“This might surprise a few people (this was Ted Cruz’s bill)”
I’m with Rand on this. My main fear in that part of the world is that Europe (i.e., Germany), with no military to speak of, will decide to go toe-to-toe against Russia, and then coming begging to us to clean up their mess (which we may or may not be able to do, depending on the circumstances).
However, if the pipeline gets built, well then Europe (i.e., Germany) will have an ‘incentive’ to not push things too far with Russia.
I believe Blinken carried a bag of money to Ukraine on the last visit...200 million??
Germany already gets most of their natural gas from Russia. They’re not going to push anything except going belly up due to lack of energy independence.
Even Macron is pushing nuclear power. Germany is closing it down.
Not quite.
First of all it has been fully built already, the issue is paperwork.
Secondly, the way things stand now, Europe (and Germany in particular) depend on Russian gas with or without North Stream II.
If I were Putin I'd love someone blowing up NS2. It makes more sense to sell half of the amount of gas at twice the price. Or perhaps 10x the price before long.
Germany and Russia go to war. Half of Germany will lose power overnight. So that’ll shut their economy down. Advantage Russia. At that point, Russia would not even have to launch a strike against Germany to cause damage. The Germans are stupid for shutting down their nuclear power so they are dependent on the Russians. But like you said, it may be a good thing so nothing bad will happen.
I’m sorry, but we cannot allow our allies to become dependent on Putin for their energy supplies.
It looks to me like Russia is the pushy one.