he story of how the Biden administration crippled American energy production is well known, as are the disastrous consequences of those actions. Yet those same energy policies have also played a critical, albeit much less known, role in advancing the president’s foreign policy.
That same approach to energy policy has also focused, from Day One as well, on elevating America’s traditional enemies and undermining our traditional allies. In spring 2021, the Biden administration waived congressional sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline at the behest of Germany, which said it needed Russian natural gas to keep the lights on. Those waivers became politically impossible to sustain after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, but at the same time, expectations were sky-high that another Iran deal was about to be announced.
In the Mediterranean, the Biden administration has managed to strong-arm a pliant lame-duck government in Israel, weeks before a general election, to forfeit its claim to an entire piece of territory that had been claimed by Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon — the justification being, of course, that nothing is more critical than immediately starting fossil fuel production.