Okay, all Uncle Joe and his State Department did was recognize that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russia with western Europe was a done deal (95% done, in fact) and thus will not impose sanctions on the Europeans for defying us, but in today’s xenophobic mindset, where everyone, but everyone, likes to hate Russia, accepting reality when it bites you on the ass can be considered a step up.
The idea that Europe can manage its own affairs and even deal with Russia all on its lonesome, since the European Union dwarfs Russia in all but acreage, should be obvious rather than invisible. Consider the following: EU population, 447,710,000; Russia’s population, 146,200,00. EU GDP, $16.2 trillion; Russia’s GDP, $4.33 trillion. EU defense spending (2019), $220 billion; Russia’s defense spending (2019), $65 billion. The upside of Donald Trump’s “fuck you” diplomacy was that it helped convince many Europeans that they couldn’t rely on the U.S. Now Uncle Joe’s apparent policy of “getting along with our allies” means, sometimes, listening to them and not letting the alliance of neocon “U.S. (and Israel) against the world” crowd and the Wilsonian do-gooders lead us into a war of righteousness in eastern Europe. Small steps, eh? Small steps!
Afterwords
Over at the National Review, Kevin D. Williamson, in a refreshingly non-frothy mood, educates his anti-Nord Stream 2 editors, or at least tries to do so, on the economics and politics of the energy biz:
[F]irst take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of the United States’ trying to use sanctions to bully Europeans out of importing Russian gas while the United States spent every day of 2020 importing, on average, 538,000 barrels of Russian oil, which is more than we import from Saudi Arabia. All that talk about American “energy independence” was, and always has been, baloney — baloney by the barrel, millions of them.
Kevie D. then goes on to explain why it makes no sense to piss off both the EU and Russia, for, basically no reason at all, alienating two political entities who have neither the desire nor the capability to interfere with our interests, but who are necessary allies if we hope to deal effectively with the one political entity who could and would like to push us around, that is to say, China!
As political entities go, China is pretty damn ugly, but I am much less convinced than Kevin that a Cold War style, decades long confrontation with China is unavoidable. Still, in dealing with China, which is unlikely to be comfortable, having the EU and Russia on our side, or even neutral, would be worth a great deal. And I like the way Kevie speaks truth to power, or at least editors, on America’s “role”:
The United States does not have the power to force the other nations of the world to adhere to its interests and values on its own. It never has — including at the height of its power and prestige in the immediate postwar years. But rather than recognize the facts on the ground and organize its diplomatic business accordingly, the United States has in recent years lurched from absurdity to absurdity and from crisis to crisis, now aping the crude nationalism of Beijing, now striking a grandiose Wilsonian pose — while at almost all times and on almost all occasions making foreign policy an instrument of short-term domestic politics, subordinate to short-term political calculation. This has led — inevitably — to the undermining of our national interests rather than their fortification.
If only more on the “right” (and the left) thought that way.
