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President Biden took to the East Room to announce a series of sanctions against Russia, as punishment for its “minor incursion” into two provinces of eastern Ukraine. From the gravity in his voice, he must have assumed Vladimir Putin would be in the Kremlin, quaking in his boots. I doubt President Putin even bothered to shrug his shoulders.
Putin’s power grab in eastern Ukraine is a done deal, a repeat of his rapid occupation and annexation of Crimea after the Sochi Olympics in 2014. What do these two power grabs have in common? Joe Biden, obviously. He was vice president for the first, and president for the second.
But they have something else in common – high energy prices. In 2014 oil was about $100 a barrel, just like today.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE CRISIS – IT’S TIME FOR BIDEN TO SURPRISE PUTIN
Russia’s main export is energy resources. Nobody buys Russian watches or computers or cars. Just about everybody buys Russian oil and gas. When energy prices are high, Russia is flush with cash, and emboldened to do ambitious things.
Putin understood this decades ago. In the early 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Putin left the KGB and went to graduate school. With an eye to politics, he used his dissertation to outline how to rebuild Russia through energy exports. He advocated taking oil and gas companies away from the oligarchs and bringing them under centra government control.
After investing in infrastructure, and building pipelines, Russia could export gas and oil, especially to Europe. Russia could use the revenues to rebuild its central government and military. Europe’s energy dependency would give Putin with political and economic leverage over his customers.
Putin was prepared to play the long game, and he has finally seen his efforts pay off.
What he didn’t anticipate was America’s shale oil and gas technology revolution. Nor did he anticipate a businessman like Donald Trump…
Source : foxnews
