Over the last several months, a series of retaliations—some European states refusing to pay for gas in rubles, various closures by Poland and Ukraine of the pipeline network—have been paired with Russian reductions (from 40 percent to 20 percent to 0 percent) of the Nord Stream I pipeline. In the summer, the drama entailed a dispute over gas turbines for the pipeline, stuck in Canada because of the sanctions, then sent to Siemens Germany, then rejected by the Russians because E.U. sanctions made the transaction illegal.

Because each side said the other was lying, it was difficult to ferret out the truth. Were the Europeans refusing to buy? Or were the Russians refusing to sell? If the former, the Europeans were weaponizing the energy trade. If the latter, the Russians were doing so.  

It has been difficult to tell which was which, but one thing is clear. Both sides are far more intent on assigning blame for the impending catastrophe than seeking an accommodation that would avoid it.

With the pipeline network facing obstacles, the obvious test for this great question—who is refusing to do what?—is the status of the Nord Stream II pipeline. Built side by side with Nord Stream I on the floor of the Baltic Sea, it apparently remains ready for service. Germany canceled its opening in February in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For now, buying Russian gas through Nord Stream II seems off the table in Germany. According to German Foreign Minister Annalene Baerbock, German voters must sacrifice for Ukraine. This and other statements suggest that Europe is refusing to buy.

If the Europeans were willing to buy, would the Russians be willing to sell? At the beginning of the crisis, when the West was proclaiming it would refuse to buy, the Western assumption was that the Russians had to sell and would sell, as their “gas-station” of an economy depended on it. Then in late spring the answer from Russia became “yes, but you have to pay in rubles.” Some European states did; some didn’t; only the latter had their gas shut off. Russian president Vladimir Putin insisted in the summer that Gazprom would honor all its contracts and blamed the Europeans for the impasse. Now the Russian answer teeters on “no, never.” Putin on September 6 said that Russia remains willing to sell and portrayed the stoppages as a wound the West has inflicted on itself, but two days previously Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and resident Kremlin hawk, wrote that Germany had declared itself an enemy to Russia. No gas? Too bad.

Germany, now looking at imminent immiseration, has long been the paymaster of the E.U. One wonders how the E.U. can function when Germany’s vast manufacturing, chemical, and industrial complex, dependent on cheap Russian gas, is forced into closure or sharp curtailment. German largesse, funneled through the E.U., has facilitated many an internal E.U. agreement over the years. What happens to the E.U. when Germany becomes the beggar?  

Luuk Middelaar, the grand theorist of the European Union, has noted that peace, prosperity, and power have been the three main goals of the European project. The European Union, to be sure, was never a “power project” in the military sense. The armed forces of its member states have been entirely subordinated to NATO. But the economic sanctions imposed on Russia vastly enlarges the EU’s claim to be a power project. The sanctions are on course to gravely imperil the E.U.’s status as a prosperity project. Its status as a peace project may not be far behind. These sanctions effectively represent a new purpose, unlike anything the E.U. has sought in the past. They introduce strong centrifugal forces into the Union.

To get the gas flowing would require a reversal in signal respects of the West’s sanctions campaign. Though desirable, there is no evidence that such a volte-face is in contemplation by any of the major states. On the contrary, the United States has succeeded in lining up the support of the G-7 for its plan to get Russian oil onto the market and simultaneously cap the price Russia gets for it. This plan, the apparent brainchild of Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, is a contradiction masquerading as a policy, a hare-brained scheme that cannot possibly work. It requires the cooperation not only of Russia but of a host of other states, led by China, India, and Turkey. These buyers have all made it clear that their energy policy is not going to be dictated by the West or by the threat of Western sanctions. The Russians have dismissed the plan as ridiculous: “We will simply stop supplying crude and fuels to countries that introduce a price cap.”

If the West goes ahead with the Yellen Plan, and Russia refuses to play along, what then? The logical outcome, absent a grave turndown in the global economy, is severe upward pressure on energy prices. Coming in December is the promised implementation of the Yellen Plan, similar attempts by the E.U. to either embargo or cap energy prices paid to Russia, and the cessation of the million-barrel-a-day release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Biden administration’s main plan for avoiding a price spiral is to force the Russians to eat crow. It delusively believes it holds the cards in this showdown. It doesn’t.

In the law of war, civilian immunity has long been held as a desirable principle. Indeed, the U.S. armed forces take it as a point of pride that, by law, they must observe the targeting rules that seek to secure that outcome. In economic warfare, however, these barriers to civilian harm have been breached on numerous occasions. With hardly any domestic recriminations, the United States follows policies in Afghanistan, Syria, and Venezuela which starve the population; the same indifference to civilian suffering attends the total economic and financial war against Russia. Usually, the objection to such measures is the harm inflicted on innocents in foreign countries; in the instant case, harm to the West’s own citizens has also emerged as a clear and present danger.

