Obama Could Use Natural Gas To Cripple Putin

by JASmius

Wow, I should really rethink that headline, given O's affinity for chili half-smokes.

Think of it more like what Charles Xavier said to Erik Lensherr as he was attempting to leave the CIA facility in X-Men First Class: "I won't stop you, Erik; I could....but I won't":

The United States could cripple Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin if it started to export natural gas to Europe at a better price than what Russia is charging, says foreign policy expert Herb London.

"If you were President Obama looking at this situation seriously, you would say, 'you know what, we're going to start exporting natural gas at a price lower than what the Russians are presently charging,'" London told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on Newsmax TV Wednesday."

We can bring Putin to his knees on the natural gas question, and that is something that has to be given consideration," he said.

We've got more natural gas than the Russians do.  Heck, we've got more natural gas than we know what to do with.  And you know what?  It's clean energy.  We should be supplying the Euros with it anyway, just on general principles and a healthy level of greed.  But here it serves a strategic purpose as well as a means of applying genuine, real world coercive pressure on Vladimir Putin to get his proxies the hell out of Ukraine and retreat to the status quo ante.

Or at least, it could have four months ago.  Doing so now might have the same affect on the Russians as embargoing oil exports to Imperial Japan did in 1941....



....or not.  But that's the excuse you can count on Barack Obama offering up if it comes to that point.  It'd certainly sound better than his usual, tiresome greenstremist "fossil fuels are icky" boilerplate.