A nation must think before it acts.
The U.S. should ramp up its energy diplomacy in Europe and help better insulate our European partners from Russian gas coercion. Gas supplies are a powerful tool of geoeconomics–using “economic instruments to produce beneficial geopolitical results.” To date, Moscow has dominated this game. The shale revolution offers Washington and its partners an opportunity to right the balance and further harness the benefits of globally abundant natural gas. European consumers’ economic security would benefit—and with it, the Continent’s overall security in the face of increasingly aggressive Russian behavior.