The German government in Berlin has denounced as a “provocation” letters that the US ambassador sent to companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 project, warning them of possible US sanctions.
This time the outspoken US ambassador in Berlin may have gone too far to be ignored.
The Berlin government reportedly told the project companies to “ignore” the missives dispatched by Ambassador Richard Grenell.
Nord Stream 2 is the 1,222-kilometer pipeline being laid in the Baltic seabed which will greatly increase delivery of natural gas from Russia to Germany. It will double Germany’s import of Russian gas when complete.
But the Trump administration has repeatedly voiced its objection to the gas project, claiming that the distribution will give Moscow undue political leverage over Europe.
Trump has warned of sanctions on participating companies, which include German and Austrian firms.
The flagrant agenda is seen as the USA trying to undermine German-Russian energy trade, for the purpose of selling more expensive American liquefied natural gas to Europe. So much for American free-market capitalism!
When Grenell took up his diplomatic post in Berlin last May, he immediately provoked a political firestorm when he tweeted that German companies doing business with Iran “should wind down operations” or face punitive American sanctions.
Only a few weeks after that dubious debut, Grenell gave an interview to the pro-Trump Breibart News outlet, boasting that he wanted to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe”.
Grenell’s high-profile media interventions concerning German politics and business do appear to constitute a brazen breach of the 1964 Vienna Convention, which stipulates that diplomats must remain neutral on matters of policy concerning host nations.
This is not be the first time that US embassies and envoys have violated the Vienna Convention in host countries. Washington habitually uses these outposts for fomenting regime change.
The absurdity is that the USA and its NATO acolytes have been foaming at the mouth for the last two years about alleged and unproven Russian interference in domestic politics of Western states.
Russia Insider / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