Proposals to limit the impact of war on civilians was part of the first breath of American diplomacy. In 1783, Benjamin Franklin sought to improve the law of nations by securing agreements to prohibit “the plundering of unarmed and usefully employed people.” In 1785, Franklin, together with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, representing the United States abroad, signed a treaty with Frederick the Great of Prussia intending to introduce as customary practice far-reaching restrictions on military targeting of civilians in war.

Adams was “charmed to find the King do us the honor to agree to the platonic philosophy of some of our articles, which are at least a good lesson to mankind, and will derive more influence from a treaty ratified by the King of Prussia, than from the writings of Plato or Sir Thomas More.” These diplomats were appalled that farmers and fishermen, traders and mechanics, scholars and housewives, should invariably be caught up in war’s destructiveness. The United States was once closely associated with this principle. Today’s policymakers, however, have no pangs of conscience in sweeping innumerable innocents into the web of its sanctions. It’s how things are done in our progressive new century.

Even if it is conceded that the sanctions war is just, it does not follow that it is prudent. On the contrary, the consequences of the West’s course are manifestly inconsistent with the public good and entail the high risk of losing more than is gained. The sanctions only make sense on the idea that they are a necessary and effective means of forcing the Russians out of Ukraine, when their real ability to do so is nil. This would be so even if the sanctions were biting Russia to the point of destitution, which they are not. But Western policymakers think otherwise, or say they do. That suggests the light at the end of the tunnel is an incoming train.

David Hendrickson is president of the John Quincy Adams Society and professor emeritus of political science at Colorado College.

In this back-and-forth, the West keeps stepping up the rhetoric. Putin is accused of using a mix of blackmail and economic terror against Europe. His actions supposedly prove once more that he is a monster who cannot be negotiated with, and a threat to world peace.

Denying fuel to Europe as winter approaches, in a bid to weaken the resolve of European states to support Kyiv and alienate European publics from their leaders, is Putin’s opening gambit in a plot to expand his territorial ambitions from Ukraine to the rest of Europe.

Or so runs the all-too-familiar narrative shared by western politicians and media.

In fact, Europe’s arrogant, self-righteous posturing over Russian gas supplies, divorced from any discernible geopolitical reality, reflects precisely the same foolhardy mindset that helped provoke Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in the first place.

It is also the reason why there has been no exit ramp – a path to negotiations – even as Russia has taken vast swaths of Ukraine’s eastern and southern flanks – territory that cannot be reclaimed without a further massive loss of life on both sides, as the limited Ukrainian assault around Kharkiv has highlighted.

The western media has to carry a major share of the blame for these serial failures of diplomacy. Journalists have amplified only too loudly and uncritically what US and European leaders want their publics to believe is going on. But maybe it is time that Europeans heard a little of how things might look to Russian eyes.

Economic war

The media could start by dropping their indignation at “insolent” Moscow for refusing to supply Europe with gas. After all, Moscow has been only too clear about the reason for the shutdown of gas supplies: it is in retaliation for the West imposing economic sanctions – a form of collective punishment on the wider Russian population that risks violating the laws of war. 

The West is well practised in waging economic war on weak states, usually in a futile attempt to topple leaders they don’t like or as a softening-up exercise before it sends in troops or proxies.

Iran has faced decades of sanctions that have inflicted a devastating toll on its economy and population but done nothing to bring down the government.

Meanwhile, Washington is waging what amounts to its own form of economic terrorism on the Afghan people to punish the ruling Taliban for driving out US occupation forces last year in a humiliating fashion. The United Nations reported last month that sanctions had contributed to the risk of more than a million Afghan children dying from starvation.

There is nothing virtuous about the current economic sanctions on Russia either, any more than there is about the blackballing of Russian sportspeople and cultural icons. The sanctions are not intended to push Putin to the negotiating table. As US President Biden made clear in March, the West is planning for a long war and he wants to see Putin removed from power. 

Rather, the goal has been to weaken his authority and – in some fantasy scenario – encourage his subordinates to turn on him. The West’s game plan – if it can be dignified with that term – is to force Putin to over-extend Russian forces in Ukraine by flooding the battlefield with armaments, and then watch his government collapse under the weight of popular discontent at home.

But in practice, the reverse has been happening, just as it did through the 1990s when the West imposed sanctions on Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Putin’s position has been bolstered, as it will continue to be whether Russia is triumphing or losing on the battlefield. 

The West’s economic sanctions against Russia have been doubly foolish. They have reinforced Putin’s message that the West seeks to destroy Russia, just as it previously did Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. A strongman is all that stands between an independent Russia and servitude, Putin can plausibly argue.

And at the same time, the sanctions have demonstrated to Russians how truly artful their leader is. Economic pressure from the West has largely backfired: sanctions have barely made an impression on the value of the rouble, while Europe looks to be heading into recession as Putin turns off the gas spigot.

It will doubtless not only be Russians quietly rejoicing at seeing the West get a dose of the medicine it so regularly force-feeds others.

