As to the pipeline itself, the main sticking point for many people in the U.S. was a combination of leftover Cold War policy of denying Russia any new pipelines into Europe and personal enrichment because of Ukrainian gas transit.
https://tomluongo.me/2021/07/24/nordstream-2s-hard-lesson-in-reality-for-everyone/
Author: Tom Luongo
For more than six years everyone who is anyone in a politically sensitive position in Europe and the U.S. has wrung their hands over the Nordstream 2 pipeline. From the moment it was announced the howls of pain could be heard all around the world.
Those screams were the screams of people who had grown fat and rich on the status quo realizing their gravy train was over.
Now the project is all but complete and the saga coming to an end we have a weak deal between all the major parties to keep some of that gravy train running. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Joe Biden finally buried the hatchet over Nordstream 2.
But the reality was that Nordstream 2 was always going to get completed. I’ve never wavered in my assessment of this.
The reasons were myriad.
The Germans need the gas.
The Germans wanted another political cudgel to use over the recalcitrant Poland and the Baltics.
The Germans need the gas.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is a board member of the Nordstream 2 consortium who put the deal together.
Oh, and the Germans need the gas.
It wasn’t a tough set of equations to solve here. The major players are Russia, Ukraine, Germany, the U.S. Whose needs are fulfilled by Nordstream 2? Germany’s. Who controls the EU? The Davos Crowd through Germany. Who needs relatively cheap energy to keep popular revolts from overthrowing major governments? Davos.
In the end economics and the reality of positive incentives always force a resolution on people determined to hold back the tide through regulation and arm-twisting creating perverse incentives. Believe me, there’s a broader lesson for all concerned here than just Nordstream 2.
As to the pipeline itself, the main sticking point for many people in the U.S. was a combination of leftover Cold War policy of denying Russia any new pipelines into Europe and personal enrichment because of Ukrainian gas transit.
But the events of the past decade and the existence of Nordstream 1 saw the dynamic in that relationship shift dramatically.
The U.S clearly does not control the reins over European energy policy and hasn’t for a long time.
The Davos Crowd controls U.S. policy over Europe and damn near everything else at this point, especially with Biden sporifying in the White House and Obama pulling all the strings behind the scene.
That anti-pipeline policy was powerful when the U.S. called the shots in its relationship with Europe. Trump tried to reassert U.S. dominance over Europe and beginning to be successful. But Merkel and others simply waited for his term to end, hoping their incessant meddling in his presidency would weaken him.
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