Russia’s new energy deal with China undoes the Kissinger-Nixon achievement.
Charles Krauthammer
National Review Online
5/22/2014
On Wednesday, it finally happened — the pivot to Asia. No, not the United States. It was Russia that turned East.
In Shanghai, Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping signed a spectacular energy deal — $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported to China over 30 years.
This is huge. By indelibly linking producer and consumer — the pipeline alone is a $70 billion infrastructure project — it deflates the post-Ukraine Western threat (mostly empty, but still very loud) to cut European imports of Russian gas. Putin has just defiantly demonstrated that he has other places to go.
The Russia-China deal also makes a mockery of U.S. boasts to have isolated Russia because of Ukraine. Not even Germany wants to risk a serious rupture with Russia (hence the absence of significant sanctions). And now Putin has just ostentatiously unveiled a signal 30-year energy partnership with the world’s second-largest economy. Some isolation…
…Decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice, Obama’s choice. And it’s the one area where he is succeeding splendidly.
The complete article is at National Review Online.
