When Joe Biden was running for president in 2020, his Democratic Party directed its fury toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. Democrats asserted and protested Putin’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. They lamented his warm personal relationship with then-President Donald Trump and what they claimed was its ensuing damage to U.S. alliances. They condemned Putin’s refusal to relinquish his control over Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.
Putin must be laughing now, because the tough-on-Putin rhetoric that defined Democrats in 2020 is but a distant memory. Instead, as measured by their position on a defining strategic issue, it is the Biden administration and its Democratic allies in the Senate who are actually colluding with Putin to stop a Republican plan to stop him.
The issue is Russia’s Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline and Democrats’ refusal to support sanctions against it. Those sanctions are seen by many analysts, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as a critical means of deterring further Russian aggression against Ukraine. It’s a serious concern in that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers now encircle Ukraine’s borders.
In the Senate, Texan Ted Cruz, nearly all of his fellow Republicans, and some Senate Democrats want to restore sanctions against the pipeline’s operation. Imposed under the Trump administration, those sanctions were unfortunately waived by Biden. The argument for these sanctions is clear: they reflect the fact that Nord Stream 2 is a centerpiece of Putin’s energy-blackmail strategy against Europe.
If the pipeline comes online and the gas starts flowing, Putin will be able to demand appeasement from European governments as the price of his heating their nations’ homes and businesses. The former KGB lieutenant colonel will also be able to divert gas supplies that currently transit Ukraine. Despite a fanciful Biden administration deal that aims to prevent this outcome, Nord Stream 2 will mean Putin can deprive Ukraine’s pro-Western government of billions of dollars in much-needed transit revenues.
Russian energy extortion is not a hypothetical concern. This week, Putin suspended thermal coal supplies to Ukraine for 2 1/2 months. For more than three weeks, Putin has been reversing the flow of gas to Europe through the Yamal gas pipeline. Putin is playing this game as energy prices surge in Europe, threatening to bankrupt small businesses and force the poor to choose between heat and food.
Showing utter disdain for Biden’s well-intentioned but naive negotiators, Russian officials openly insist that they have never used energy supplies as a political weapon and will never do so. But their true motive in the present energy war is to pressure Germany into approving Nord Stream 2 for operation as soon as possible.
This time around, Nord Stream 2’s operation is the price of ending the freeze. Next time around, it might be Estonia’s suspension from NATO. Republicans recognize the risk and know that the United States must not give in to Putin’s blackmail. The size and lucrative nature of the U.S. economy means that very few international firms or governments will be willing to engage with Nord Stream 2 if it comes under renewed sanctions.
Fortunately for Putin, Democrats are riding to his rescue.
Desperate to defeat Cruz’s sanctions bill, Biden’s White House is pulling out all the stops. Perhaps embarrassed by a German lobbying campaign that did more harm than good, Biden has deployed a senior State Department official to the Senate. Victoria Nuland implored Democrats that Cruz’s bill needs to be defeated.
Some Democrats are not convinced — at least not yet. Montana Sen. Jon Tester told Politico that the White House “has to do a better job of messaging what the flaws are” with Cruz’s bill. But Tester’s concerns speak to a broader truth — there are no good arguments against the sanctions, so what could the better message possibly look like?
Other Democrats are simply resorting to childish name-calling. Sen. Dick Durbin simply says Cruz’s bill is “weak.” Sen. Bob Menendez offers up an alternate sanctions bill that is far weaker than Cruz’s, which would only apply after Russia invades Ukraine. Menendez doesn’t realize that by that point, it will already be too late — nor does he realize that Russia is attempting to mitigate potential sanctions by dividing the Western alliance. The U.S. thus needs to take a firm stance out front, leading against a pipeline that only Germany and Russia truly want.
Sen. Chris Murphy has taken perhaps the boldest course of supporting Putin’s aims, going so far as to criticize Zelensky for thanking Cruz for the sanctions bill. When it comes to Zelensky, Murphy says he often “misreads American politics, and I think it would have been better for him to have stayed out of this one. This is not good policy for the United States to allow Ted Cruz to break us from our trans-Atlantic partners in the middle of a delicate negotiation over the future of Europe-Russia policy.”
This argument rings hollow. It subordinates every consideration in Europe to the whims of the new German government, even though nearly every U.S. ally in Europe opposes Nord Stream 2 except for Germany. It also ignores the fact that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has abandoned Germany’s NATO defense spending obligations and its longstanding nuclear deterrence posture, even calling for a reset with Putin.
When Biden’s staff show up to lobby them on Putin’s behalf, Democratic senators should think twice. If they pass up the chance to vote for Cruz’s sanctions bill, they will be the ones colluding with Russia.
