US to negotiate end to Nordstream 2 sanctions; Americans face ‘sanction fatigue’

The US is signaling that it is ready to end sanctions on the Nordstream 2 pipeline, according to a report published by German newspaper Handelsblatt. 

Under US President Joe Biden,  the administration has asked the German side to submit a proposal that takes their concerns about Nord Stream 2 into account.

“The Germans have to put a package solution on the table,” said a US official involved in the internal talks to the “Handelsblatt” (Tuesday edition). “Otherwise we will not be able to get the Nord Stream 2 topic out of the way.” The ideas of the USA are aimed at minimizing the feared geopolitical consequential damage to the pipeline.

Washington wants to prevent Europe’s dependency on energy supplies from Russia from growing and Ukraine from being decoupled from the European gas infrastructure, according to the report.

A proposal to provide Nord Stream 2 with a shutdown mechanism is of interest to the US government. This would interrupt gas deliveries through the Nord Stream pipeline if Moscow tries to put Ukraine under pressure by throttling gas supplies. The US is also calling for the agreement that regulates the transit of Russian natural gas through Ukraine’s pipeline system to be renegotiated.

Another suggestion: Germany should help Ukraine expand its gas infrastructure for the transport of hydrogen. The federal government has so far held back with specific offers. In government circles it was said that the Americans had been accommodated very far in recent years and that the scope for negotiation was therefore limited. Foreign Minister Niels Annen (SPD) spoke out in favor of approaching the United States: “We previously had an administration in Washington that was not interested in reaching an agreement,” he said.

“If there is a willingness to speak, it is a political opportunity that we should seize.”

A  report in the New York Times also suggests that Washington is suffering from “sanctions fatigue”.  There are still four bills for Russian sanctions on the table in the US House of Representatives. But these bills have not been brought forward.

“We have fallen into this trap that sanctions are the easy answer to every problem,” Ivo H. Daalder, the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization under President Barack Obama, noted on Wednesday. “They demonstrate that you care, and they impose some price, though usually not sufficient to change behavior.’’