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DALLAS – As Russian forces continue to advance on the Ukraine border and Western officials warn of an impending invasion, Texas Senator Ted Cruz blames President Joe Biden for the recent aggression in the Kremlin.
Cruz, a Republican, points a finger at Biden for kowtowing the Kremlin by waiving sanctions on a controversial Russian gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, giving Putin the green light to attack Ukraine again to threaten.
“This catastrophic foreign policy disaster is Joe Biden’s fault,” said Cruz in the Senate this week. “This is a direct result of Joe Biden’s surrender to Vladimir Putin on Nord Stream 2.
In statements made in the Senate this week, Cruz urged the US to immediately reinstate sanctions on a natural gas pipeline.
“Joe Biden could stop the invasion today by simply following the law and sanctioning Nord Stream 2,” Cruz told the Senate.
The sanctioning of the pipeline is said to be on the table in discussions between US and European leaders who will decide how to react should Moscow launch an attack on Ukraine.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 22 members of the US House of Representatives joined Cruz in a letter to Biden urging him to immediately sanction Nord Stream 2 and increase “lethal defense aid” to Ukraine to remove Russia from one Deter attack.
“Your government must use all means to prevent Russia from taking further action against Ukraine, including economic sanctions,” the letter said. “Congress has a strong bipartisan record in protecting Europe’s energy security. We will also use future legislative instruments to protect Central and Eastern Europe from Russian manipulation. “
Cruz has used Nord Stream 2 for months to dampen Biden’s foreign policy record and block Biden’s nominations for key positions in the State Department and other agencies when his government enters its sophomore year.
Bashing Biden on Nord Stream 2 misses the point of today’s political discussion when it comes to the current Russian threat to Ukraine.
“Vladimir Putin has been building forces to try to manipulate Ukraine for years, and he has intensified it as Ukraine tried to break away from Russian influence,” said Jeremi Suri, professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin. “That motivates his behavior. This has nothing to do with the US position on Nord Stream 2. “
Biden’s decision to lift sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in January “had no impact on Russian aggression against Ukraine,” said Suri. “For Ted Cruz this is made up because he wants to move on for his own reasons.”
However, Cruz is not alone in criticizing Biden’s dealings with Putin and other autocrats around the world.
Once commissioned, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would connect Rusian’s gas supply to Europe via a pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Critics of the pipeline warn, however, that since the owner and operator of the gas pipeline is a subsidy from the Russian state gas company Gazprom, this would give the Kremlin a lever to use energy supplies as a weapon.
Also of concern is that Nord Stream 2 is bypassing existing pipelines through Ukraine, a financial transaction that Kiev is dependent on for both funds and gas supplies. Critics argue that excluding Ukraine from the gas supply chain is another way for the Kremlin to cripple the Kiev government.
“Nord Stream 2 is not being promoted by Putin’s Kremlin for commercial reasons, but rather to advance Moscow’s vicious geopolitical strategy in Europe,” said Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt, Postdoc at Harvard University and Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis: “In particular, the project is being promoted to bypass existing natural gas transit routes via Ukraine, a country against which Russia is currently at war and with another invasion threatens by gathering over 175,000 soldiers near the Ukrainian border. “
If Nord Stream 2 is allowed to go into operation, a loss of gas supplies through the Ukrainian system would harm Kiev’s economic and national security interests, Schmitt said.
The US has long resisted the construction of the pipeline, as have some Poles, Baltic citizens and other European countries that are aware of Russian aggression. Former President Donald Trump sanctioned the pipeline construction companies after a bipartisan push in Congress.
The sanctions frustrated US allies in Europe who depend on Russian gas. Biden took office in January, and as his administration realized that construction of the pipeline was almost complete, his administration decided to lift the sanctions as a gesture of goodwill towards Germany and other US allies with whom it is having relations with those below the Trump administration were frayed.
In recent weeks, the US has sounded the alarm that the Kremlin is preparing to invade Ukraine, Russia’s southern neighbor, in late January. Tensions are mounting between Russia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics that became independent states after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991.
Recent satellite imagery has shown that nearly 100,000 soldiers are stationed on Ukraine’s eastern, northern and southern borders.
Some analysts agree with the idea that sanctions should be imposed on the pipeline now rather than on condition of invasion.
“Given that a functioning Nord Stream 2 would remove Russia’s physical infrastructure dependence on the Ukrainian gas transport system, Nord Stream 2 would now be stopped a long way by imposing the various sanction packages that Congress has already passed three times on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis to change Putin’s calculation of another invasion, â€said Schmitt.
If the US and EU countries wait for Nord Stream 2 to be operational, “then a significant deterrent would be lost as the Kremlin has one less dependency on Ukraine to keep track of at that point,” he said.
Biden held a conference call with Putin on Tuesday to try to defuse the situation and warned the Kremlin chief that he would impose even harsher economic consequences on Russia should Moscow launch an attack on Ukraine.
Biden has ruled out sending US forces to Ukraine to deter Russia. The US continues to supply defensive weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, as well as military advisors to Ukraine.
Russia invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and then annexed it in retaliation for a street revolution in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, which ousted a Kremlin-friendly president and instituted a western-oriented government. Russia then instigated and supported an uprising in the eastern regions of Ukraine with both military and financial support in a military conflict in which more than 13,000 people were killed.
US officials say there is a plan to invade the Kremlin but believe Putin has not yet decided whether or not to execute him.
Putin assured Biden on the phone that he was not planning an attack, but blamed US and NATO forces for escalating tensions between Moscow and Ukraine by supplying military weapons and aid to Kiev.
At the center of the Russian-Ukrainian tension is Putin’s belief that Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union are inherently within Moscow’s sphere of influence. Putin believes that Western and US military aid in the region is interfering with Kremlin territory. Putin sees the eastward expansion of NATO and the partnership with Ukraine as a direct threat to Moscow.
Ukraine, like Russia, has been an independent country since 1991 when the former Soviet Union collapsed and new nations emerged in its vast empire. Since then, the United States has invested billions of dollars in development aid and now military aid to Ukraine as a sovereign nation entitled to choose its own alliances, including NATO.
The main actor in the agreement on a sanctions package with the heads of state and government of the European Union will be Germany, which recently elected a new government and chancellor. The Biden government will likely try to be a partner instead of dictating the terms of the sanctions with the new German leader, said Jeremi Suri.
“The last thing the US can do with a new German government that we want to work closely with is to try to harass it over its own energy supply,” said Suri.
Germans will likely only support capping the Nord Stream 2 deal if Putin attacks Ukraine, which means that “Ted Cruz could, in a strange way, get what he wants through war,” Suri said.
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