In Defiance of Sanctions

With foreign help, the controversial Soviet pipeline is completed

To the Soviets it was the "deal of the century," but in the West it is better remembered as an unnecessary source of tension between the U.S. and Western Europe. The Reagan Administration vigorously opposed European plans to help build and finance an $18 billion, 2,759-mile pipeline designed to deliver up to 20 billion cubic meters a year of natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe. The U.S. not only barred American companies from working on the project, but it imposed economic sanctions (suspended five...

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