Biden's Perilous Putin Policy

 

 

There is a very real risk that a cornered Putin would utilize tactical nukes in Ukraine.

Mark Alexander

 

 Article by Mark Alexander in The Patriot Post

 

Biden's Perilous Putin Policy

"I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home." —George Washington (1795)

A month ago, Joe Biden went to Europe to warn Vladimir Putin to get back in his box, or else. Fact is, the most sensible thing he said — that Putin "cannot remain in power" — was immediately walked back by his full-time team of "he didn't know what he was saying" record correctors.

His bumbling Brussels confab proved to be what we all knew it would be — another Biden failure. He even denied that sanctions were a deterrent, after two months of his entire administration's declarations that sanctions were a deterrent.

A month earlier, Biden had sent over his version of Neville Chamberlain's "peace for our time" appeasers, Tony Blinken and Wendy Sherman, to fix it, with equally predictable results.

This week, Biden sent Blinken back, along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and this time they ventured across the border into Kyiv for a photo-op with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They led from behind by announcing that our embassy personnel would return from Poland to Ukraine, and Biden appointed a U.S. ambassador, Bridget Brink, a career Foggy Bottom bureaucrat, to the post that had been vacant since 2019. (We were rooting for ambassador Hunter Biden, since he has so much experience in Ukraine, but to no avail.)

Of course, they came bearing more gifts, including another $713 million in foreign military financial aid and $165 million in "non-standard ammunition." According to Austin, "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." Or at least "weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things" the Demos' Russian disinformation cabal falsely claimed they did with Donald Trump. (Please put them in jail!)

Officially, Blinken concluded: "Russia is failing, Ukraine is succeeding. Russia has sought as its principal aim to totally subjugate Ukraine — to take away its sovereignty, to take away its independence. That has failed."

For the moment.

Putin underestimated the tenacity of Ukrainians, both those in uniform and street resistance fighters. Evidence of their fighting spirit is displayed on billboards, including references to the sinking of his prize Black Sea fleet flagship Moskva (Moscow) in retaliation for the Snake Island attack. As you recall, the Ukrainian guards manning that small outpost responded to demands they surrender, "Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй" ("Russian warship, go f*ck yourself," as noted on the billboard). Other billboards encourage street methods for fighting, like the use of Molotov cocktails. (Compliments to our friends on the ground in Ukraine for the billboard photos.)

Responding to Biden and Blinken's assessment, Putin is shutting off the gas lines to Poland (a primary weapons staging area) and Bulgaria until which time they pay in rubles — a measure to shore up the value of the ruble and to remind the EU they have struck a bargain with the devil.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen observed the obvious: "Unilaterally stopping delivery of gas to customers in Europe is yet another attempt by Russia to use gas as an instrument of blackmail. This is unjustified and unacceptable. And it shows once again the unreliability of Russia as a gas supplier."

Memo to Ursula: Duh!

The good news is that citizens in the EU are getting a very rude wakeup call.

So, what's the current status of the Russian threat to Ukraine and NATO?

Despite weeks of hopeful predictions that Putin was in retreat after failing to take Kyiv, if that was in fact his objective, along with pulling back to refortify his position in the Donbas region on the Eastern Ukraine border with Russia, what is Putin's next move?

No question that the Russian dictator met more resistance than expected in Kyiv, but as all war strategists know, the best laid plans are compromised after the first shots are fired. However, the surge to Kyiv may have been a feint, a diversion, and the refocus on taking the Donbas region may be precisely Putin's strategy.

However, re-staffing our embassy in Kyiv is the right move, coming on the heels of the UK and other European countries, and finally affirming that the Biden administration believes that Putin might be stopped in Donbas. But the perils abound.

In December, I outlined Putin's Ukraine invasion strategy and rationale in "Putin the Tyrant v. Biden the Appeaser." As I noted then (and as a few media outlets are finally mentioning now): "Why does Putin want to retake Ukraine? One reason is the threat that Ukraine could eventually become a NATO country, providing a military staging ground on Russia's western front. But more to the point would be that on 22 February of 2014, after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians rose up against Putin's puppet president Victor Yanukovych, occupying Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Yanukovych was forced to flee back to Russia in what was a severe blow to Putin's power and ego."

Putin wants to restore his legacy.

