I don’t know if you guys are being deliberately obtuse with stuff or what, but the Nordstream pipeline can deliver gas to Germany—that’s it. If circumstances change such that Russia no longer wants to deliver gas to Germany, the pipeline has no value to them. It doesn’t matter that it’s theirs. It’s not like they can use it for something else.
Russia controls the valves and germany controls the sanctions... anti-gas sanctions come from germany, russia closes the valve, no gas for germany.
Then a cold winter comes, gas prices get very high (especially since the americans are inflating the price), german industry is fucked, people are paying a lot for heat (or being cold), and there's putin with "just lessen the sanctions, stop sending stuff to ukraine, and you get the cheap gas back". And the only one standing between the (relatively strong) industry and cold people are Scholz (...and Ursula) and a lot of "alternatives" who could take their place.
Germany and russia being friendly? American biggest nightmare... as they've said before, literally, on camera, they'll stop the nordstreams, and they did. Now, even if people of germany get fed up and replace the current politicians, they won't get the cheap gas again.
So, russia has less money, germany has less industry, usa gets stronger and can sell overpriced gas... so only one winner in this outcome, and it's not russia.
By the time the pipeline was bombed, it was clear that the EU wasn’t going to cave into Russian demands to stop supporting Ukraine.
So the pipeline sitting there usable but with no gas flowing would both create legal problems for Russia and also be a symbol of European unity.
Regarding the US being able to sell LNG, the capabilities to transport and offload it in the quantities needed don’t exist yet.
I don’t know who blew it up, the most logical would be the Ukrainians but they probably couldn’t have. The next logical are Russia and the certainly have the capability.
The USA may be the third logical option and they do have the capability but I’m not so sure they could have done it in this part of the world undetected by Russia.
> So the pipeline sitting there usable but with no gas flowing would both create legal problems for Russia and also be a symbol of European unity.
What legal problems? Is russia going to get sued? ...while EU is literally stealing russian assets and sending weapons to kill russians?
The situation on tv is one thing, but the people are fed up with ever more expensive lives while sending billions to ukraine, and enough angry people means huge changes in politics. The last time germany was so fucked by outside forces as it is now, they elected that austrian painter guy, who actually made the country strong again... sadly it ended up in a war and another fuckup of germany.
> By the time the pipeline was bombed, it was clear that the EU wasn’t going to cave into Russian demands to stop supporting Ukraine.
it is clear that the ruling class didnt want to, but there was increasing pressure from the people of germany and also other parts of EU to approve nord stream 2.
And the US simply couldnt accept that the possibility that they would cave to pressure from the people(the horror). Its probably entirely possible that the germany/EU regime asked the US to do it, just to remove the possibility of them having to be accountable to their own citizens.
you got me, putin secretly sends me bitcoin, and photos of him riding horses shirtless, as I so desperately crave that.
What a marvellous argumentative tool you have, anything you disagree with that can in some way be classified as "russia might think this way", and you have a magical out where you percieve yourself to have won the argument. And with moral superiority too!
I have heard that putin recommends you breathe oxygen regularly, I would strongly recommend you cease listening to russian propaganda, and do the right thing here
I’d argue Putin is a winner. The Nordstream pipelines were essentially switched off money printing machines that could be switched on at any point if powerful Russians decided it was time to remove Putin. No longer the case now.
By September Putin would have been able to see the writing on the wall. Germany was not caving on sanctions and they were clearly expediting a post Russia energy future.
Also, are you deliberately changing what Biden said about ending (specifically) Nordstream 2 to “the Nordstreams” to make it seem more believable that he was referring to physical destruction rather than stopping the non-operational Nordstream from progressing to operational status?
Meaning what exactly? Very expensive gas, and in turn heat, and local factories closing down?
Politicians can shit around all day, factories need cheap gas to work, people need jobs in those factories to be able to eat and heat their homes and heat is more expensive than ever.
People first need safety, and only after that working factories, and there's tremendous suspicion in Europe that here we have a replay of sad events some 80 years ago. Politicians can shit all day, and people can be gullible as worms, yet sometime they add two with two and figure out that spending more today and changing the energy sources for tomorrow may save them from having to spend all and above to maintain the defense after the previous guy separating them from problems will fail.
Talking about jobs and factories one shouldn't forget about safety.