Western conceit

But there is a more troubling dimension to the West’s conceit. It was the same high-handed belief that the West would face no consequences for waging economic warfare on Russia, just as earlier assumed it would be pain-free for Nato to station missiles on Moscow’s doorstep. (Presumably, the effect on Ukrainians was not factored into the calculations.)

The decision to recruit ever-more east European states into the Nato fold over the past two decades not only broke promises made to Soviet and Russian leaders, but flew in the face of advice from the West’s most expert policy-makers.

Guided by the US, Nato countries closed the military noose around Russia year by year, all the while claiming that the noose was entirely defensive.

Nato flirted openly with Ukraine, suggesting that it too might be admitted to their anti-Russia alliance.

The US had a hand in the 2014 protests that overthrew Ukraine’s government, one elected to keep channels open with Moscow. 

With a new government installed, the Ukrainian army incorporated ultra-nationalist, anti-Russia militias that engaged in a devastating civil war with Russian communities in the country’s east.

And all the while, Nato secretly cooperated with and trained that same Ukrainian army.

At no point in the eight years of Ukraine’s civil war did Europe or the US care to imagine how all these events unfolding in Russia’s backyard might look to ordinary Russians

Might they not fear the West just as much as western publics have been encouraged by their media to fear Moscow? Putin did not need to invent their concern. The West achieved that all by itself.

The encirclement of Russia by Nato was not a one-off error. Western meddling in the coup and support for a nationalist Ukrainian army increasingly hostile to Russia were not one-offs either. Nato’s decision to flood Ukraine with weapons rather than concentrate on diplomacy is no aberration. Nor is the decision to impose economic sanctions on ordinary Russians.

These are all of a piece, a pattern of pathological behaviour by the West towards Russia – and any other resource-rich state that does not utterly submit to western control. If the West were an individual, the patient would be diagnosed as suffering from a severe personality disorder, one with a strong impulse for self-destruction.

Bogeyman needed

Worse still, this impulse does not appear to be open to correction – not as things stand. The truth is that Nato and its US ringmaster have no interest in changing.

Their purpose is to have a credible bogeyman, one that justifies continuing the massive wealth redistribution from ordinary citizens to an elite of the already ultra-rich. A supposed threat to Europe’s safety justifies pouring money into the maw of an expanding war machine masquerading as the “defence industries” – the military, the arms manufacturers, and the ever-growing complex of the surveillance, intelligence and security industries. Both Nato and a US network of more than 800 military bases around the globe just keep growing.

A bogeyman also ensures western publics are unified in their fear and hatred of an external enemy, making them readier to defer to their leaders to protect them – and with it, the institutions of power those leaders uphold and the status quo they represent.

Anyone suggesting meaningful reform of that system can be rounded on as a threat to national security, a traitor or a fool, as Britain’s former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn found out.

And a bogeyman distracts western publics from thinking about deeper threats, ones that our own leaders – rather than foreigners – are responsible for, such as the climate crisis they not only ignored but still fuel through the very military posturing and global confrontations they use to distract us. It is a perfect circle of self-harm.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the demise of the Soviet Union, the West has been casting around for a useful bogeyman to replace the Soviet Union, one that supposedly presents an existential threat to western civilisation.

Iraq’s weapons of mass distraction were only 45 minutes away – until we learned they did not, in fact, exist.

Afghanistan’s Taliban was harbouring al-Qaeda – until we learned that the Taliban had offered to hand Osama bin Laden over even before the 9/11 attacks.

There was the terrifying threat from the head-choppers of the Islamic State (IS) group – until we learned that they were the West’s arm’s-length allies in Syria and being supplied with weapons from Libya after it was liberated by the West from its dictator, Muammar Gadaffi.

And there is always Iran and its supposed nuclear weapons to worry about, even though Tehran signed an agreement in 2015 putting in place strict international oversight to prevent it from developing a bomb – until the US casually discarded the deal under pressure from Israel and chose not to replace it with anything else.

Braced for recession

Each of these threats was so grave it required an enormous expenditure of energy and treasure, until it had served its purpose of terrifying western publics into acquiescence. Invariably, the West’s meddling spawned a backlash that created another temporary enemy.

Now, like a predictable Hollywood sequel, the Cold War is back with a vengeance. Russia’s President Putin has a starring role. And the military-industrial complex is licking its lips with delight.

Ordinary people and small businesses are being told by European leaders to brace for a recession as energy companies once again clock up “eye-watering” profits.

Just as with the financial crash nearly 15 years ago, when the public was required to tighten its belt through austerity policies, a crisis is providing ideal conditions for wealth to be redistributed upwards.

Like other officials, Nato’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has sounded the alarm about “civil unrest” this winter as prices across Europe soar, even while demanding public money be used to send yet more weapons to Ukraine.

The question is whether western publics will keep buying the narrative of an existential threat that can only be dealt with if they, rather than their leaders, dig deep into their pockets.