Note that, as we anticipated, while the layers of economic sanctions being enforced against Russia are doing significant damage, Putin has also used the pain as a rallying point to bolster nationalist fervor, the model used by Adolf Hitler. However, on the other side of some negotiated victory, what are Putin's options now that Biden has accused him of war crimes and genocide?

The Hoover Institution's Niall Ferguson writes in his assessment of worst-case scenarios: "Most conflicts end quickly, but this one looks increasingly like it won't. The repercussions could range from global stagflation to World War III."

Of those, the one we are most concerned about is the very real risk that a cornered Putin would utilize tactical nukes. (A tactical nuclear weapon is one specifically designed for battlefield use.) He may well be determined to demolish what he can't possess.

Remember that Ukraine is already the site of history's worst nuclear accident — the nuclear power plant core meltdown in 1986 at Chernobyl, which is located just north of Kyiv — so pilling on additional nuclear contamination is not beyond Putin's playbook.

Ferguson notes: "Biden and his advisers seem remarkably confident that the combination of attrition in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia will bring about a political crisis in Moscow comparable to the one that dissolved the Soviet Union 31 years ago. ... Those who prematurely proclaim Ukrainian victory seem to forget that the worse things go for Russia in conventional warfare, the higher the probability rises that Putin uses chemical weapons or a small nuclear weapon."

Further, he writes: "Those who dismiss the risk of World War III overlook this stark reality. In the Cold War, it was NATO that could not hope to win a conventional war with the Soviet Union. That was why it had tactical nuclear weapons ready to launch against the Red Army if it marched into Western Europe. Today Russia would stand no chance in a conventional war with NATO. That is why Putin has tactical nuclear weapons ready to launch in response to a Western attack on Russia. And the Kremlin has already made the argument that such an attack is underway."

On the other hand, as I have previously asserted, the scenario we find most appealing is this: The tidiest way to end Putin's dictatorship is for a member of his security or military detail to take him out. The more war and sanction-related civil unrest that emerges in Russia's major cities, the more likely a proud and heroic individual may impose that "regime change" — and that individual would qualify for a "Hero of Russia" medal.

Ferguson suggests the "combination of military and economic crisis precipitate a palace coup against Putin." He believes "the Biden administration is betting on regime change in Moscow." He concludes, "There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. (and at least some of its European allies) are aiming to get rid of Putin."

The standoff is best summarized in an assertion by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: "NATO is, in essence, going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy." Of course, the same can be said of Russia, going to war with NATO through a proxy and attacking that proxy.

Clearly, one outcome of the Ukraine war is that our military footprint in Europe, which was receding, is now growing, with significant budgetary and military allocation implications.

All the hopeful predictions that Putin is on the ropes notwithstanding, it is actually Biden who is on the ropes as a result of his growing list of domestic and foreign policy failures. And make no mistake, Biden's handlers are making no moves without calculating, first and foremost, how those moves affect the midterm elections and the socialist Democrat Party agenda.

Biden's domestic political standing is so abysmal that he has now resorted to blaming his constituents for his own abject ineptitude.

They are not responsible for his failures, of course, but they are most assuredly responsible for putting him in a position to codify those failures, and the dire consequences are on them. What exactly did Biden voters think he was going to accomplish? A bustling economy? World peace? A restoration of dignity to the executive branch? Biden, and by extension our nation, is the laughing stock of the world.

Finally, as I have stated previously, Putin's "minor incursion" into Ukraine, as Biden framed it ahead of the invasion, is the direct consequence of a weak and inept commander-in-chief — one who was a foreign policy dolt long before he was elected. Power does not tolerate a vacuum, nor a feeble-minded appeaser. Consequently, Biden's weakness invited aggression.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

 

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X22, And we Know, and more-April 27

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Democrats Have Nothing To Offer Voters So They’re Banking On Smearing And Censoring Their Opposition

Biden has doubled down, signaling how confident his people are in their ability to collude with the censorship regime against their challengers.

Elle Reynolds reporting for The Federalist

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain offered an interesting insight into Democrats’ 2022 midterm election strategy on Sunday, musing about French President Emmanuel Macron’s ability to win reelection despite a 36 percent approval rating, implying a similar possibility for U.S. President Joe Biden. Instead of trying to turn Biden’s sinking approval ratings around by ditching failed policies, Democrats seem content with their underwater numbers so long as they can drive Republicans’ popularity even lower with smears and censorship.

