One of Donald Trump’s main pledges on the 2016 campaign trail was to rekindle the dying embers of US-Russia relations, which had been undergoing a mini Ice Age under Barack Obama, his ballyhooed ‘reset’ notwithstanding. But before Trump was ever put to the test of romancing Russia, he was sidelined by one of the most malicious political stunts of the modern age.

It is only necessary to recall the 2016 Winter of Our Discontent when the Democratic leader sent 35 Russian diplomats and their families packing just before New Year’s Eve in retaliation for Russia’s alleged involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers. Before Trump ascended the throne, those unfounded claims lit the fuse on ‘Russiagate,’ the debacle which continues to undermine not just US-Russia relations, but the entire US political system.

Yet would things have turned out any differently between Washington and Moscow had the Democrats graciously accepted defeat in 2016 without feeling the need to blame remote Russia? I am not sure.

Today, observers reason that the US Republicans have no choice but to ‘get tough’ on Russia in an effort to dispel Democrat-generated rumors of excessive coziness with the Kremlin. Last year, for example, Trump bested Obama on the Russia front when he expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to an alleged assassination attempt on former British spy, Sergey Skripal; an astonishing move on the part of the US conservative, but with so much riding on the line was it really a surprise?

And what was it exactly that was ‘riding on the line’? Aside from good relations between the world’s two premier nuclear powers, not to mention thwarting nuclear Armageddon as Prime Minister Theresa May very unwisely issued an ultimatum to Russia over the matter, there is the question of hundreds of billions of dollars of business contracts – from gas supplies to military hardware. Tycoon Trump would sooner win over European gas supplies than the plains of Central Asia, for example, the geopolitical lynchpin so dear to the hearts of US policymakers, like the late Zbigniew Brzezinski. This is where so many people misread Donald Trump: His heart and mind is devoted to the business deals, not the military steals. But that doesn’t necessarily make his moves are any less dangerous.

From President Trump’s perspective, Russia is a 500-pound cigar-chomping guy at the negotiating table with an ego and stature equal to his own that must be vanquished lest The Deal be lost and he – Donald J. Trump, CEO and Founder of The Trump Organization – look like a second-rate negotiator and fraud. Similar to the methods a belligerent globalist, Trump the inveterate businessman will do anything to achieve leverage in the pursuit of profit.

This is where Trump was only too happy to oblige the British with their extremely suspect Skripal story because vilifying the Russians, once again, would give the US an upper hand in stealing business away from Moscow, most notably in the realm of European gas supplies. Presently, the Trump administration is trying hard to halt progress on Nord Stream 2, an ambitious 11 billion euro ($12.4 billion) project to construct a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany.

Speaking from Kiev this week, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Washington, once again endorsing the spirit of free competition and enterprise, was preparing to introduce sanctions on foreign companies involved in the project.

But that’s just the beginning.

To show how low the Americans would stoop to get a piece of this lucrative European market, which the Russian’s have been dutifully supplying for many decades, they’ve gone for some dramatic rebranding, calling LNG supplies “freedom gas.” You know, the byproduct of ‘freedom fries.’

“Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America’s allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy,” said US Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes.

Dmitry Peskov, official spokesman of the Russian president, scoffed at such cynical attempts by Washington to strong-arm nations into accepting its preferred version of the ‘free market.’

“Instead of fair competition they prefer to act like in Wild West times,” Peskov told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). “They just show the gun and say that no, you guys here in Europe, you are going to buy our natural gas and we don’t care that it is at least 30% more expensive than the gas coming from the Russians. This is the case.”

Perhaps nowhere else is this effort to ‘control the market’ more evident than in the realm of military spending, and particularly among NATO states. Currently, European countries spend some $240 billion annually on military weapons and forces, while Russia spends just $66 billion each year. Yet for businessmen like Trump, that is not good enough. Employing the vacuous claim of an ‘aggressive Russia,’ Trump is passing around the proverbial hat, demanding that NATO members contribute an ever-higher amount of their GDP to military spending. At the same, the eastern border with Russia has become militarized like never before.

Here there is striking convergence on the part of the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to Russia. The Democrats under Barack Obama, accepting the baton passed to them by the Bush administration, dropped a US-made missile defense system in Romania, a stone’s throw from the Russian border. Obama’s assurances that the Russians would be allowed to participate in the project were casually forgotten. But the Russians, who know a thing or two about military strategy, did not forget.

Last year, Vladimir Putin unveiled a number of daunting military breakthroughs, including hypersonic weapons, which the Russian leader explained were developed with the sole purpose of striking a strategic balance between the two nuclear superpowers. And if the world needs more of anything these days, it is certainly balance.

With such ploys in mind, it is easy to see why Moscow has little cause for celebration with either a Democrat or Republican in the White House. Both political parties have long viewed Russia not as a potential partner that could lend tremendous assistance in resolving some of the planet’s most intractable problems, but rather as some Cold War foe that needs vilified and vanquished. Of course there is good reason for this decades-long duplicity. The double-pronged attack by the Democrats and Republicans allows Washington to continue to make strategic inroads against Russia, as well as China, while filling the corporate coffers at the same time. It is an age-old strategy – albeit a foolhardy one in an age of nuclear weapons – which is doomed to ultimate failure, if not disaster, if left unchecked.

