What Hillary Clinton knows about Vladmir Putin is very simple: Putin’s economy is exactly one commodity deep. So when Hillary Clinton gives a speech about the growing power of U.S. oil and gas ...

“We can have a North American energy system that will be unbelievably powerful. If we have enough of it, we can be exporting and supporting a lot of our friends and allies.”

What she’s really doing is putting Putin on notice that he can no longer use pipelines between Russia and Europe to both bully European politics and (literally) fuel the Russian economy.

Those Wikileaks speeches where Hillary Clinton talks up the idea of fracking? American progressives may not like them, but Russian authoritarians hate them, because keeping world oil and gas prices high is the only chance that the oligarchs have to pocket massive wealth for themselves—and to fund a first-rate army in what is, increasingly, a third-rate power.

Truthfully, it’s not necessary to frack every stone in either America or Europe to keep Putin’s Russia on the rocks. It’s not even clear that there’s a need for any additional fracking. What’s necessary is that oil and gas prices stay low. With the U.S. producing at record volume and OPEC unable to agree on production cuts, Russia finds its shallow economy getting shallower by the day. At this point, increasing use of renewables can probably replace fossil fuels quickly enough to keep those prices down.

And Hillary Clinton is very, very aware of this fact.

… Clinton made the direct link between America’s energy fortunes and targeting Moscow. “We are now energy independent, something we have hoped for and worked for over many, many years,” she said in a July 2014 speech. “That gives us tools we didn’t have before. And it also gives us the opportunity not only to invest those resources in more manufacturing and other activities that benefit us directly here at home, but to be a bulwark with our supplies against the kind of intimidation we see going on from Russia.”

This is the sore point for Russia. Keep the price of natural gas low, and Russian wealth goes away. Take the need for oil and gas away … and Russian power disappears with it.

Clinton doesn’t have to go to war with Putin. She can starve him out.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories and lies makes Putin’s mouth water with possibilities.