Biden’s approval rating is at 40.9 percent, according to the RealClear aggregate, although a Quinnipiac poll has him as low as 35 percent and a CNBC poll has him at 38 percent. A February NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll reported that 56 percent of Americans thought Biden’s first year in office was a failure, and the month before a mere 25 percent were “satisfied” with his administration.

The Biden administration has helped drive its own approval ratings into the ground with crisis after self-induced crisis. Democrat-led Covid lockdowns and ballooning federal spending have caused the worst inflationary crisis in decades, coupled with energy prices that were on the rise even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine thanks to Biden’s war on oil and gas. Destabilization in Ukraine and a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan may top the list of Biden’s most deadly mess-ups, but they’re far from the only line items.

From a first-day executive order requiring that schools ignore the biological differences between male and female students from the athletic field to the bathroom if they wish to continue receiving federal funding, and keeping those same schools closed for months, to bragging about working with Big Tech to silence dissent, exacerbating a record-setting crisis at the U.S. Southern border, ousting people from their jobs with medical mandates, encouraging kids to chop off their genitals, and colluding with the National School Boards Association to smear parents as domestic terrorists, the Biden team has done everything possible to alienate voters.

Meanwhile, Biden’s radical legislative agenda has crashed and burned, leaving him with nothing to offer voters but a list of failures. Biden could choose to learn from these mistakes and respond by securing the border, unhampering American oil production, respecting parents and free speech, and protecting minors from predatory sex propaganda. But instead, the White House is tacitly admitting it doesn’t care that Americans don’t like its agenda.

How is that a workable election strategy? It isn’t, unless you can convince voters to hate or fear your opposition even more. Democrats spent all four years of former President Donald Trump’s presidency pushing the Clinton campaign-funded Russia collusion hoax, aided by propagandists in the legacy media. When The New York Post broke news of sensational and incriminating Biden family scandals in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, Big Tech and big media collaborated to nuke the story and censor those who tried to share it.

Those are just two of the most explosive examples. There are countless more of tech companies censoring conservative perspectives (including a sitting president), journalists running cover for Democrat conspiracy theories while lying about Republicans, and even tech barons like Mark Zuckerberg funneling nearly half a billion dollars to take over local election offices.

In a fair system, a president with approval ratings that are underwater by double digits would be worried about his next election, and probably worried enough to be making some big changes. But Biden has done nothing but double down. That signals just how confident his people are in their ability to collude with the censorship regime to smear their opponents or keep their arguments from reaching voters entirely. Censorship is a powerful political tool, and it’s part of why the laptop class is so panicked at the idea that someone with slightly more respect for free speech than they now owns the Twittersphere.

All of Biden’s disasters point to a Republican victory in the midterms this fall, but Democrats’ unwillingness to let nosedives in the polls budge their cultural battles should be a chilling reminder to Republicans that Democrats haven’t played by the rules for years. The collaborators in the Biden White House, in the legacy media, and in Big Tech are so confident in their backroom rigging that they don’t think they need to listen to what American voters think.

This should put urgency and tangible political reforms behind the broad and bipartisan desire among Americans to ensure American election processes are beyond reproach.

Jada Pinkett-Smith and Amber Heard Make Me Question:…

 Jada Pinkett-Smith and Amber Heard Make Me Question: Why Is No One Talking About 'Toxic Femininity'?

Jennifer Oliver O'Connell - Red State 

Jada Pinkett Smith and Amber Heard. (Credit: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File; Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

Newsweek ran a piece about Jada Pinkett-Smith’s appearance on a 2017 episode of Watch What Happens: Live with Andy Cohen. Pinkett-Smith casually discussed “rumors” surrounding the Smith’s marriage.

The celebrity couple’s unorthodox marriage has long been the subject of intense speculation and now even more so since Smith slapped Chris Rock onstage at the Oscars in reaction to a joke he had made about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head.

Back in 2018, Pinkett Smith admitted to having a romantic relationship that she famously dubbed an “entanglement” with musician August Alsina, while Smith was also rumored to have had extramarital affairs.

The couple was subjected to speculation about an open marriage before Pinkett Smith confirmed her relationship with Alsina, and in 2017 the actress even laughed about those rumors during a TV interview.

On an episode of Watch What Happens: Live with Andy Cohen back in 2017, a fan asked Pinkett Smith: “What is the craziest rumor you have ever heard about your family.”

