TEXAS — When it comes to American opposition to a natural gas pipeline being built from Russia to Germany, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has emerged in recent weeks a vocal critic of the controversial project

Cruz has called the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ”a critical threat to America's national security” that must be stopped. Failing to halt the pipeline’s construction would have “disastrous effects on European security by making them subject to economic and energy blackmail from Russia.”

To prove his point, Cruz has used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold up key Biden administration appointments as he insists Nord Stream 2 should be stopped, a move that many see as political grandstanding that ultimately would result in hamstringing American diplomacy in the exact area where Cruz insists the U.S. is needed most: protecting Ukraine. 

But with a U.S.-German deal already signed on the pipeline and the pipeline nearly 98% complete, some see Cruz’s outspoken cries as too much, too late.

What Cruz is doing “is a bit like Monday morning quarterbacking,” said Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at American Progress, a think tank in Washington D.C. Holding all these nominees is really self-defeating, he said.

This week, when President Joe Biden announced that his administration had reached a deal with Germany on the nearly decade-long dispute over the pipeline’s construction, Cruz accused the U.S. president of capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Decades from now, Russian dictators will still be reaping billions from Biden's gift, and Europe will still be subject to Russian energy blackmail. We always knew Biden was in bed with Putin, now they're spooning," a statement from Cruz’s office said on Wednesday, as details of the U.S.-German deal emerged. 

Cruz is not alone in his opposition to Nord Stream 2. Most global security and energy experts and even the U.S. State Dept. top officials would agree with his point that Russia will gain a potential new weapon in the Kremlin’s arsenal with which it can assault geopolitical stability and Western democracies. There is a bipartisan understanding in Washington that the pipeline is a bad deal for a key U.S. ally, Ukraine, Russia’s southern neighbor and the victim of the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy tactics. 

In fact, Biden shares the same concerns as the Texas Republican when it comes to Nord Stream 2 and has opposed the pipeline since the beginning. 

“Cruz realizes full well that his actions aren't going to cause the Biden administration to break its deal with Germany,” said Mark Jones, a Baker Institute Fellow in Political Science at Rice University. 

“What he's doing is really posturing and allowing himself to seize the higher ground in terms of opposing Russian imperialism or adventurism while at the same time, bashing the Biden administration on an issue that Biden and even a number of Democrats have an issue with,” Jones said.

Nord Stream 2 is composed of a pair of pipelines running from the tip of Russia west of St. Petersburg for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea to Germany. The construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year and, once operational, is expected to nearly double the amount of natural gas Russia delivered to Germany.

Critics of the pipeline, including Biden, Cruz, and a bipartisan collective in Congress, have major concerns with the completion of the pipeline. The new pipeline will divert gas supplies from pipelines already in use that pass through Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. 

The European Union imports about a third of its natural gas needs from Russia and most of that gas in the past has transited through Ukraine’s highway system of pipelines. Ukraine relies on the transit fees it charges Russia to use its hundreds of miles of pipeline as well as the price it negotiates for its share of the gas it needs to heat Ukrainian homes and power its industries.

Ukraine, a nation of 44 million, has, in recent years irked Moscow and especially Putin, as it has looked toward the European Union and most alarming for the Kremlin, to the National Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, for future membership. 

Moscow has on several occasions reacted to Ukraine’s Western ambitions by simply turning off its gas supply, such as it did in 2006 and 2009. The shut-offs deprive Ukraine of both heat and economic stability and ultimately affected customers in the European Union. Russia began looking for alternative ways to get gas to Europe, a move Ukraine fears could devastate its economy, hence the Nord Stream 2 project.

Cruz said this week that the pipeline “hurts Ukraine badly.”

The U.S. has been a strong supporter of Ukraine’s post-Soviet democratic development. But in 2018, the country became embroiled in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Trump was accused of pressuring Ukraine’s leadership by withholding security assistance in exchange for a promise to investigate Biden.

Cruz at the time defended Trump’s actions in Ukraine, suggesting that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The second major worry with Nord Stream 2 from a geopolitical standpoint is that if Russia controls the supply of bulk of Europe’s critical natural gas needs, what’s to stop the Kremlin from shutting it off at the first sign of geopolitical disputes with Germany or another U.S. ally? 

Biden came into the White House in January with a geopolitical dilemma when it came to Nord Stream 2: Restoring a fractured relationship with Berlin while at the same time adhere to his and many U.S. objections to the pipeline.

This week’s deal with Germany is an attempt to find some kind of compromise for Washington’s fraught situation. The deal sets up a $1 billion investment fund to help Ukraine to reduce its dependence on Moscow’s gas exports. Germany will make the initial $175 million investment and administer the fund.

“Biden recognized that we couldn't stop this now,” said Jeremi Suri, a professor of history and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Biden also understood that the U.S. relationship with Germany, a strong ally since the end of World War II, had been seriously battered during former President Donald Trump’s term, who had several contentious confrontations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“If the U.S. had a better working relationship with Germany over the last four to five years,  we could have had more influence,” Suri said. “Instead Trump alienated the German leadership and so it was very hard to use influence over them. I’m not saying we could have stopped this completely, but we would have had more influence.”

Ukrainians are understandably worried, Bergmann said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to meet Biden in Washington next month and the subject of Nord Stream 2 will likely be a major agenda item.

Holding or blocking nominees isn't a new political tool. Both sides of the aisle have used it in the past to pressure the White House on an issue, Berman said. 

“But what Cruz is doing is different in that what is he asking for? There's no deliverable that the administration can give him. It's just sort of justifying obstructionism which ultimately just delays the effectiveness of the U.S. government,” Bergmann said.

“We have no reason to trust the Russians on this, this is why Cruz should immediately confirm the assistant secretary to Europe,” Bergmann said. “We need to immediately start preparing now for when the Russians use the pipeline to squeeze Ukraine and to use it to play geopolitics.”