When former President Donald Trump attempted to shake down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Senate Democrats rightly reacted with outrage. Trump, they credibly explained, was putting his personal political interests before the nation’s strategic interest. Specifically, the U.S. interest in supporting a pro-Western democracy against Russian aggression. Democrats pledged that Ukraine would receive their unflinching support.
Now that President Joe Biden is in office? The memory be green.
As Politico’s Andrew Desiderio reports, Senate Democrats are now inventing some rather creative excuses for why they will vote against a bill to reimpose sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline. Most absurd is Sen. Chris Murphy.
He is quoted as saying, “This isn’t about Russia. This is about a Cruz-Trump agenda to break up the transatlantic alliance. This is a moment where we need to be in solidarity with the administration as they try to use a carrot-stick approach with the Russians to prevent an invasion. Sending a wedge into the transatlantic relationship right now would not be productive if our end goal is to try to save Ukraine from an invasion.”
Sorry, senator. That’s a very disingenuous fiction.
For a start, Murphy is presumably aware that the vast majority of trans-Atlantic allies oppose Nord Stream 2. Ukraine and those NATO allies most threatened by Russia are particularly opposed to the pipeline. Murphy might have a point on the “carrot-stick” dynamic, but only were the Biden administration actually presenting sticks. And its refusal to identify specific sanctions that will follow any Russia attack or to provide more lethal arms to Ukraine proves its strategy is more akin to carrot-verbosity.
The facts are clear.
Sponsored by Ted Cruz and supported by the vast majority of Republican senators, the sanctions bill will face a floor vote by the end of next week. Supporting the sanctions requires no complex argument nor affection for Cruz. It requires only three things. First, a belief that democratic sovereignty and NATO are worthy of defense. Second, eyeballs. Third, a brain.
I’m not being facetious. This really isn’t that complicated.
If Nord Stream 2 becomes operational, Russia will consolidate a stranglehold over the European energy market. Germans will get cheap gas, but other states such as the Baltics and Poland will be pressured to acquiesce to Russian aggression or face their people, and economies quite literally freeze. Sen. Dick Durbin comes the closest to admitting that he’s going out on a limb not because it’s the right thing to do but to support the White House.
Durbin told Politico, “I have no lost love for Putin and Russia, but I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt our security.”
But again, this is disingenuous. It is Nord Stream 2, not sanctioning Nord Stream 2, that hurts U.S. security interests. Similarly unsustainable is Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s suggestion that Cruz’s legislation is “ill-timed” because the United States must “work very closely with our allies, and Germany is one of those very important allies.”
Is that really true?
On timing, Russia’s invasion is likely imminent. And on the question of allied value, Germany’s position is clear. Germany refuses to consider suspending Nord Stream 2, even in the event that Russia reinvades Ukraine. Democratic senators should thus ask themselves why Berlin’s interests come before those of every other European ally? Especially, that is, in light of the new German government’s abandonment of the NATO 2%-of-GDP defense spending pledge and of NATO’s priceless nuclear deterrent posture.
What of Ukraine?
The Trump shakedown now a distant memory, Democrats ignore the fact that Nord Stream 2 will mean Ukraine losing billions of dollars in annual transit fees as Russia redirects gas supplies out of Ukraine and instead through Nord Stream 2. This isn’t a hypothetical concern. We need only look at what Putin is doing at this very exact moment.
As energy prices surge across Europe, Putin has reversed gas flows out of Europe for more than two weeks now. Similarly, Russian thermal coal supplies to Ukraine have been restricted for more than two months. Via his Gazprom proxy (the U.S. and British intelligence communities know for a fact that Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller takes direct orders from the Kremlin), Putin also refuses to book additional supply to Europe through Ukraine. This should matter to Murphy and co. seeing as the Biden administration pledged that it and Germany would ensure Russia sustained those supplies.
Let’s not hear any more about how Democrats are tough on Putin. It’s clear that the vast majority, at least in Congress, are not. Indeed, one might even say they are indirectly colluding with Putin’s energy strategy.
