“Time is running out here to get something done before the pipeline is completed,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a member of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, said on Thursday. “And I think we need to act very quickly.”
The pressure campaign escalated on Friday when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) put a hold on final confirmation of President Joe Biden’s CIA director nominee William Burns, delaying a quick vote, to pressure the Biden administration to impose additional sanctions.
“I’ll release my hold when the Biden admin meets its legal obligation to report and sanction the ships and companies building Putin’s pipeline,” Cruz wrote on Twitter Friday.
The dynamic on the Hill has put the White House in a diplomatic bind. The new administration’s overarching goal is to display a united front with Germany and the rest of Europe against Russian aggression. But Germany is eager to see the pipeline completed because it would offer a cheaper alternative for natural gas, meaning that the U.S. could anger a key ally if it proceeds with sanctions demanded by Congress.
“We very much want to restore our relationship with Germany after four years of abuse by the previous administration,” said a senior administration official. “But Congress is not budging. We are between a rock and a hard place.”
“A bad deal for Europe”
Biden himself has publicly called the pipeline a “bad deal for Europe,” and a sanctions package on the project is continuing to work its way through the interagency process, even if it is not as fast as some lawmakers want. Stopping Nord Stream 2 has long been a bipartisan priority, with members of Congress arguing that the pipeline’s completion would strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin at the expense of Ukraine and other U.S. allies.
In its final days, the Trump administration had been planning to go as far as to sanction German entities for their role in the project, former officials said. Those entities included Nord Stream’s German CEO Matthias Warnig and the German vessel Krebs Geo. But they ultimately never did it, instead sanctioning only the Russian pipe-laying vessel Fortuna and its owner KVT-RUS.
The State Department upheld those designations in a report to Congress last month, but did not go further — angering both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who say the administration is mandated by law to identify and sanction any and all entities involved in the pipeline’s construction, which now includes at least seven Russian vessels.
Shaheen and Cruz co-authored a provision in the annual defense bill that imposed sanctions on those involved in the pipeline’s construction. Shaheen also joined Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, in pressing Biden last month to fully implement that provision.
The State Department briefed Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers about the administration’s position on Nord Stream 2 last week and will again next week, according to a Senate aide. But staffers said they learned nothing new during the briefing, and senators themselves said they remain largely out of the loop.
You won’t like the Germans when they’re angry
Multiple current and former officials said that at the heart of the issue is how to stop the pipeline without souring relations with Germany. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to rebuild Washington’s relationship with Berlin after four years of neglect and scorn by former President Donald Trump’s administration. The relationship deteriorated so much under Trump that German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously said in 2018 that Europe could no longer rely on the U.S. and “must take its destiny in its own hands.”
The National Security Council’s Europe director Amanda Sloat has also cautioned internally against moving too quickly on additional Nord Stream sanctions as the administration works to repair the U.S. relationship with Germany,…
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