For "the rest of the world", the "sad events" have been happening literally right now, or during the last 80 years... syria, libya, afghanistan, iraq, iraq again, yemen, yugoslavia, etc., but since it was "us" doing it, no sanctions were needed, and dead civilians didn't count. Syria is occupied right now by americans and you're shitting here about safety... Price Harry even went playing "war tourism" and went shooting afghani farmers and bragged about it... France has been fucking up africa for centuries too. I live in a shitty small slovenia, and even we sent soldiers to help the agressors in afghanistan and syria.
But yes, overinflated politicians are bragging about europe being civilization and everywhere else being a jungle... so yeah, maybe it's time for yankee/European to go home and keep for them/ourselves. If we don't, we have no moral superiority to blame putin for anything while our own soldiers are occupying foreign sovereign countries this very moment.
I don't agree that some of your statements are facts.
However, pretty much all countries have unjust conflicts in their history, where they were on the wrong side. That doesn't mean it should continue.
I'll refrain from commenting on Syria topic - I feel it justifies better facts on the table and longer discussion than this place allows. You may think what you want.
Maybe it's time for many countries to keep to themselves - that would roughly correspond to Westfall sovereignty, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty . Or maybe we should be of the opinion that certain things, like human rights, aren't the matter of countries, and have some ways of supporting them too.
> If we don't, we have no moral superiority to blame putin for anything while our own soldiers are occupying foreign sovereign countries this very moment.
> However, pretty much all countries have unjust conflicts in their history, where they were on the wrong side. That doesn't mean it should continue.
We're not talking about far away history... we're talking about our soldiers occupying foreign sovereign countries right now, today. This is not a germany WW2 situation, where they got fucked, repaid some of the damage, said that they won't repeat history and two generations went by... this is literally today. If we wanted to be better than putin, there's 1 year (minus 11 days) gone by, with us pointing a finger, while we're doing the same... 1 year (almost) that we had the time to "be better", and leave the occupied countriey... but we didn't.
> Or maybe we should be of the opinion that certain things, like human rights, aren't the matter of countries, and have some ways of supporting them too.
Lets be real... noone cares about human rights. At least not enough to start a war. Do people have a right for police not to steal their stuff? Not in america (civil asset forfeiture). The british have arrested more people for "wronghink" (on social media) than the "bad bad putin" did. Guantanamo bay is still there. And zelensky is banning political parties, tv stations and a whole church now. Noone cares about all that. This is just a nice excuse to start a war where you need one... usually in places with either natural resources or strategic location. Find someone to testify about soldiers killing babies, bam war. Need a better story for the second time? Just use weapons of mass destruction excuse.. and then a few years later a "whoopsie, we fucked up". Where are the human rights of the people prince harry killed when he went on his killing tourism?
> Why?
Because we're the same. Counting the number of wars and dead people, even worse.
> I really doubt USA fights at the moment anything close to what's going on in Eastern Ukraine. I think you're biased.
Imagine if 'the rest of the world' was arming afghanis, giving them intelligence and satellite data, starlink, training their soldiers and sending mercenaries... plus of course hundreds of billions of dollars/euros... the afghanistan war would look even worse than vietnam did for americans.
Since we didn't help them, but helped the agressors, afghanistan fell relatively fast. ...and after 20 years and trillion of dollars, they managed to replace the taliban with the taliban.
Both countries also heavily invested in Nordstream-2, and there were good economical reasons for that. Current sanctions are temporary, as well as this war, and if it haven’t been blown up, it would start working again in no time.
Once the dust settles, it will take less time to fix the pipeline than to repair Russia's international standing. That's true even if the pipeline is unsalvageable, because Russia certainly is.
The sanctions aren't going away until Putin is replaced by someone sane. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, do you?
I can easily imagine both a) countries restoring relationship with Russia with Putin and b) Putin by various reasons being replaced by another server of national capital, with some shifts in money, giving excuse to EU to reestablish relationship.
EU was buying gas and oil from Russia for the last 40+ years, they were okay with pumping Russia with billions of euros even after Crimea annexation (and they still pump some moneys during 2022), also funding Russian military industrial complex, that is now blowing up Ukraine. So I’m pretty sure that when dusts settles, Russia will come back as part of international community, maybe with a slightly different leadership.