Without missing a beat, Pinkett Smith added: “That Will and I are swingers. That’s the craziest one. It’s constant.”

When you look at the video, Pinkett-Smith is a shade shy of pure delight over these rumors. I don’t think her, “I wish!” is acting.

When you have such a casual attachment to your marriage it also reflects your lackadaisical attitude in doing it damage. Hence, ensuring Will Smith had a joyous and profound moment at the Academy Awards, instead of ruining it by egging him on to violence.

I think back to the 1997 Academy Awards when Director James Cameron had his night with Titanic. The blockbuster had been nominated for 14 Academy Awards, and it promised to be an epic night for Cameron, even if he did not win for Best Director.

It had been alluded to in the entertainment ‘zines that he and then-wife Linda Hamilton were on the rocks. But Hamilton graciously went through the evening and allowed Cameron to have the spotlight as Titanic went on to win 11 Academy Awards, including Best Director.

The next day, Linda Hamilton packed her bags and filed for divorce—but it showed a level of class that she allowed that 1997 Academy Awards night to be Cameron’s alone; and that is what the history books and people remember.

I have had people who attempted to squelch my success and marginalize some of my greatest moments. I cannot imagine being married to that type of person. Most of America is fixated on “The Slap,” Will Smith’s apology, his resignation from the Academy, and being banned from the Academy Awards for 10 years.

But the media accounts focus on Jada Pinkett-Smith’s being the butt of the joke or being the person Smith was “protecting.”

My question is, Why wasn’t Jada protecting Will? This was the greatest moment of his acting career, and with one look from her, he took an un-called for action that threw it all away.

That’s toxic femininity. That’s not a woman looking for protection, she is looking to destroy.

And Pinkett-Smith did. The damage continues to roll out with every video of past interviews and interactions, and probably will for years. This is what people will remember about what used to be considered a great, Black American success story and a fine acting career. Any good woman would not have allowed for it to happen. That good woman would have reigned Smith in, because there is a moment and a time for every work, and what happened that Oscar evening wasn’t it.

Pinkett-Smith is not a woman who is interested in being protected or interested in protecting anyone else. In marriage, you have the best interest of your husband and family in the forefront. Pinkett-Smith only sought to serve her own interest.

Toxic femininity at work.

Granted, Will Smith co-signed to, and participated in this. Marrying someone with the understanding that I don’t wish to be exclusive, so when I want to stray, I will do it, is not a sound basis for any commitment, let alone something as intimate and special as marriage.

After all, isn’t an open marriage saying, It’s all about “ME,” and not about “US”? US is forged in the fire of fidelity, and just like gold, the intensity of the heat makes it become brighter and purer. When your relationship starts out base, you get the result that you get in a base metal: corrosion, tarnish, oxidation.

Ruination.

The Left and the legacy media has done its best to make traditional marriage look weird, backward, and as pedestrian as possible. But those of us who have good marriages and hold that commitment in high honor know and live the truth. The Smiths set themselves up to fail, and this supposed focus towards “deep healing” that Pinkett-Smith is announcing lately will never accomplish anything as long as there is no admittance of wrong and a restructuring of their marriage commitment.

Then there is the glaring example of toxic femininity playing out in the courts: The defamation trial of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.

I have little respect for any woman who manipulates a broken man and drives him further into degradation. While Johnny Depp is a remarkable talent, it is evident that like Smith, he is broken to the core. Depp and his sister testified to this during the trial, and those who have watched his career have seen bits and pieces of that trouble play out over the years.

Whatever mid-life crisis caused him to break from his longtime relationship with Vanessa Paradis, with whom Depp has two children, Amber Heard gravitated toward that gaping wound and decided to pour rock salt into it.

The couple married in 2015, and after a publicly tumultuous 23 months, finalized their divorce in 2017. Despite his personal struggles, Depp had garnered a reputation as a quality and professional actor and a stable family man (he was with Paradis for 14 years). Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post detailing how she was a victim of domestic abuse. While she did not name Depp, Depp alleged his reputation was trashed and that he lost work because of it. Depp officially sued his ex-wife for $50 million, and after much legal back and forth, Heard countersued for $100 million.

And here we are. As it is with the Smiths, we are watching the detritus of people’s private lives thrown out into the public square.

It is not pretty.

