Opinion: Why not Kiss the Russian Bear Goodbye?

Although it may not be appealing to consider kissing a bear goodbye, especially a Russian bear, it is surely necessary now, as Vladimir Putin presses a war of conquest in Ukraine. His full scale attack on a sovereign nation is something we had hoped to avoid after utterly defeating the naked aggression of the Germans and Japanese during the Second World War.

While the present butchery is far from our shores and involves a country that is not a NATO ally, we remember well that Adolph Hitler started slowly, annexing Austria, obtaining the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the Munich Conference in 1938, and then sending his Wehrmacht into Poland. All of this is eerily similar to the situation today. Putin has maniacal tendencies like Hitler. He may call himself the President of Russia, but he is behaving like a Russian Czar, a Communist Dictator, or a fanatical German Chancellor.

Putin has amassed a personal fortune that reportedly exceeds any of his predecessors. This has occurred at the expense of the Russian people. The present Russian government is described as a kleptocracy. Putin can never retire, because any successor would surely bring him to trial for crimes against Russia. At 69, he is getting old enough that he may not be able to rule much longer. His recent appearances suggest that he has become sullen and unable to control his temper.

But how do we stop him in the near term? The answer is that we cannot, without using substantial military power. As of the early days of this conflict, the Ukrainians seem to be doing a fine job of slowing the Russian advance and making them pay a substantial price for attempting to subjugate Ukraine.

Putin is like the Energizer Bunny. You have to let his battery run out of juice. His battery is not as strong as he pretends and is running on Western cash, derived from Russia’s oil exports. We encouraged those in the hope that Russia would prosper and become a valuable partner among the nations of the world. But dictatorships are about one person and not about the people they rule.

The best choice we have is to immediately halt ALL purchases of Russian energy. That will be relatively easy for us, because the United States buys relatively small amounts of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and crude oil from them. Those purchases are more for convenience than necessity. Western Europe is far more dependent and will have to surrender some of their climate hysteria, if they do not want to surrender to the Russians. Climate hysteria has led them to make many bad energy decisions.

Germany has enough installed wind and solar to theoretically run their country. The problem is that German engineering is not what it is supposed to be. Renewables are intermittent and only work when the sun is shining or the wind blowing. That occurs, at best, one third of the time. Germany uses quick-start (but low efficiency) natural gas-driven power plants to make up the difference. Guess where they get their natural gas?

The Germans have made a pact with the devil, and the devil is collecting on the bargain. Furthermore, Germany will eventually come to realize that the climate gods are angry with them for emitting more carbon dioxide with their renewable schemes than they would with natural gas alone. High efficiency dual-cycle gas turbine power plants are twice as efficient as the quick-start plants. German engineers should have recognized the folly of renewables. How could they be so stupid?

But the stupidity does not stop there. Why did Germany shutdown all of its nuclear power plants? The nuclear power disaster at Fukushima, Japan was hardly applicable to German plants. No tidal waves will ever float away the diesel fuel tanks necessary to run water pumps for emergency reactor cooling in Germany.

And what about Germany’s traditional source of energy that they used during the Second World War? They produced most of their gasoline and diesel from coal during the war. Germany has plenty of coal to run coal-fired power plants. And they were returning to coal for producing electricity, even before Russia invaded Ukraine. But for some reason, they have been buying their coal from Russia. It is hard to fathom how stupid they have been.

While Germany and other European nations have backed themselves into a corner, there are ways for them to escape the grip of the Russian bear. They should promptly restart every coal-fired power plant that they have and fuel it with non-Russian coal. If they have to buy coal from distant countries like the United States or Australia at greater cost, that is far preferable to sending any more money to Putin to wage wars of aggression.

As for oil, Europe has some local resources that are currently available, for instance in Norway. Norway was smart enough to avoid halting their production when a Socialist came to power and started spouting the green nonsense. Norwegians appreciate the creature comforts that a robust oil industry brings.

Additional oil will likely be available as Russia tries to sell its oil and gas to China, and China reduces its purchases from the Middle East and elsewhere. In other words, the fossil fuel industry will adjust, and Western nations will be able to do business with friendly suppliers.

President Biden can help the process of kissing the Russian bear goodbye by allowing the American oil industry to prosper as it did during the Trump administration. He should allow us to return to being the world’s largest producer of oil, natural gas, and coal, larger than Saudi Arabia or Russia.

Biden must stop canceling or regulating oil and natural gas pipelines out of existence, as he did with Keystone pipeline which was to carry crude oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada to US refineries. He should reverse the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to halt East Coast natural gas pipelines that could carry our ample gas supplies to domestic users and to LNG export terminals. That was a party-line vote to apply crippling regulations.

Biden should also remove the roadblocks he erected to stop leasing of federal lands for energy production. And he should immediately meet with oil executives to figure out the best way to move our oil production into high gear. Sending John Kerry out to remind everyone about Global Warming was the sort of absurdity that must have given the Russian bear a good laugh. Is the Biden Administration really that stupid?

We should never forget our friends in Europe, even if they have made incredibly bad decisions to cozy up to the Russian bear.

Europe can purchase our natural gas in the short term, until they develop substantial supplies of their own. The United Kingdom has large reserves that can be easily recovered with American fracking technology. And they have taken the first steps toward declaring natural gas a ‘clean fuel.’ But Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have to stop listening to the green nonsense from his latest wife.

While Germany has plenty of coal, she needs the natural gas that Poland could easily develop, if allowed to do so by the European Union. There are other large gas fields that could be exploited across Europe. Exploiting them would bring Europe closer together and perhaps even energy independent.

President Biden should also stop blocking the proposed EastMed pipeline that could carry natural gas from a large gas field that Israel discovered off her Mediterranean coast to Southern Europe through Cyprus and Greece. And a central European pipeline, designed to carry natural gas from LNG import terminals in Spain to central Europe should move ahead.

The Western world can easily live without Russian energy. That is the most important non-lethal way of discouraging Russian aggression. Our petrodollars should not be used by Russia to attack countries in Eastern Europe, threaten us with nuclear war, and hold the world hostage over energy. We do not need any more wars with lunatics, who may consider themselves ten feet tall but are far from it.

Let’s kiss Vladimir Putin ‘Goodbye,’ just as his wife, Lyudmila, did in 2014!

It is time to put a “Tiger in your Tank,’ not a Russian bear.

Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He previously worked on strategic war studies for the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency and holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.