well there could be trouble between
germany and the united states
in the pipeline yet again the u.s house
of representatives on tuesday approved a
pentagon budget bill that also expands
sanctions against companies building the
german-russian nord stream 2 pipeline
the bill passed with an overwhelming
majority of both democrats and
republicans far exceeding the
two-thirds supermajority that would be
needed to override a presidential veto
the bill must now go to the u.s senate
where it is expected to easily
pass u.s opposition to the pipeline
goes back to president obama's second
term
president trump surprisingly agreed with
this foreign policy
position that he inherited from the
obama administration
now work on the pipeline stopped a year
ago under pressure from the u.s
but it's due to restart any day now
germany has rejected u.s calls for a
stop just as
it has rejected any notion of sanctions
yet as you've listened yet you know what
our position is on nordstream 2 and
possible sanctions
we reject them because we do not
consider extra territorial sanctions to
be compatible with international law
this has not changed
my next guest says that russia is trying
to sell nordstream 2
as a done deal which it is not i'm happy
to welcome benjamin schmidt
to the show benjamin served at the u.s
state department as a european energy
security advisor he's now a
research fellow at harvard university
benjamin it's good to have you back on
the program before we talk about
what's happening in washington and in
congress tell me
what you mean about russia trying to
convince the world that
there is no stopping of nordstream 2.
hi brent it's always a pleasure to be on
deutsche bella great to be back
well let's start with the situation at
hand right now today i just wrote a
piece for the center for european policy
analysis in washington this morning
um and i i i'm looking at this situation
as gas prom reprising
its december 2019 disinfo playbook
in order to make nordstrom 2 look
unstoppable with the intent of
dissuading passage of these targeted
congressional sanctions
after all if the project can't be
stopped why even bother passing them
well that's not true we've seen gas
prominence allies over the past few
weeks
uh state in the media that the project
is moving along a pace its
companies are fully committed in spite
of sanctions but just 24 hours after
some of those headlines came out
the biggest certifier for the pipeline
dnv
gl a major uh a technical provider that
would be needed for this project to be
completed
left the project and this was followed
by an announcement last week
that project construction would start in
german waters on december 5th last
saturday
uh but there's a little detail there
this is only 2.6 kilometers of the
pipeline
and it's at a shallow depth that's not
even targeted by the ndaa sanctions
so with all of that russian vessels uh
including fortuna and academic chersky
which have been reported on
have headed back uh to uh at least in
terms of the cherokee to kaliningrad in
russia
so benjamin are you saying then that
that's all propaganda that it's not true
that construction is is restarting
well one of the biggest stories was that
the cherokee the academic cherished
would be the main pipe layer and that
vessel
never even made it to german waters it
sat in the polish exclusive economic
zone over the weekend
well a lot of media reported on this and
then it headed back to russia
just uh just yesterday now the fortuna
is making some motion this morning in
the
uh outside of the port of vismar germany
but it hasn't
really started this uh this pipeline
that was supposed to start
several days ago now let me ask you
about the us opposition
to this project we know it dates back to
the obama administration
then vice president joe biden he was
vocal
with his opposition he is now about to
become president
congress stands with him do you think
all of this this monolith of opposition
is it going to be enough to ensure that
this pipeline never goes online
i think it is i mean i think this
project my uh my colleague
tom o'donnell uh spoke on euro news this
weekend and said the project was dead i
think it's close to dead
to be honest if if these pass and they
look like they will
um but you know let's let's just step
back for a second let's be thankful for
the opportunity that the end of the
trump administration has provided
to improve transatlantic ties especially
with berlin i've no doubt that the biden
team
will be committed on this front both uh
by man congress have been spoken i've
spoken out against trump's spurious
trade disputes and threats of pulling
troops out of germany in particular
but this is separate this is about uh
energy influence projection from
authoritarian nations we look at this
from a transatlantic security standpoint
that russia and china are using
technology and large-scale critical
infrastructure
to do things like elite capture we see
gerhard schroeder working for this in
germany
we see a number of other nations working
on uh you know this sort of front so we
need to stop this strategic corruption
well what what role does the change at
the white house play here i mean
will it be easier or more difficult for
german chancellor angela merkel to tell
a president joe biden
no i mean you know she's not running for
re-election next year so she has nothing
to lose here
and you know you and i have talked about
this before she has tried to separate
nordstream to business from geopolitics
well unfortunately the russians haven't
uh haven't separated their
state-owned enterprise projects like
nordstrom from their own geopolitics
when you and i last talked
it was in the wake of the navalny
poisoning and the position of berlin of
the government was to
to back off of this project should
russia not come through and actually
help on that well they certainly didn't
uh but yet we're having this
conversation just a few weeks later so
i really think that it is possible that
uh that murphy will make this sort of
pitch but i think there are bigger
things
uh that need to be fixed in the
transatlantic relationship that will be
easier
certainly under the bible administration
yeah and we've got
about a minute minute 15 this pipeline
we know that it bypasses
ukraine um if you were to take ukraine
out of the equation here
um european economies also are turning
to renewable energies but if you
put that together this pipeline it
really doesn't seem to be
that needed it's not as threatening as
it may be
it would have seemed five or even ten
years ago do you agree with that
i think that it's not needed because
it's not aimed at bringing new gas
to germany or points west only 9.9
billion cubic meters of that 55 billion
cubic meter project are built to do that
so it's not about this energy vendor
transition to
renewables that some project supporters
are trying to say
uh this is a massive hydrocarbon
properly and it's something that
deutsche um
the uh the the environmental ngo has
spoken out against
at length especially in the past few uh
few weeks
so this is something where we see
upstream in the russian federation
uh european space agency satellites
seeing
methane plumes from the the upstream in
the midstream
pipelines that feed uh projects like
nordstrom one and two so this is really
not about
uh you know climate change uh addressing
climate change in that respect
benjamin schmidt unfortunately we're out
of time always good to talk with you
and i think this this story will have
some longer legs on it than we thought
originally come back and talk with us
again good seeing you
sounds good anytime thanks so much brent
well the day's almost done the
conversation continues
online and remember no matter what
happens between now and then tomorrow is
another day we'll see you then everybody