U.S. energy dominance: A key to Trump's peace bid

By Matthew Roy
Real Clear Wire

U.S. and European energy policies toward Russia are marked by striking inconsistencies. On the one hand, the Biden administration, flanked by its NATO counterparts, dispatches hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine and trumpets sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy. 

Yet, on the other hand, these same nations continue to procure Russian oil, gas, and LNG, thereby replenishing the very coffers they claim to be emptying. This hypocrisy is compounded by President Biden’s own domestic energy policies, which curtail American production at precisely the moment when Europe is floundering in its quest to disentangle itself from dependence on Russian energy.

In this context, the incoming Trump administration’s “energy dominance” agenda represents a necessary and impactful realignment. By expanding U.S. oil and gas production, Trump proposes a strategy that aligns America’s energy policy with its geopolitical imperatives. Such a framework not only enhances transatlantic energy security but also positions Trump to negotiate from strength in his pledged pursuit of a peace accord with Russia. This plan, ambitious as it is pragmatic, deserves nothing less than priority attention — both for its immediate utility and for its potential to reintroduce coherence into a realm where it has been sorely lacking.

One is struck, observing the dispensation of billions by NATO nations to Ukraine, while they simultaneously underwrite the Kremlin's war machine through energy purchases, by the sheer absurdity of this double-dealing. This is no mere bureaucratic oversight but rather an absence of grand strategy. The sanctions ostensibly designed to hobble Russia's economy are rendered impotent when Europe turns around and replenishes Moscow’s coffers through both direct and backdoor energy trade.

Ostensibly barred from European markets, Russian crude oil finds sanctuary in third-party nations — chiefly in Central and East Asia — where it is shuffled, refined, and, with an air of plausible deniability, sold back to Europe at an agreeable markup. Consider India: once a negligible player in Russian oil imports, now suddenly the beneficiary of nearly 40% of Moscow’s exports. Indian refiners transform this crude oil into diesel and other derivatives, only to export them back to Europe. It is, in essence, a tidy laundering operation — one that ensures a steady flow of revenue to Russia while Europe pays handsomely for its pretense of self-righteous isolation. The irony would be amusing were the stakes not so high.

Meanwhile, President Biden’s tenure has been marked by an almost doctrinaire aversion to reliable energy development in the United States, a legacy that seems less a matter of policy and more a point of pride. His intentions were made clear as early as 2020, when he campaigned under the banner of “ban fracking,” a slogan as reductive as it was revealing. 

On his very first day in office, Biden summarily canceled the final phase of Keystone XL pipeline project, a critical artery for North American energy connectivity. By the end of his first week, he had frozen all public land oil and gas lease applications and saddled existing leases with an additional layer of bureaucratic review.

Biden then doubled down, championing new climate legislation aimed at regulating methane emissions, a tribute to Barack Obama’s unvarnished ambition to strangle fossil fuel production via the regulatory apparatus. 

Perhaps most offensive to European allies seeking alternatives to Russian energy, Biden paused permitting for LNG export activities in January 2024. At a moment when American energy resources could have provided a bulwark against both economic instability and geopolitical vulnerability, Biden chose instead to indulge the ideological imperatives of his political base. 

While it is true that US LNG exports to Europe surged to historic highs since the war began in 2022, it must be understood that this was a market response and happened despite, not because of, Biden’s energy policies. Biden’s priority was always to use the government to hamper natural gas development, even while European allies faced a crisis of supply curtailment and uncertainty.

The contrast between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on energy policy is a study in antitheses. Trump’s rallying cry of “drill, baby, drill,” encapsulates a vision of “energy dominance” that is unapologetically ambitious, unabashedly pro-development, and unmistakably American. In his first term, Trump fast-tracked approvals for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, cut through the bureaucratic thicket to expedite oil and gas leases, and presided over a remarkable quadrupling of LNG exports.

Now, with billions of dollars of capital hanging precariously in limbo, the energy sector eagerly anticipates a return to this ethos of decisive action. The permitting backlog, an albatross of the Biden administration’s making, has left projects stalled for months, even years, as Washington dithers. 

Under Trump, the energy industry flourished not by the watchful bean-counting of the government, but by its liberation from it. With Chris Wright and Doug Burgum selected for secretaries of Energy and Interior, respectively, one can safely assume that the new administration will once again unleash the free and creative forces that drive American industry. 

There are some in Europe, as well, who look forward to Trump leading in a new direction on energy and foreign policy. Friend and political ally, Viktor Orban, has stood against the European status quo in pursuit of a negotiated end of violence in Ukraine. Orban’s Hungary imports nearly 100% of their natural gas, used for home heating, power-generation, and industrial production, from Russia. 

Orban is roundly criticized across the West for this realpolitik approach of maintaining normal relations with the sole provider of an indispensable resource, for which his landlocked country has no current alternative. But even European Commision President Ursula Von der Leyen, who has been a vocal critic of both Trump and Orban, has recently changed her tune, expressing enthusiasm for a new Trumpian energy policy. 

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election triumph, dialogue between Trump and von der Leyen turned swiftly to matters of strategic substance, including a proposal to expand the U.S. LNG exports to Europe. “LNG is one of the topics that we touched upon,” Von der Leyen remarked. “We still get a whole lot of LNG via Russia. And why not replace it with American LNG, which is cheaper and brings down our energy prices?” 

Politico analysis concludes this is merely postering for upcoming tariff negotiations, a face-saving suggestion to import more LNG to rebalance trade deficits that Von der Leyen can’t actually enforce. It is a completely plausible interpretation, yet there is another pending negotiation directly impacted by the topic, a Russian Ukraine peace deal. 

Energy, after all, is never merely a micro-economic matter, limited to its own industry concerns; it is the sine qua non of the modern economy. As such, it is an integral factor in state security and social stability. By recalibrating Europe’s energy reliance toward American LNG, Trump wields an instrument not only of economic leverage but of geopolitical realignment, one that could prove indispensable in shaping the contours of peace. In this context, the LNG discussion is not merely transactional but emblematic of a larger, more consequential strategy.

To suggest that energy trade alone could bring Russia to heel would be to indulge unwarranted optimism. Yet, as a bargaining tool, it is not without merit. 

Even if Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal for increased LNG trade is little more than rhetorical flourish, it nonetheless serves a tactical purpose: it signals the kind of seriousness that compels attention and tilts the negotiation table in favor of the United States. Negotiation, after all, is an intricate ballet of feints, insinuations, and veiled threats — each calculated to unsettle the adversary and recalibrate the balance of power.

With 1 million dead or injured, Russia’s recent liberalization of nuclear doctrine, and battlefield deployment of a new nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, the stakes have never been higher nor the cause for de-escalation and peace more clear. 

When engaged in a proxy war against a “gas station masquerading as a country,” as John McCain famously characterized Russia, energy policy really matters. In Trump’s vision, one glimpses not merely a transactional play but a reaffirmation of the principle of strength, both economic and military, that is the linchpin of effective diplomacy.

Matthew Roy is an energy industry professional with over a decade of experience in corporate management and strategy. He is currently the Visiting Research Fellow for the Budapest Fellowship Program at the Danube Institute, focusing on energy policy.