I have only been watching the defamation trial casually, but I am not surprised on why it is capturing the public’s imagination. Stories of abusive and toxic men abound, but in this case, the spotlight is being shone on an abusive and toxic woman. When you admit to having to lock yourself into rooms and bathrooms to get away from your abusive wife, and that your sobriety was tanked because of this, it is obvious that you’ve been whipped. Depp testifying to having a piece of his finger sliced off by a broken Vodka bottle that Heard threw at him is also a distasteful detail and reflective of the type of person she is.

From Insider:

Depp said Heard was the real abuser in their relationship and the change in their relationship started with her making “little digs” and “demeaning name-calling.”

The actor said he felt like he was “suddenly wrong” about everything, and suffered an “endless parade of insults,” Insider reported.

The actor added that sometimes these arguments would escalate to violence, with Heard — who he said “has a need for violence” — shoving him or throwing a glass of wine in his face. When these arguments would start, Depp said he would try to extricate himself from the situation, sometimes locking himself in the bathroom just to get away from Heard.

Depp also said his relationship with Heard — as well as what he described as her frequent verbal attacks — often contributed to his use of alcohol and drugs.

“I was more inspired by Ms. Heard to reach out for a numbing agent because of the constant clashes,” he said. “I had to have something to distance me and distance my heart from those verbal attacks.”

What gets tossed out with the damage that feminism and the Trans agenda has done to gender roles, is how a woman can not only build up her husband, but in doing so, safeguard and build a strong marriage. Proverbs 14:1 says, “Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands.” That tearing down can be as explosive as the Depp-Heard marriage, or the brick-by-brick erosion of the Smiths.

These ladies are poster children for toxic femininity. We need to encourage our young women not to aspire to this.

Durham Details Massive Effort Against Trump and Destroys Clinton Team's Claims

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Special Counsel John Durham has filed a response to the effort by Michael Sussmann, Perkins Coie, Hillary for America (HFA), the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”), Fusion GPS, and Tech Executive-1 (Rodney Joffe) to claim their communications were privileged legal communications to keep them secret.

Durham has a little laugh at the beginning of this filing, noting how Sussmann has claimed he wasn’t representing anyone when he went to the FBI — the very thing he is charged with lying about — so that these efforts have trapped him (and them), as we have previously pointed out here and here.

Durham also derides the claim that Fusion was hired for legal work — calling that a “novel” way to cover up opposition research and the derogatory information that they then spread against President Donald Trump and his team. He says that despite efforts, the parties have failed to provide “meaningful, substantive explanations to support these continuing broad assertions of privilege and/or work product protections.” But because Durham intends to call a Fusion GPS employee as a witness in the trial (to presumably speak to the communications), he says this is why they need to resolve the question at this point as to the communications and whether they are privileged. The fact that he has a Fusion employee that’s going to flip on them is not good for Fusion or the Hillary team because she will likely lay out more of the plot publicly and that’s not going to go well for them.

Durham has some incredulity at the claim of HFA General Counsel Marc Elias that “Fusion’s role was to provide consulting services in support of . . . legal advice . . . related to defamation, libel and similar laws,” given that that that “role” seems to have been to spread derogatory (and possibly defamatory) information about Trump and his team.

Indeed, the documents produced by Fusion GPS to date reflect hundreds of emails in which Fusion GPS employees shared raw, unverified, and uncorroborated information – including their own draft research and work product – with reporters. And they appear to have done so as part of a (largely successful) effort to trigger negative news stories about one the Presidential candidates.

“Hundreds of emails” — so Durham has the whole plot to spread Russia collusion laid out in the emails.

Here are some of the emails they have, as lawyer TechnoFog lays out on his substack.

1. Emails with Slate’s Franklin Foer from May 14, 2016 in which Fusion GPS conveys information on a Trump advisor and Alfa Bank.
2. July 26, 2016 e-mails from Fusion GPS to the Wall Street Journal communicating allegations from Christopher Steele stating “a Trump advisor meeting with a former KGB official close to Putin … would be huge news.”
3. July 29 and July 31, 2016 emails with a reporter (Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger) concerning Carter Page’s investments and meetings with Russians – of which the reporter said “Its bullshit.”
4. July 27, 2016 e-mails between an ABC News reporter (Matthew Mosk) and Fusion GPS concerning Sergei Millian. Fusion GPS responded with a “comprehensive report” regarding Millian.
5. Fusion GPS communications with NY Times reporters pushing more dirt on Millian.
6. This e-mail from a Fusion GPS co-founder to the New York Times – dated October 31, 2016 – pushing the Alfa Bank allegations and stating the US Government is investigating.

