President Biden’s team is promising to implement a sanctions law designed to halt construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany in a deal with a top Senate conservative to secure confirmation of two senior national security nominees.
“The Biden administration is committed to complying with that legislation,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “The Department reiterates its warning that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S. sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.”
Biden opposes the pipeline’s construction but wants to rehabilitate U.S. relations with Germany, which favors the project despite warnings from other NATO allies that the pipeline will allow Moscow to cut gas supplies for Eastern Europe while keeping Western Europe well supplied and complacent. Blinken has implied the administration believes the pipeline is too close to completion to be blocked by the United States, but Senate Republicans have demanded that he enforce the sanctions law.
“Entities that are engaged in work on Nord Stream 2 today now understand that they will face devastating sanctions unless the work stops immediately,” Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who has put a procedural hold on the confirmation of several Biden nominees to gain leverage in the dispute over how to target the pipeline.
STATE DEPARTMENT SUGGESTS US CAN’T THWART ‘VIRTUALLY COMPLETE’ RUSSIAN GAS PIPELINE TO GERMANY
“In light of the secretary’s strong declaration, I am following through on my commitment to the State Department to lift the Nord Stream 2-related holds that I have placed on William Burns and Brian McKeon, the president’s nominees for director of the Central Intelligence Agency and deputy secretary of state for Management and Resources, respectively,” he said.
Other House and Senate Republicans have crafted legislation that would mandate the stiffening of sanctions related to Nord Stream 2 while requiring the Biden administration “to expedite approvals of natural gas exports to NATO allies, Japan and any other foreign country” where the energy resources could support a U.S. national security priority.
“Russia continues to use its energy resources to intimidate and influence our allies,” Sen. John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican author of the bill, said after Blinken’s statement. “American energy is cleaner and more efficient than Russian natural gas, and this legislation reaffirms our commitment to American energy dominance.”
Those sentiments might pique German suspicions that U.S. officials are using national security misgivings as a pretext to promote American gas exports.
“Sanctions policies are neither a suitable nor an appropriate instrument for promoting national export interests and the domestic energy sector,” then-German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in 2017.
Blinken has emphasized, in public statements, that the pipeline is “virtually complete” — a talking point that some observers take as a sign that Russia could complete the pipeline even if European companies abandoned the project due to sanctions threats. Other opponents of the pipeline think aggressive sanctions implementation can still have an effect.
“The Russians still need third-party services to complete the pipeline,” a source familiar with the Nord Stream 2 debate said.
Blinken’s statement implies that the U.S. will sanction at least some of those entities, but he made no specific commitment.
“The Department is tracking efforts to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and is evaluating information regarding entities that appear to be involved,” he said. “As multiple U.S. administrations have made clear, this pipeline is a Russian geopolitical project intended to divide Europe and weaken European energy security. The sanctions legislation Congress passed in 2019 and expanded in 2020 has significant support from a bipartisan Congressional majority.”
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Cruz still has some leverage to use while monitoring the policy going forward. He said that he will continue to block the confirmation of Blinken’s top deputy and “future State Department nominees until the full sanctions mandated by Congress are in fact broadly imposed against the ships and companies critical to completing the pipeline.”
