President Joe Biden continues to be the best thing that ever happened to Vladimir Putin.
As a candidate, Biden pledged to get tough on Putin. Former President Donald Trump, Biden insisted, had appeased the former KGB lieutenant colonel to the great detriment of America’s closest allies and values. Now in office for five months, Biden’s former rhetoric stands in stark contrast to his actual policies.
Biden this month gave the green light to a Russian pipeline across northern Europe with huge strategic value to Putin that every thinking person acknowledges.
The Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline is more than 90% completed, and Congress passed sanctions in early January designed to ensure it doesn’t get to 100%.
Putin needn’t have worried. Biden is unilaterally lifting those sanctions, giving Germany’s shortsightedness a thumbs-up and giving Putin a gift. In an absurd effort to disguise its appeasement, Biden’s State Department said it would sanction the ships involved in the concluding pipe-laying process but not the actual operators of those ships. As you might assume, there is rather limited utility in sanctioning inanimate objects.
But for Putin, there is great utility in what Biden has just done. Biden has licensed Putin to complete this centerpiece of his long-term European strategy by making Europe dependent on Russia for energy.
With the completion of Nord Stream II, Putin will be able to extract European political appeasement of his global priorities as the price for his provision of winter heating. The new pipeline will also allow Russia to undercut Ukrainian energy supplies to Europe, thus denying Kyiv billions of dollars in much-needed revenue. Even if only at the margin, Nord Stream II will reduce the viability of expanded U.S. liquid natural gas exports to Europe.
And what might Putin want to get away with? Consider Russia’s sustained buildup of military forces on Ukraine’s borders. Or the recent Russian cyberattack on Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party leader and front-runner to replace Angela Merkel in Germany’s September federal elections. Or the identification of the Russian GRU intelligence service responsible for the 2014 detonation of two ammunition depots in the Czech Republic. That attack cost the lives of two innocent Czechs.
But we should stay for a moment with that name: Annalena Baerbock.
After all, Baerbock has said Nord Stream II is incompatible with European security. Seeing as Baerbock has outlined her position in clear public detail, we must assume the U.S. Embassy in Berlin made Washington aware of it. Why, then, did Biden not sustain the pipeline sanctions in recognition of Baerbock’s prospects?
The question deserves answering.
What we do know is Biden’s rhetoric on Russia is very different than his Russia policy. It’s not just Nord Stream II. In recent weeks, Biden has allowed Putin’s hackers to extort the Colonial Pipeline operators into a nearly $5 million ransom payment. The Kremlin knows the U.S. intelligence community is aware these hackers operate under the supervision of the Russian FSB intelligence service. Yet, for whatever reason, Biden decided it was easier to abandon the Colonial Pipeline and accept fuel disruption across the East Coast rather than threaten Putin with retaliation.
Equally pathetic is Biden’s begging Putin for a one-on-one summit. This Trump-style pageantry has seen national security adviser Jake Sullivan forced into numerous phone calls with his Moscow opposite, Nikolai Patrushev. The ringleader of Putin’s espionage, cyber, and assassination malevolence around the world, Patrushev must have reveled in Washington’s humiliation.
Humiliation certainly is the right word: Just a few weeks ago, Putin publicly questioned whether Biden is senile. Again, Biden doesn’t appear to care.
Where does this leave us?
Perhaps only with one sad but obvious truth. Biden’s “I’m-tough-on-Putin” shtick is simply preening to a press and a Democratic electorate invested in the fantasy of Trump as a Russian asset. Now that Biden is out of fantasy land, his tough talk has evaporated.
