Thomas L. Friedman said:
Wars bring together surprising alliances.
Today, we have America and its NATO allies backing the brave Ukrainians fighting to save their country from being torn to shreds by Vladimir Putin.
And we have Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bernie Sanders, the House progressive caucus and the whole G.O.P. all working -- deliberately or because they are dupes -- to ensure that Putin has more oil revenue than ever to kill Ukrainians and freeze the Europeans this winter until they abandon Kyiv.
In another dark corner, Putin and Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are also probably hoping that the soaring energy inflation unleashed since Russia's invasion helps the Donald Trump-led Republicans to regain control of at least the House of Representatives in next month's elections. That would be icing on the cake for both, who view Trump as a president who still loves black crude over green solar and knows how to look the other way when bad things happen to good people.
Too cynical, you say? No, sorry, you can't be too cynical with this cast of brutes, bandits and useful idiots. Just look at the facts.
. . .
Putin's strategy is neither crazy nor without hope because of two decades of Western nations' failing to think strategically about energy. They willed the ends -- a world no longer dependent on fossil fuels as soon as possible. But they did not will the means to reach that goal in a stable way -- by maximizing their climate security, their energy security and their economic security all at the same time.
Instead, they pretended.
In Europe they pretended -- with Putin's covert encouragement -- that they could abandon large-scale, largely emissions-free energy like nuclear power, as the Germans did, and just jump directly to intermittent wind, solar and other renewables and everything would be just peachy. Oh, my goodness. The Germans felt so virtuous in doing so -- without acknowledging that the only reason they were getting away with this pipe dream was that Putin was selling them cheap gas to make up the difference.
In America, we did our own version of this green virtue signaling. Green progressives demonized the oil and gas industry .... At a House committee hearing two weeks ago, Representative Rashida Tlaib demanded to know if JPMorgan Chase C.E.O. Jamie Dimon ... had any policies "against funding new oil and gas products."
Dimon answered, "Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America."
Tlaib then told Dimon that any students who had student loans and bank accounts with JPMorgan should retaliate by closing their accounts. Have no doubt: This kind of juvenile moral preening by Tlaib surely made Vladimir Putin's day. She's nowhere nearly as bad as the G.O.P. senators who were inspired for years by ExxonMobil lies that climate change is a hoax, and then used that to block our transition to clean energy. But Tlaib still made Putin's day.
...
All in all, Putin had a bad month in Ukraine -- but a good month in the U.S. Congress.
