by Soeren Kern, GATEWAY PUNDIT • December 28, 2020
The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. Pictured: The Nord Stream 2 landfall facility in Lubmin, Germany, on September 7, 2020. (Photo by Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)
- “We continue to call on Russia to cease using its energy resources for coercive purposes. Russia uses its energy export pipelines to create national and regional dependencies on Russian energy supplies, leveraging these dependencies to expand its political, economic, and military influence, weaken European security, and undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. These pipelines also reduce European energy diversification, and hence weaken European energy security. — U.S. Department of State, “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act,” October 20, 2020.
- On December 24, the Kremlin admitted that U.S. sanctions may succeed in preventing completion of the pipeline. The U.S. government is now readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions that could deal a fatal blow to the project, according to the Reuters news agency.
- A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.
The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany “captive” to Russia for its energy supplies.
Trump has been especially critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, in opposition to the United States and many Eastern European countries, has doggedly pursued the pipeline project, which would funnel billions of dollars to Russia at a time that Germany is free-riding on the U.S. defense umbrella that protects Germany from that same Russia.
In addition to the conflict over the pipeline, there iare many other arenas of economic conflict between the u.S. on the one hand, and an informal economic alliance between Russia and China on the other.
According to RT,there is a dispute over who is the rightful owner of $50 billion dollars of assets that used to belong to a large privately owned Russian gas company owned by a political opponent of Putin. Putin’s prosecutors had the owner jailed for business crimes and closed down his company. Now there is a dispute between Russia, other governments, private creditors, and the orignal owner who has now completed his jail term as to who is the rightful owner of these assets. So the account where the assets are stored has been frozen.
Another and perhaps more serious source of economic conflict is an attempt to bid up the value of the Bitcoin crypto-currency. The public face of the effort to “corner” the market in Bitcoin is an American financier named Michael Saylor, who has more or less taken credit for the dramatic rise in the price of Bitcoin in recent weeks in a series of press interviews. However, Max Keiser, RT’s financial analyst and commentator, has hinted that the Russian and Chinese governments are backing Saylor’s move, because they want to reduce their dependence of the dollar in doing business abroad, and see Bitcoin as a possible alternative currency for international deals.
Both the Russian and Chinese governments, as well as several other governments, have for years stated publicly that they wish to reduce their need to use dollars for international trade, which they believe makes them too dependent on the United States, and leads their currencies to be undervalued.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
” It is hard to imagine political corruption and conflict of interest greater than that.”
Unfortunately, no, it’s not hard to imagine.
The Germans don’t give a damn! they love Russia, Iran and China.@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Gherard Schoder was this chancellor.
Brilliant article by Soren Kern, whose articles are always extremely informative about matters not reported by the MSM.
Outrageous that a former German Chancellor immediately became CEO of two oil companies, one German and one a state-owned Russian companies, immediately after he resigned as Prime Minister. It is hard to imagine political corruption and conflict of interest greater than that. By heading up a gas company owned by a state that remains a long-term threat to Germany’s national security, Shroader is a traitor to his own country. The Merkel regime and most German political parties are not true friends of the United States, their East European neighbors or even their own people.