As President Vladimir Putin seeks to reinforce Russia’s position as a global power through nuclear saber-rattling and military campaigns in Ukraine and Syria, the next U.S. administration will need to both contain and cooperate with him. If played right, that may get easier in the years to come. The reason: The transformation of the world’s natural gas markets is weakening Moscow’s economic toolkit. And that will make Putin’s pipeline politics – his use of natural resources for foreign policy purposes – obsolete. It’s clear that Russia will try to make a last stand to hold on to its natural gas market in Europe. On Oct. 25, the European Union granted Russian gas behemoth […]