That is the interesting idea being floated by commentators looking for ways to halt Russia\u2019s military adventurism in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
If direct military intervention is off the table \u2013 and at this point it\u2019s hard to imagine the Obama administration going that route \u2013 then exporting America\u2019s vast new reservoir of liquefied natural gas to Europe could be a way to deter Russian aggression in the region while at the same time strengthening our allies.<\/p>\n
Gazprom, a huge state-controlled gas provider in Russia, supplies much of Europe. Hesitancy on the part of some European governments to respond to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is tied to Russia\u2019s use of Gazprom to raise prices or restrict access when confronted with political situations it does not like. Increasing United States exports of its natural gas stock to Europe would diminish this threat substantially<\/a>, allowing America\u2019s European allies to take a more assertive stance against further Russian force.<\/p>\n In order to wean Europe off of Russian gas, President Barack Obama \u201cshould order the Energy Department to expedite authorization for roughly 25 liquefied natural gas export facilities. Demand all decisions within six weeks. And express major U.S. support for a southern-route pipeline to export Caspian Sea gas to Europe without traversing Russia or Ukraine,\u201d writes Charles Krauthammer<\/a>.<\/p>\n This solution puts an abundant natural resource to work for America\u2019s national security interests, and also increases the number of domestic production and manufacturing jobs. The only hitch is that it requires President Obama to commit his administration to an energy policy opposed by liberal environmentalists. That alone probably dooms an otherwise win-win alternative to direct military intervention or sitting pat while Russia reconstitutes the Soviet Union. If so, it\u2019s more confirmation that current Oval Office decisions are based more on pleasing special interest groups than helping domestic workers or our foreign allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That is the interesting idea being floated by commentators looking for ways to halt Russia\u2019s military adventurism in Ukraine. If direct military intervention is off the table \u2013 and at this point it\u2019s hard to imagine the Obama administration going that route \u2013 then exporting America\u2019s vast new reservoir of liquefied natural gas to Europe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,590,27,731,2514,24,4296,141,408],"class_list":["post-20322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-economy","tag-europe","tag-jobs","tag-national-security","tag-natural-gas","tag-obama","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20322"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20328,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20322\/revisions\/20328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}