It’s not unheard for “the West” to maintain good relationships and trade with countries engaged in armed conflicts or human rights violations, if there’re good economical and political reasons. So I won’t be surprised if after conflict has settled, “the West” will slowly restore relationship with Russia, maybe with a slightly different leadership (eg without Putin - but it doesn’t make much difference overall)
If that's all you've got -- and that is, indeed, all you've got -- then just pipe down and save the bandwidth. We didn't try to take over and annex Iraq. We got rid of a dictator. Should we have done that? No, of course not. But it's hardly comparable to what Putin is doing, and your value system is horribly broken if you think otherwise.
I never said whatabout anything lol. You were the one trying to downplay what happened in iraq just because the US graciously didn't annex it (which is not saying a lot when you destroy the country so completely that you guarantee it won't ever be a threat anymore). That's a completely arbitrary goalpost, that conveniently stops right at what your own side didn't do. It's exactly the equivalent of russian apologists arguing that "yeah we invaded a country, but at least it was to defend our direct borders and it wasn't invading and destroying a country on the other side of the world". How convenient.
I get that crying about whataboutism is the trendy way to deflect and be openly hypocritical. But at least do it when it makes sense, not when you get called out for downplaying warcrimes.
I think your value system is even more broken when you dismiss and downplay an entire region being destabilized for generations, a million lives lost and countless more ruined because your side did it "with good intentions", or because gasp someone said a hecking whataboutism.
> The only beneficiary of the pipeline going bust are the USA.
Ukraine and Norway are also beneficiaries. Ukraine because it reduces the risk of Germany getting squishy about supporting them and Norway because they’ve cornered the European natural gas market.
But ukraine is unable to do it by themselves, and norway probably to. On the other hand, USA (biden) literally said that they will stop the nord streams on tv.
They're pretty good at improvisation. Odds are good that they could pull off such a thing if they were so inclined. You don't need a traditional submarine fleet to do something like this.
They're not at the top of my suspects list though.
If the US did blow the pipeline I would be impressed and fully supportive of the decision. I just think Biden lacks the courage to authorize such an action. It’s possible that it was done behind his back, since I very much doubt Biden himself is in control of things to any real extent.
As someone from the balkans, how about you put a uniform on and go fight a war somewhere yourself, and keep us, other people out of your warmongering. Wars are not like call of duty, or whatever your sick fantasy is.
As someone from the balkans, I've had Clintons missles fly over my house to hit a country 400km away, that we were once a part of the same country.
As someone from the balkans, I've seen the waves of immigrants due to bush-obama-trump-ending_with_biden afghanistan war. Also syria and libya wars. Lets not forget iraq... twice.
Also as someone from the balkans, where you can't fart without someone mentioning war crimes, i was wondering how someone can bomb a wedding in pakistan, without being in war with pakistan, or drone-kill a political leader in iran without being in war with iran.
Also as someone from the balkans, I wonder how come that kosovo must become independent, forced by bombs, because some people there want to leave, but at the same time, republika srpska cannot become independent, even though people there want to leave too. On the other hand, just mentioning catalonia, makes EU leaders turn blind, deaf and mute.
Not to mention all the other stuff certain other american politicians did, from cuba, vietnam, korea, somalia, half of southern american countries... also the french (half of africa is trying to get them out), and other countries. Oh, and lets not forget places like yemen... or even palestine.
So what happens when a certain <not putin> decides to start any of those wars? My small country of slovenia, sends soldiers to help them... afghanistan for example. No sanctions, no embargos, no sending weapons to help... send soldiers to help occupy instead. Even we're still in syria right this moment.
But yeah, let our soldiers occupy foreign countries right this moment and point a finger at putin.
Switzerland? Sure, they can point fingers (and even they are close to throwin away their neutral status). Everyone else should pack their soldiers home first and pay to rebuild those countries, before they point a finger at putin.
"If the US did blow the pipeline I would be impressed and fully supportive of the decision."
Then you are also fully supportive of starting (more like escalating, at this point) a WWIII. I hope you never find about the true cost of such a decision, and of war in general.
But seeing how you support this act of war, don't be surprised when one day it comes knocking at your door.
No longer supplying means that they get geopolitical flack for 'using hydrocarbons as a weapon'. And will get dragged before the courts for not honoring their long term contracts.
