposition to it from a number of NATO allies, especially those that were former Soviet colonies now facing a revisionist Russian state. It affirms in no uncertain terms that the Biden administration sees Germany as the unequivocal leader of the European Union and Europe more broadly, and that it counts on Berlin’s help with shaping a larger European consensus on China. (That assumption is not likely to come true, considering that the PRC is now Germany’s largest trading partner and that Germany’s business community remains determined to stay fully engaged in the Asian market.) And most importantly, the decision will have a wide-ranging impact on internal alignments within Europe, for Nord Stream 2, notwithstanding Berlin’s insistence from its inception that it was strictly an “economic project,” has always carried with it transformative geostrategic implications.
The project’s completion will further strengthen Berlin’s position as the dominant player in Europe (especially because since Brexit, Europe’s second-largest economy is no longer part of the EU.) Germany will become the principal distribution center for Russian gas across Europe, at a time when the EU’s push for “green energy” will eventually force the closure of coal-fired power plants in Central Europe, increasing those countries’ dependence on German (Russian) gas and, hence, indirectly, Russia.....
....MUCH MORE
See also:
"Berlin, Moscow Negotiate New Trade Accord".
—Reading Eagle
Feb. 12, 1940
