America with Germany (and Russia) on Nord Stream 2 made a splash
It is unclear how the US will prevent Russia from using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a political weapon. Italics by Giuseppe Gagliano
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, arrived in Washington on Thursday 15 July, where she was welcomed by the President of the United States, Joe Biden.
The topic of the conversation was the geopolitical and geoeconomic role of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. As indicated in a previous article , the US administration made a quick turnaround on such a sensitive issue, despite the positions between the United States and Germany have been, especially under the Trump administration, deeply divergent.
The completion of the pipeline has now reached 98% and this is certainly one of the reasons that led the American administration to take more cautious and prudent positions.
Despite the assurances from Biden – as well as from Blinken – that it is necessary to prevent Russia from using this pipeline as a tool to exert political pressure on neighboring countries, and despite the reassurance given by both leaders to Ukraine, that it will not be damaged by the pipeline as Ukraine will have to remain a transit country for natural gas, it is frankly not difficult not to acknowledge on the one hand the defeat of the Biden administration and on the other hand the defeat of the economic war implemented by Trump .
In short, Biden had to recognize – as in the case of Turkey and Saudi Arabia – the centrality of Germany both in the NATO context and in the more general context of European security.
In any case, we will see concretely how the United States will prevent Russia from exercising its power projection in the energy field in Europe …
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/nord-stream-2-sconfitta-biden/ on Sat, 17 Jul 2021 08:31:17 +0000.