HOW TO KILL PUTIN’S RUSSIA

Varna, Black Sea Coast, Bulgaria.  I'm sitting on the veranda of my luxury suite at the five-star Flamingo Grand Hotel with a spectacular view of the Black Sea, and enjoying a glass of spectacularly good Bulgarian red wine.

It seems odd that this place of such peace, beauty, and enjoyment is where to kill Putin's Russia – but it is, exactly right here.

With Vladimir Putin using his oil billions and traditional Russian thuggery – murdering opponents, invading neighbors – to reignite the Cold War and reestablish the Soviet Russian Empire, it's time to think of ways to put an end to it.

If we got rid of the Soviet Union, it should be child's play to get rid of Putin's Russia.  And it is. 

Putin's Russia has a mortal vulnerability.  Exploit that vulnerability, and he, together with his entire imperialist enterprise is done for.  That vulnerability is not oil.  It is gas, natural gas.  The vulnerability has a name:  Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly.

Putin's main strategy is to make Western Europe so dependent upon Russian gas for heating and electricity that it will be as compliant as a puppet – while at the same time recolonizing Eastern Europe.

The strategy has two prongs, North Stream and South Stream.  At this moment, Gazprom supplies 20% of France's natural gas, 25% of Italy's, and 40% of Germany's.  This is supplied by pipelines that run from Russia through Ukraine, the Baltics, and Poland.

The North Stream pipeline project bypasses the Baltics and Poland and runs directly from Russia under the Baltic Sea to the north coast of Germany.  Once completed, it will make Germany 60 to 70% dependent on Russian gas, thus not in any capacity to object as Russia presents the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Poland the choice of being recolonized or literally freezing to death in the winter with no gas.

The Germans are well aware of this, so much so it is no exaggeration to compare their support for North Stream and willingness to sell their sovereignty to Russia to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.

The South Stream pipeline project bypasses Ukraine and runs directly from Russia under the Black Sea to right here, Varna in Bulgaria and thence through the Balkans to Italy.  Once completed, it will make Italy and France 40 to 50% dependent on Russian gas, and enable Russia to give Ukraine the same choice as it will give Poland and the Balitcs.

That's the danger.  Here's the vulnerability. 

First, it's not the oil revenues that makes Putin's Russia rich, because of the enormous extraction costs of the oil.  It's the gas.  Second, Putin derives his power and money from Gazprom.  Third, Gazprom is already very vulnerable.

Gazprom is now importing gas from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan at premium prices for Russia's own domestic market in order to make Europe dependent on its exported gas.  Gazprom cannot produce in Russia enough gas for both Russia's domestic and export markets.

And that production is declining rapidly.  Russia's gas fields are depleted.  Gazprom must develop new fields in order to replace declining production from the old fields, and increase the production required for the North/South Streams.

These fields are in the Yamal Peninsula of western Siberia and the Shtockman region of the Barents Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean.  Yamal is permafrost that melts and turns into mud during the summer.  Shtockman has incredibly hostile Arctic conditions.  Both cannot be developed without Western financing and Western technology.

In other words, the West must provide both the money and technology to enable Russia to take it hostage.

In reality, though, Europe has neither the money nor the technology – only America does.

In particular, only Halliburton and Schlumberger have the drilling equipment and technology to exploit Yamal and Shtockman.

The bottom line is that the way to kill Putin's Russia is to kill North Stream and South Stream.  The way to kill them is to block development of Yamal and Shtockman, thereby bankrupting Gazprom.

To do that, all a President McCain has to do is explain to America's NATO allies that in the national security interests of all NATO members including the US, funding for North/South Streams must be halted, that there will be no Ex/Im Bank or OPIC funding from the US, and that export controls are being placed on US tech transfer for them.

And he tells them that their own coal, of which (such as Germany) they have enormous reserves, nuclear power (new plants can be built quicker than the North/South Stream pipelines), and LNG from the Gulf (such as Qatar) are the solutions to increased energy needs, not subservient dependence on Russia.

With that, just like that, Putin's Russia goes belly up.  Russia is now down, with its bank bailouts and collapse of its stock markets, to its last $100 billion of dollar/euro reserves.

There are 87 Russian billionaires now, and they are becoming unhappy with Putin in the extreme.  One of them says privately, "We think Putin is an idiot and must go."

Putin's egomania and megalomania have made him stupid and vulnerable.  Exploit both by bankrupting Gazprom with a few simple presidential moves, and Putin's Russia is history.

I'll raise my glass of Bulgarian Mevrud red to that, to there never being a South Stream pipeline terminal in this beautiful place.   And in the hope that Americans aren't idiots enough to elect Obambi, for he, of course will be putty in Putin's hands.  Only McCain would have the nerve to exploit Putin's weakness and end thereby the threat of a new Cold War.