Perry (who characterized his remarks as “his opinion” and thus not necessarily those of President Trump whom he was attempting to speak for) was referring to the 1222 km (9.5 billion Euro) pipeline begun last year which Russia’s Gazprom has been constructing alongside four western companies. Once completed in early 2020 this project will double the current 55 billion cubic meter/year Russian gas output to Germany through the Baltic Sea. This line is not only vital for European energy security as Euro zone nations have suffered years of unreliable and extremely expensive green energy but cannot legally invest in long term energy projects that would revive its productive potential as EU rules ban deficits greater than 3% of GDP. Technocrats in the EU have even pressured countries to shut down nuclear energy entirely with Germany leading the pack with its commitment for full shut down by 2022 (ironically, this has caused Germany’s carbon emissions to soar to 10 times those of France who still gets 70% of its energy from nuclear power). Energy deficits can only currently be met by Russia, whose oil and gas supplies 60% of the European Union’s energy needs with Italy and Germany accounting for half of that.

Technocrats and Neocons throw a tantrum

The Nord Stream 2 project has long faced resistance by the United States and has suffered many serious setbacks since sanctions on Russia caused a halt to the pipeline’s earlier planned start in 2015. Ukraine and her technocratic controllers are now confronting the fact that they put themselves in an un-winnable position since Ukraine’s puppet regime seeks the contradictory goal of enjoying the $2-3 billion annual transit fees (3% of its GDP) earned by having Russian gas pass to Europe through its territory while simultaneously wishing to integrate into the failing Euro energy market. Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller confirmed that Ukraine’s fears of this lost revenue are well founded when he said on April 28, 2018 that after the project’s completion “volumes of such transit will be much lower, probably 10 to 15 billion cubic meters/year” (15% of its current volume).

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman commented on the proposed U.S. sanction threat saying “the construction of Nord Stream 2 is a kind of Russia’s energy weapon. They want to use this energy weapon to influence European partners. Ukraine is categorically opposed to construction. We thank the United States for its support on this important issue”.

Already a week before Groysman’s comments, a bi-partisan bill was introduced in the U.S. senate calling for the sanctioning of all vessels cooperating on the Nord Stream 2 build. Tom Cotton, one of the Senators co-sponsoring the resolution it said “if the project isn’t stopped Moscow will use the pipeline to split eastern nations away from those of central and Western Europe. The German government must deny Putin this opportunity to weaken the NATO alliance. If Berlin won’t act, the United States will.”

The thinking expressed by Perry, Groysman and Cotton reflect the height of delusion and desperation of the western technocratic elite who have been watching their carefully planned system of economic, energy, military and political controls over the trans-Atlantic slip away ever since 2013. This was the year that Russia and China began creating an alternative new multipolar world order alongside other Eurasian nations starting in earnest with China’s September 2013 creation of the Belt and Road Initiative, followed by Russian’s 2015 intervention into Syria and unification of the Eurasian Economic Union with the BRI.

Of course rather than admit that Europe’s disintegration and the split between eastern and western Europe has anything to do with their own faulty thinking, these technocrats and neo cons can only bring themselves to blame Russia as the cause of everything wrong with their world.  Perhaps the conditions of draconian austerity to service the bankrupt financial system has something to do with the collapse of the stability of the European Union. Perhaps the NATO-led drive to play nuclear chicken with the missile shield around Russia and NATO’s collective security pact has something to do with it? Or maybe the decreased standards of living accompanying the carbon emission cuts that have nearly doubled much of Europe’s household “green” energy costs and reduced productive industrial power have something to do with Europe’s problems. No the answer must be Russia.

Nord Stream 2 and the BRI: A Hope for Europe

The reality is that Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a major lifeline for a beleaguered Europe, and provides an economic gateway to broader European integration into the growing infrastructure complex of the New Silk Road which is providing for the first time in decades long term productive investments tied to the REAL (vs. speculative) growth of Europe’s physical economies with rail, energy corridors, telecommunications connecting east to west (and increasingly north to south) in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. Pre-empting Perry’s threat, Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Mass said in January 2019 that “questions of European energy policy must be decided by Europe. Not the USA. To impose unilateral sanctions against Nord Stream 2 is not the way to go”.

Europeans are beginning to take notice that there are now two competing systems pulling the world in two opposing directions and that Europe has increasingly fallen under a future-less cage. Just in the past two months major deals have been signed extending Chinese rail, ports and infrastructure to Greece, Germany, Italy, France Spain and uplifting every nation in between. Italy’s joining the BRI in March was followed by similar MOU’s signed by Switzerland and Luxembourg in April while Greece made headlines becoming a member of the 16+1 Central and Eastern European nations working with China’s BRI.

Whether nationalist leaders such as President Trump and other figures in Europe continue to resist the deep state drive for war and economic fascism by working with the Russia-China alliance or submit to the whims of the technocrats and their London-centered managers remains yet to be seen.

