Current US policy, to the extent that we have policy today, is a whole other matter.
About 25% of Germany’s primary energy are produced from gas, of which about 40% come from Russia (down from about 50% in 1995).[1]
The US sanctions against the Nord Stream project are seen by a number of Germans as a rather clumsy attempt to push the sale of their expensive liquified natural gas, which to a high degree is produced by hydraulic fracking.[2]
1) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...
2) https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?tl=en&u=...
They were in favor of sanctions against lots of countries, usually because of human rights abuses. I currently can't access their archives, but I am quite sure they were calling for sanctions on Germany as early as 1933.
Doubly so if you own the ships too.
They can't directly confront Germany, but the US can, and it is doing so rightly. The project comprises the long term security of the Nato block, and the said countries have a major distrust towards Russia as it has they have suffered a lot under thier imposed communist regimes.
For a bunch of smart people, HN veers too much into hands off 'libertarian' side of things. US lets its hands off in the region, it will slowly be transformed again into a basket case of 'kleptocratic' countries in the way Russia is today.
---- The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia––all highly dependent on Russian gas––signed a petition against Nord Stream 2 in March 2016, highlighting the risks for energy security in Central and Eastern Europe.
Italy is in a similar bind. In 2015, Italy accused the EU Commission of applying double-standards when the Commission did not reject the Nord Stream 2 project, as it did with the South Stream––a project which would have benefited Italy’s role as energy hub in the Mediterranean. For this reason, Italy complained about Germany’s influence in the EU Commission and called for equal treatment.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/04/22/n...
but if you can pick up the penny(-wise) now, and let somebody else pick up the pound(-foolish), you make bank and leave before the going gets tough.
That has nothing to do with their objections to the pipeline, to the contrary.
Can you give actual examples of this friendliness? I see it cited very often but I don't know any concrete example. I know Trump has imposed new sanctions on Russia last September, that is sanctioning European companies for the Russia pipeline, and that he's doing anything that he can to destabilise Iran, which is supported by Russia. So it doesn't seem that friendly to me.
Maybe you should have asked for 100, or 1000. I can probably come close to 100 though.
PolitiFact explains well the context in this article:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jan...
"most experts we spoke to said this is a case of the Trump administration’s clumsiness, not coziness.
Back in April, when the sanctions hit the aluminum giant Rusal, it sent shockwaves through the global aluminum markets. The price of aluminum soared over the following weeks. Europe, which relies heavily on Russia’s metals market, faced the prospect of plant closures and lost jobs. Even now, the European Union strongly supports the lifting of sanctions."
"according to experts, the Treasury discovered it had bitten off more than it could chew.
"They were done clumsily," Alina Polyakova, of the Brookings Institution, said of the sanctions. "It seems clear that the administration did not plan for the dramatic effects on aluminum markets and the knock-on effects on European businesses.""
So the only example you came up with in fact says nothing of the presumed friendliness of Trump towards Russia. Next one.
This "friendly" policy is basically not considering what Russia does within its borders justification for military action. This was always the unofficial policy, with the new bit being the Trump administration doesn't pass moral judgement on what Russia does within its borders.
A pipeline between germany and Russia strengthens Russia (increased GDP, increased control over the EU) and weakens the EU (which is full of countries that have proven they cannot defend themselves). Increasing the chance of war with Russia, and creating another mess for the US to clean up.
Seems pretty consistent foreign policy to me.
This doesn't really treat with the dollar-denominated world economy but I wanted to point this out to differentiate the current irrational foreign policy of the US government from the subject at hand.