Springtime for Vladimir Putin. What a hoot it must be for the world’s most audacious thug to operate at a time when the US can’t even impose a time-out on the Russian leader’s map-altering ambitions?
No, the best President Obama could do this past week was come up with a list of 21 Putin playmates who will face “sanctions” on some of their dollar-denominated holdings.
Putin’s reaction? He sanctioned the likes of John Boenher, effectively precluding any plans the House speaker has to work on his tan on a Black Sea beach this summer. It was a mocking response to another feckless action from the White House.
For while the president was off fundraising in Florida, Putin crony and Cabinet member Igor Sechin (who also happens to be the chairman of Rosneft, now the world’s largest oil company) was telling reporters that Russia was moving its energy axis to the east.
Speaking from Japan, where Rosneft inked a multibillion-dollar pipeline and exploration deal with Mitsui in February, Sechin gloated that sanctions were useless and that Russia was about to sign a huge natural-gas supply deal with China when Putin visits that country in May, uniting the world’s biggest supplier and consumer of natural gas.
So while the president continues to dither over the Keystone pipeline, Russia and China will be going forward with the Power of Siberia, a 2,500-mile pipeline that will offer Russia four entry points into the massive Chinese market.
Once that’s up and running, Western Europe will have significantly less leverage in negotiating with the Russians on gas prices. Checkmate.
It’s exactly the message Putin wants to send, especially to the former Soviet republics: namely, that while the European Union may seem enticing, the commodity-driven power is shifting from the West, and eventually so will political and consumer power.
The more Russia can monetize its vast energy resources away from the West, the weaker the dollar’s status as a reserve currency.
It’s time for the US to go on the offensive as Putin has and use our powerful energy resources to beat the Russian president at his own game.