now proponents of the nordstrom 2 gas
pipeline between germany and russia hope
that
joe biden will make life easier for them
but they could be mistaken
now the u.s opposes the 1200 kilometer
pipeline and
it's threatened to impose sanctions on
companies involved in the project which
is
nearly finished washington says
nordstrom 2 will make europe more
dependent on russian gas deliveries
and it will allow russia to cut off
supplies to countries
like ukraine biden's team has already
spoken out against
the project saying president biden will
seek to strengthen europe's energy
independence but
he will continue to impose or oppose
nordstrom 2
as a fundamentally bad deal for europe
well for more let's bring in
benjamin schmidt he's a former european
energy security advisor at the us
department of state
and he's a postdoctorate fellow at
harvard university good to have you
with us on this program so please uh can
you explain to us
why is washington so worried about
europe's uh
energy security well good early morning
monica it's great to be on deutsche well
as always
uh i'm glad that you had the belt road
initiative from china as a as a lead
into this story because really
there's a lot of synergies between what
what uh russia does with vis-a-vis
energy
uh infrastructure deals like nordstrom 2
uh and
what china is doing with critical
infrastructure around the world it's not
debt trap diplomacy when it comes to
moscow
but it is influence projection and the
us is indeed concerned with europe's
energy security because it's fundamental
to the national security of our closest
allies this speaks directly to those
concerns
uh with nordstrom 2 since it if it was
completed it would hurt both the
economic and strategic stability of
ukraine
it flies in the face of the european
energy union's own concept on
diversification away from russian energy
resources and i think more concerning in
the past few years has been the fact
that it
provides a platform for russian malign
influence strategic corruption and elite
capture across the west
um and the truth of the matter is it's
not just the concerns from the united
states but many others across the
european continent not just poland and
ukraine but the united kingdom canada
sweden and denmark
have also spoken out and of course also
within the united states
also also within the eu there are sort
of different
views on that uh granted nevertheless it
is somewhat weird
that one big nation tells a whole block
of 27 member states uh what to do i mean
how would washington react if the u
turned round and say listen guys we
don't like the way you do fracking or
or look for oil in alaska how would that
go down
i mean i think there is a lot of a lot
of concerns with the way that we do
fracking and look for oil in alaska
those are those are legitimate those are
things that we should be talking about
um but when it comes to nordstrom 2
there's really national security
concerns that are fundamental to both
the
uh the the u.s and across the eu
and many in washington continue to hope
that berlin will ultimately just reject
nordstrom 2 on these grounds
because the last time i was on deutsche
bella what we were talking about just a
few weeks ago
was that germany itself was on the
precipice of of rejecting the project
because of the kremlin option
opposition leader navalny's poisoning
right uh i mean
i know there was a lot of a lot of
debate here but so far berlin is holding
on
to the north stream to uh pipeline
project
uh and just briefly if you would i mean
how does this vote for
uh well hopefully new relations between
europe between germany and the united
states
under a biden administration
that's a great question first of all we
have to remember that opposition to
nordstrom 2 is bipartisan
uh it's it's not tied to mr trump has
been uh
been the case of uh of a lot of
nordstrom two proponents trying to make
this a a trump
issue a guilt by association issue of
course uh the detrimental
policies of mr trump including the
withdrawal of troop station in germany
uh trade uh proposals that were damaging
those all i believe will go away because
uh they've been very unpopular among
leaders of both parties in washington
um but when it comes to nordstrom 2 at
its core it's a national security issue
okay uh well thank you so much benjamin
schmidt and as you mentioned earlier
uh for you it is a very very early
morning a very early start to the day so
thank you
for making time for us benjamin schmidt
the post-doctoral fellow at harvard
university former european energy
security advisor
at the us department of state thank you
you