WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th August, 2021) US President Joe Biden slapped new sanctions on Russia over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in order to satisfy Republican senators who were blocking some of his administration's appointments, analysts told Sputnik.
On Friday, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on two Russian companies and two vessels over their involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. The move comes after the US and Germany on July 21 published a deal in which Washington agreed to withhold sanctions to allow for the completion of the pipeline. However, the US also reserved the right to impose sanctions if it deemed it necessary, but that was supposed to be related to Russia's activities vis-à-vis Ukraine.
The Nord Stream 2 project, which is 99 percent completed, provides for the construction of a 745-mile offshore twin pipeline aimed to supply up to 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas per year from Russia directly to Germany. Ukraine and several eastern European states have called on the European Union to abandon the project, citing the bloc's perceived energy over-dependence on Moscow.
Meanwhile, Russia has insisted that the Nord Stream 2 is an entirely commercial undertaking, urging critics to stop politicizing the project.
Republican senators led by Ted Cruz recently vowed to block Biden's appointments for a number of positions unless he reversed his decision on Nord Stream 2.
"This move by Biden appears an effort to mollify the Republicans in Congress," Global Policy Institute President Professor Paolo von Schirach, a former consultant to the European Union and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told Sputnik. "This is only a gesture for domestic political consumption... the new sanctions just imposed by the Biden administration will not stop the almost completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline."
Schirach, who also holds the Chair in Political Science and International Relations at Bay Atlantic University, said Biden's decision earlier to waive the main part of the sanctions was in essence "a Washington green light on the entire project" and a good will gesture towards Germany.
Many Republicans in the Senate seem to be determined to force Biden "to do something," he added, hence why the administration felt the need to assuage them.
Financial analyst and former merchant banker Martin Hutchinson said the new measures would do nothing to significantly delay, let alone prevent the completion and activation of Nord Stream 2.
"[That] horse left the barn at least a year ago and is now miles away. [Failing to] stop Nord Stream... was an Obama administration failure," Hutchinson told Sputnik.
Moreover, the US government had no credible grounds for trying to prevent the completion of the Nord Stream project, Hutchison pointed out.
"There is really no moral validity in imposing sanctions on people building a pipeline on a willing buyer-willing seller basis with Germany. Sanctions ...were perhaps appropriate when the pipeline was started, but not now," he said.
Political commentator Professor John Walsh suggested that Biden also appeared in part motivated by a desire to strike out economically against Russia, even though the announced sanctions could not have any significant impact.
"It appears that the object is to damage Russia without angering Germany, that is let the pipeline go ahead to keep the Germans happy and place sanctions on Russia of a sort that will not stop the pipeline," Walsh told Sputnik.
The sanctions would also be popular among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress who had long supported such irresponsible and polarizing moves against other nations around the world, Walsh observed.
