The Only Solution for Putin

It will be painful for the EU and the U.S. has to help the EU, so it will be painful for the U.S.

The EU must cut imports of Russian energy in both price and volume.  That means the US must cut its consumption of oil (and the 1st place a price increase would reduce imports is the oil that must travel the furthest to the US, which means the Middle East and that would flow to the EU) and the US must start to export Natural Gas (which will take time to build the facilities) to the EU so it can reduce its business with Gazprom.

The only way this will happen is (i) a U.S. gas tax (with perhaps the funds flowing back to taxpayers so there is no revenue increase for the government) and (ii) more pipelines and construction of LNG facilities.  The gas tax will mollify the environmentally concerned about the latter.  The latter will mollify the free traders and business part of the GOP.  And the whole process should be seen as good by the neo-con's who want to return to the Cold War, because that is where we are, but we can't fight it through military means.  It has to be economic.  The only unhappy people will be the Tea Party, but they don't want anything coherent anyway.

The only thing Putin understands is a Cold War mentality and until the West gets serious about reducing the global price of energy (which also provides the funds for global jihad) we will not be taken seriously by Putin.

So we can kill 3 birds with one policy:  Global Warming, reducing the money that Putin is using to harm the Ukraine and work to curb Islamic terrorism.

If the GOP cannot support this, then they are truly in the pockets of the energy companies and their campaign $ and they support the flow of energy profits to fuel instability in this world.