Biden’s Erdogan Appeasement Shows He Learned Nothing from Nord Stream 2

It has been just six years since Russia’s Gazprom and its German partners announced plans to expand Russian gas imports into Europe via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Greed motivated Germany, but Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interest went deeper. He understood the strategic value of a pipeline that would essentially unlink Ukraine from Europe.

Not only did Warsaw and Brussels raise concerns about the plans — so did the Obama administration. “This is a project that will serve the Russian narrative completely from all aspects … and it creates just the chasm [the Russians] want in the middle of Europe,” Amos Hochstein, Secretary of State John Kerry’s energy envoy, explained.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went further and sanctioned the enterprise. “We want Europe to have real, secure, stable, safe energy resources that cannot be turned off in the event Russia wants to,” he explained. He understood that Nord Stream 2 was no simple commercial enterprise: Its chief executive officer, Matthias Warnig, was a former East German Stasi officer at the time the KGB stationed Putin in Germany, and the two became fast friends. It was Russian dissident Alexei Navalny’s exposure of their ties that would lead Putin first to poison and then imprison Navalny.

Συνέχεια εδώ

Πηγή: aei.org