So blowing the pipeline up is the better alternative.
Oh come on... just look at the list of anti-russia sanctions and trying to legalize literal stealing of russian assets in europe... closing the valve on the pipeline is miniscule compared to eg. cutting russia out of SWIFT.
On the other hand, this has cause many other countries to think the famous "what if we're next?", and switching from dollars to their local currencies, forming new alliances (either within BRICS or SCO) which seriously endangers the power of dollars and in turn euros.
> No longer supplying means that they get geopolitical flack for 'using hydrocarbons as a weapon'.
They've already invaded a nation. What you're suggesting here is like a violent machine-gun toting bank robber in ski mask making sure to pay his parking bill before driving off, because he's worried about what other people might think of him.
Using international trade to coerce nations is a far lesser crime than invading them and leveling their cities with artillery.
> A famous journalist, American no less, does not agree with you
A famous journalist who believed obl was imprisoned by pakistan in 2006 and the assassination was staged, siria didnt use chemical weapons, and skripals weren’t poisoned by novichok. You see the pattern here?
This was reported at a simmilar timeframe (compared to the war) and from the same groups of people who said iraq had weapons of mass destruction, so not trusting them would not be that stupid... especially if you have better inside sources that "normal people" do.
It’s not even just a little difficult for you to believe that the US would risk totally destroying its standing within NATO in order to do something that Russia was already doing on their own accord?
Why is it difficult for you to understand that Europeans have agency and pride like anyone else and they would not “toe the line” if the US did something so brazen and aggressive. It’s absurd.
This only holds if you think of Russia as a single abstract actor with its own interests. Instead Russia, like every country, has individual decision-makers with their own personal interests.
The “Russia did it” argument for Nord Stream is about internal politics. Putin’s war ruined the lifestyles of his elites, who spent most of their time in mansions and yachts in the West. All of that is gone now. It’s tempting for those elites to want to find a way to turn back the clock to February 23, 2022, get the gas money flowing again, and get back to the family villa in the Amalfi Coast. Like Cortes burning the ships to remove the temptation to mutiny, blowing up Nord Stream lets Putin close off this avenue.
Truth is you can tell a plausible story for a lot of actors to do it. But I lean toward the Russia hypothesis because they had less to lose if they got caught.
The US has spent immense political and literal capital on building a coalition to sanction Russia, which could all be undone if it got caught committing an act of war against Germany (no, phone spying is not the same, everyone does that to everyone). Besides, the benefits for the US are hazy, since Germany did not appear open to ever reactivating the pipelines. Why take such a huge risk to prevent something that didn’t appear likely to ever happen, let alone any time soon?
But if it was Russia, what is Germany gonna do to Russia that it’s not already doing? Maybe it would’ve sped up tank deliveries by a few months if they’d caught Russia red-handed, but tanks still happened eventually.
Russia had zero logical reasons to blow it up. I don’t have any trouble believing that Putin’s devotion to rational decision making is less than complete at this point—particularly when it comes to doling out retribution to the west.
The idea that the US would risk making itself a pariah amongst its NATO allies, particularly right now does not seem believable to me.
The US had no qualms making itself a pariah amongst its UN allies by spying on them back in 2010, germany included, when biden was still vice president no less, so I don't think that's much of an argument against them doing it. Especially when you are talking about NATO, an organization where the US power imbalance is even higher.
That isn't enough to blame them for it of course, but to assume that Putin is not behaving logically because the alternatives are so "unthinkable" is misguided.
News for you: Everyone is spying on everyone else. Always have, always will be. Germany was also spying on the US. Spying, a.k.a having inside knowledge, is always a preference by all regimes. Whether one has the means to do it is another matter.
>"The idea that the US would risk making itself a pariah amongst its NATO allies"
NATOS biggest financial backer, strongest military that is actually capable of something and projects force all over the world, financial power that can tell to Swiss banks how high to jump or else and tell other countries what they can sell and to whom.
Without the US NATO is irrelevant. I think your "US would risk making itself a pariah" statement is pure fantasy. There is zero risk for the US.
I suppose debating the finer points of international diplomacy would be a rather pointless endeavor at this point if we can’t even agree that, depriving a close ally of energy that it uses to fuel its industry and keep its citizens warm through the winter, would entail some non zero level of risk.
