Waging Economic War on An Ally Repeats Trump's Errors
The Biden administration is vetting a former Obama administration official to serve as an envoy with a mission to kill the almost completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline:
The White House is in talks to appoint a special envoy to lead negotiations on halting the construction of Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, current and former U.S. officials said, as the Biden administration grapples with how to stymie a nearly completed energy project that would serve as a major financial and geopolitical boon to Moscow.
U.S. hostility to this project is misguided and persisting in opposition to it will damage U.S.-German relations unnecessarily. As far as the German government is concerned, it is a done deal and construction of the pipeline is almost finished. Berlin has tried offering concessions on other issues to find a compromise with the U.S., but the Biden administration is showing the same inflexibility that its predecessor showed. Unfortunately, this is another issue where the Biden administration seems far too interested in placating hawks in the other party. Ted Cruz has been a leading critic of the pipeline, and he has been threatening to use holds on Biden’s nominees if he doesn’t get his way.
The reporting suggests that the Hochstein appointment is an attempt to thread the needle by blocking the pipeline without unduly harming relations with Germany, but it is hard to see how Biden will be able to manage that. If the U.S. piles on sanctions to punish the German companies involved in the pipeline, it will hurt German citizens whose economic prosperity is tied up with the project. No government is going to respond well to being bullied over its own economic interests. Giving our allies another example of how our government abuses sanctions will give them more encouragement to find ways to do business that don’t depend on Washington’s approval.
Picking a fight with our most important European ally right out of the gate is a strange way to repair relations with allies that were already badly damaged in the Trump era. Waging an economic war on an ally because of a peaceful commercial project is nothing more than a continuation of the heavy-handed and destructive practices of the Trump administration. The U.S. will need German cooperation on many other issues in the future, and it is unwise to exhaust their goodwill by throwing a fit over this pipeline.