Guess who’s named in the emails? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Why are they being referenced in July 2016 and what further communications were there, if any?

What’s funny is that Durham only wanted to enter a limited amount in camera (meaning in private, for the eyes of the judge). But now, because they’re fighting the emails coming out, he has to explain why they are relevant and has to lay some of them out in his filing.

No lawyers are being communicated with for legal advice on these emails and even had any of this been privileged, as TechnoFog observes, they’ve likely blown that claim since they’re disseminating this information to the media. Durham notes in the filing that Fusion did not treat these communications as privileged themselves. Durham also notes that neither campaign chair John Podesta nor campaign manager Robby Mook provided any examples of legal advice provided in their affidavits regarding the matter and that Mook failed to provide any examples when they interviewed him.

You’ve got to love that these Clinton folks are being put on the spot about the plot and they better have answered up truthfully or we’ll be seeing more cases like that of Sussmann. Their claims are ridiculous and I would suspect the judge is going to go with the government on this. But how silly of them in the meantime to do this, so now even more information is going to come out.

Thé Global Oil Market Is Over

The Global Oil Market Is Over

A worker at the Rosneft-owned Achinsk refinery in Krasnoyarsk Region, Russia, in 2018.(Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Does Russia’s invasion of Ukraine amount to a new Cold War? Among pundits, for now, interpretations vary. But prices in the oil market convey less ambiguity. Their answer? Yes.

After the Cold War, independent Russia became more enmeshed with global oil markets, including the West. With exceptions created by sanctions intended to exclude Iran and Venezuela from the global oil market, it had become possible to speak of a single global oil market.

That didn’t mean there was a single oil price. That will always vary with the grade of fuel. Heavy and sour crudes, such as the oil from the tar sands of western Canada, for instance, trade at a lower price than light and sweet crudes. This is because they are harder to refine. But those varying prices have typically been fairly highly correlated. Except for that (and sanctions regimes) and some differences mainly attributable to transportation costs, the source of the oil didn’t matter when it came to price.

The existence of one world market in oil, in some sense, embodies the prevalence of globalization in a commodity market. For it to prevail, national borders cannot stymie flows driven by supply and demand. Sure, the law of one world price only approximated the oil market as it existed between the end of the first Cold War and February 2022 for the reasons noted above, but they didn’t detract from the existence of what was close to a genuinely global market. That was then.

Nowadays, Urals oil, a benchmark Russian crude price, is trading at over $30 less per barrel than Brent crude, the worldwide benchmark price (a far higher discount than the marginal differentials seen in the recent past). Iranian oil, by comparison, is only trading at $2 to $5 less. Much of the discrepancy between Brent and Russia can be explained by voluntary “self-sanctioning” by market participants since the price disparities began showing up even before the West started some of its heaviest sanctions. In both its nature and its size, then, the collapse in the globalization of oil is unlike anything observed since the end of the Cold War.

On one side of the new oil divide are rich Westerners that can afford to pay more to avoid buying Russia’s oil. On the other side, with Russia and China, are the world’s poor. They cannot afford to turn down the Putin discount.

India is likely a harbinger of what lies ahead. Despite Western governments asking it not to, India is buying more Russian oil because it’s so much cheaper than the alternatives. Reliance Industries, one of the world’s largest corporations and one of India’s largest refiners, has ordered 15 million barrels of Russian oil since the war in Ukraine began. At current prices, the switch to Russian oil could save India as much as $40 billion per year, around 1.5 percent of its GDP. For context, 1.5 percent of GDP is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, typically the size of America’s entire federal budget deficit in a “relatively strong” economy.

Declining that type of cost savings is an act of self-flagellation that the world’s poor cannot bear. But the temptation to buy oil from the Russian bear extends beyond the developing countries that, like India, now face the same set of incentives to remain “non-aligned” that they faced during the first Cold War. Only after its purchase of discounted Russian crude oil elicited widespread backlash did Shell promise to pay the premium to boycott Russian oil. Even now, Russian crude oil persists in finding at least some buyers in Western Europe.

On the specter of a new Cold War, many have opined. But the world’s energy market is already splitting in two with consequences, we can be sure, that won’t just be confined to energy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/the-global-oil-market-is-over/?