Why all the fuss over a simple pipeline?

The Chicago Times ran this cartoon in 1982. The cartoonist, Bill Maldin, captured the enormity of the debate (by depicting it as a joke).

The Reagan administration firmly opposed the massive West Siberian pipeline project, which was designed to bring natural gas from the Urengoy gas field to Western Europe. France and Germany supported it. The critical takeaway is: this debate has been raging for decades. There’s nothing new under the sun in 21st-century politics. Western Europe needs energy. Russia has it. It is natural and reasonable that Russia would recycle that revenue into its military, and the mystery is why we don’t use diplomatic channels to do the hard work of keeping the peace.