I can’t tell what’s more pathetic at this point, the neocons in Trump’s administration thinking that sanctions actually achieve their goals or using them to suck up to a new president they don’t actively control yet.

Think about this. Perry goes to Kiev for nothing more than a photo op to assure Zelenskiy that the US won’t abandon the struggle stick it to the Russians. He does this with no sense of shame or irony after spending five years destroying Ukraine with an ill-advised coup which ushered in the chaos that brought Zelenskiy to power.

The hypocrisy of it all is stunning.

Outgoing US puppet Petro Poroshenko was such a disaster that Ukrainians voted 3 to 1 to get rid of him in favor of a political neophyte and television comic.

That’s how badly the US has mismanaged Ukrainian post-coup affairs. And the Russians are supposed to be the bad guys in this scenario?

And now Perry is going to virtue signal that the US will sanction Nordstream 2 to keep their access to Ukraine’s highest office? Zelenskiy may be a neophyte but he’s not stupid either.

The US’s opposition to Nordstream 2 is mainly for its own purposes. Just like its interest in Ukraine is purely selfish. President Trump wants the gas volumes slated for Nordstream 2 to go to US LNG exporters first. Ukraine isn’t all that important in the end to him.

Stopping Nordstream 2 is supposed to do two things. Force Russia to the bargaining table with Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas transit company, and cut a new deal since the old one is expiring at the end of this year.

It’s also meant to force Germany to buy more expensive US LNG. However, Trump can raise Germany’s costs he will. This, to him, is the way to fix them stealing from the US by building car factories in Indiana and Tennessee and selling us BMWs, Volkswagens and Porsches.

Germany is finally standing up for itself somewhat, adamantly declaring that it is ‘not a colony of the US’ even though, let’s get real, it is. Talk is cheap, however, and now is the time to act independently on major policy decisions.

Trump sending Perry to Zelenskiy’s inauguration should tell you all you need to know about how important Ukraine is in this calculus. It isn’t. Because if it were important either Trump himself would have gone or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, not a cipher like Rick Perry.

And the truth is that Zelenskiy doesn’t need leverage to cut a deal with Gazprom. Gazprom has said on multiple occasions it would be happy to renegotiate the gas contract. It would do so as a favor to Angela Merkel and the EU to soothe fears over keeping Ukraine destabilized.

The problem was it was Poroshenko that refused to come to the table, at the behest of his US masters.

Moreover, Ukraine’s energy future is bleak now that Russia has embargoed Ukraine on oil and coal imports, including reselling through Belarus, which has also put Belarussian President Lukashenko on notice that Moscow is tired of his games as well.

Zelenskiy’s first move should be to sit down with Vladimir Putin at a moment’s notice. But he can’t do that until he has the backing of the parliament. This is why he dissolved parliament immediately upon taking office, bypassing an attempt to delay such elections until late October.

Poroshenko left him multiple poison pills to navigate but a gas transit contract with Gazprom is the easiest thing to get done. But, for Putin, this means Merkel putting to bed any more doubts about the final construction of Nordstream 2.

No gas transit deal with Ukraine gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel the excuse to keep all dialogue frozen on a number of issues, including ending sanctions against Russia. But she’s facing a major change in her political pull in Brussels in a week as the European Parliamentary elections could shift the balance of power enough to see any sanctions extension this summer vetoed.

And with Germany’s economy faltering badly and the markets finally waking up to the changes politically on the horizon, Merkel is rapidly reaching the end of her current policy quagmire with respect to Russia and the US

She will have to break the deadlock over Nordstream 2 and time is running out before Ukraine finds themselves unable to import the energy needed to keep the heat on this winter.

And that brings me to Denmark. The Danes are foot-dragging an environmental permit (due to obvious pressure behind the scenes by the US and the U.K.) to halt the last miles of the pipeline which is now two-thirds complete.

The delay is, again, temporary as Denmark has no good reasons to not issue the permit except the worst kind of politics.

The new sanctions only have power if the Danes continue refusing the permit. Because, you will notice, the sanctions aren’t going to affect the major partners of Nordstream 2, the five big oil and gas majors who put up half the funds.

It’s the pipe layers and insurance companies doing the actual construction. Because that’s all the US dares sanction. Just like the empty threats against Chinese state oil companies for buying Iranian oil, the US knows there is a limit to who and what they can sanction without collapsing the world economy.

Lastly, never underestimate the long-term effect here on the US and the further use of the dollar. Right now, the dollar is the major game in town. It’s vital to the survival of a lot of companies and banks, but it is also, ultimately, replaceable in the kinds of businesses under the threat of sanctions here.

Everywhere you look Trump is lashing out at whoever he thinks he can gain leverage over to force concessions for US interests. But all he is doing is making it clear to everyone that the dollar now carries unacceptable political risk to carry on their company’s balance sheet.

And it will only further lower the barrier both economically and politically to shift away from using it leaving the US ever more isolated. And the fact that this is happening over such a small thing like a pipeline and a failed state like Ukraine makes everyone involved look desperate and pathetic.