Washington's rigid positions impede cooperation
The United States does not know how to deal with its allies
Washington asked Germany to abandon the Russian gas pipeline "Nord Stream".
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Blinken criticized America's allies at the recent meeting of (NATO).
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US President Joe Biden promised the world that "America is back," but his efforts to restore global leadership should not come at the expense of the country's closest friends.
At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers last week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken strongly criticized Germany's efforts to obtain more natural gas from Russia through a pipeline project known as "Nord Stream".
Blinken warned that the pipeline is a bad idea for Europe and the United States.
In the end, "it conflicts with the security objectives of the European Union."
Not only is the Biden administration continuing its punitive policy against former President Donald Trump against an important ally, but it is considering imposing more restrictions.
Blinken’s statement also reflected a major foreign policy imbalance under former President Barack Obama: the condescending assumption that other countries do not understand their own interests.
But the United States' focus on halting an energy project important domestically for Germany is even more misleading when the administration's strategy adopts major US security concerns - the rise of China.
Biden has a choice: Should he prioritize concern about Russia, which is an annoying but less important rival force, or should he boost support among America's allies?
The American administration is about to choose the wrong choice.
The European dependence on Russian energy resources is great, as the European Union countries import 30% of their crude oil, 40% of their natural gas, and 42% of their coal from Russia.
However, the reasons for US opposition to the Nord Stream line are outdated, because the integration of the European gas market has significantly weakened Russia's ability to threaten to cut off energy supplies.
Our allies in Central Europe strongly object to Nord Stream, fearing long-term dependence on Russia, and Germany's unwillingness to confront this threat.
Now that the United States is an energy exporter, it can offer a commercially viable US alternative through LNG shipments to terminals in the Baltic states and Poland.
Indeed, Biden’s opposition to Nord Stream is, in many ways, a repetition of former President Ronald Reagan’s position against the Siberian pipeline that the Soviet Union and Germany built in the 1980s.
Biden may not be more successful in stopping this project than Reagan has achieved. The Nord Stream project was 95 percent completed, and Germany has been hard in ignoring the objections of both the United States and its Central European neighbors for more than a decade.
Germany, which does not want to rely on nuclear energy, is keenly concerned with energy reliability and is rushing to find low-carbon sources. Asking the German government to sacrifice its domestic goals would be unrealistic, given that Biden gave priority to protecting US markets in his foreign policy, and was not willing to pay the political price for joining. To the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or to make the effort to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that the United States nevertheless imposes against China.
The United States expects other countries to make difficult domestic concessions, without being ready to do so. The debate over "Nord Stream" comes at a time when Washington is pushing the Europeans to approach a more integrated alliance with China.
The United States has made great progress in convincing allies not to use Huawei equipment in their fifth generation systems. The European Union joined the United States in imposing sanctions on China, and the Biden administration's objections to the proposed trade deal between the European Union and China helped prevent its approval. Maintaining allies requires sacrifices based on shared values, and this does not mean that other democratic countries should in every case do what the United States wants.
The Biden administration must reach a compromise over the Nord Stream, make concessions that pacify Central Europe and Ukraine, and then abandon this outdated anxiety.
Apart from the slogan "America is back," our rigid position hinders the deepening of the allies' cooperation in our most important problems.
Corey Shayk is director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Now that the
United States has
become a
source of energy, it
can commercially useful alternative to an
American offer through LNG shipments to terminals in the
Baltic States and Poland.
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