“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

> If you look at all the players, their interests, and their capabilities, I think the most logical conclusion is that the US likely did it.

I disagree.

The most logical explanation is tha Russia did it as a capacity demonstration and threat against Baltic Pipe to pressure contries in the region regarding Ukraine, but that, like all their threats against the West over Ukraine policy so far, the threat was hollow.

The US have been overtly against those pipelines and the close relations between Germany and Russia, including and especially energy dependency. In fact, a major win of the US so far in the Ukraine war has been the Europeans' and especially Germany's shift in gas supplies from Russia to themselves.

Russia destroying their own pipelines (both NS 1 and the new NS 2 were sabotaged) looks like them shooting themselves in both feet at once. Like doing 'capacity demonstration' by nuking the Kremlin... They could, but would that be a likely scenario?

Many, if not most, expert observers strongly suspect the US for a reason.

Germany gets its gas natural gas from Norway now. It would be unlikely that the U.S. would attack the gas supplies of a major NATO ally. Especially when that ally has been less than enthusiastic in helping Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/where-does-germany-s...

They get a lot from Norway because it is near and there are pipelines, but US' LNG exports to the EU are through the roof and will keep growing as things get organised.

Joe talks a lot:

"If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it." -- Joe Biden, Feb 2022, with the German's Chancellor standing next to him! [1]

So at the very least the US thought that they indeed had control over that "major NATO ally" and could make thinly veiled threats to their face. Why you think that the US would be above sabotage on a matter of strategic national interests is unclear.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-joe-biden-vladimir...

On February 22, 2022 German Chancellor Scholz suspended certification of Nordstream2 following Russia formally recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as republics. I believe that, but can’t find a confirming source, that Russia was obligated to make deliveries via Nordstream1 even though it did not have access to SWIFT. By it no longer being operational it was no longer required to make deliveries.

It is inconceivable that Biden made that comment without consulting Germany. Also it was primarily Nordstream1 that was attacked.

Gas prices spiked and it seems likelier that Russia was behind it. At least to me. I don’t know the truth of the matter.

Washington, under Obama, was caught spying directly on Angela Merkel and her government. What leads you to believe that Washington has ever respected Germany, which it occupies with tens of thousands of troops, as a sovereign equal?

You don't need to demonstrate ability to blow up your own pipeline close to your own territorial waters. If it's Russia (which I don't think is very likely) I find it more believable that it's the result of internal politics as an option of killing the tzar, withdrawing from Ukraine and making a deal with the West to go back to old normal is now off the table.

You think Russia tried to send a message by……destroying its own infrastructure?!

It was their biggest leverage over the EU. Now it’s gone and there’s no possibility of restoring Russian gas flows to the EU.

If they were gonna destroy critical international infrastructure wouldn’t it make more sense to blow up something else?

If what you say is true, why has Russia blown up their own pipelines twice before?

There's this from George Friedman in 2015 The Chicago Council on Global Affairs (@1:38 mins) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eyfTX5n_fdI where he mentions economic relations between Russia and Germany are the biggest threat to the United States.

Also see here https://www.reddit.com/r/jimmydore/comments/10x3yfq/jimmy_do...

It requires one to be fairly detached from political reality to describe U.S. military forces in German as an occupation. You lose credibility by saying such a thing. You should reconsider the sources of your information.

All governments spy on all others to the best of their ability. If Germany isn't spying on the US that only means their intelligence service is not competent. Of course more effort is and should be spent on potential enemies, but there is too much in play to not spy on your friends if you can get by with it.

Note that success of spies is not guaranteed. It is possible Germany doesn't have spies in the US because despite trying they haven't found any.

On the contrary, it is an objective portrayal of the facts which is not clouded by political smoke and mirrors.

Washington defeated Germany and Japan in the 1940s and proceeded to demilitarize them and occupy them with its own forces. This is historically standard military practice. It is not a "nice gesture" from Washington. It was all part of a coherent strategy to contain and confront the rival USSR, around which Germany and Japan represent critical nodes.

Can you share details?

> Germany, which it occupies with tens of thousands of troops

As a German, not just me, when Trump threatened - yes threatened! - to withdraw lots of troops from Germany there was lots of Angst about the economic fallout. US troops are in areas that have benefited, and still benefit, very heavily from their presence.

The opinion that US troops are "occupiers" can only be found in some tiny minority fringe groups, left and right, if even that.

I'm East German even, who even maintained interest in the ex USSR territories, visiting a few times (Ukraine and Russia, both, even taking a two month long Russian language course to refresh my knowledge, so I should be biased towards the Russian PoV, but there is no way I would find your assertion anything but nonsense. Having US troops in Germany is mostly looked upon favorably, even when Germans have not agreed with some of the wars the US fought using them.

There also is a significant difference in public opinion before the Russian invasion and after. Also, opinions and the relationship were worst, by far, during the Trump years. So, during that time, and before the invasion, and definitely after Trump, the opinion was indeed more in favor of the US leaving. For some strange reason Russia decided to help out European-US alliance and to give it a huge boost...

Just as an example, it's not like that hasn't been reported many times since last February:

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/22/international-...

They include their methodology at the top, including the questions asked.

> Data collection began a week prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Japan.

.

Oh and I'm of the - weakly held - opinion that it was the Russians who blew up the pipeline. I don't understand the questions here about benefits and motives - this has all been discussed to death elsewhere, anyone seriously interested in the topic, and not just wanting to annoy somebody here, would/could just have gone there and read it all. I'd suspect Poland more than the US, they've been visibly mad and very outspoken about Germany's Russia reliance and close ties for a long time, they've felt threatened by the Russians and are right next to them.

https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/68455... -- "Nord Stream 2 as a Threat to National Interests of Poland and Ukraine"

There is no shortage of candidates, and if the governments don't want to talk, not even the Russians making much noise, I see no good purpose behind all this speculation. Especially when people start making strong assertions left and right, based on carefully selected pieces of facts. What a waste of time, but I didn't want to let the "US troops occupy Germany" stand, it's just too silly. Oh, and one pipe of NS2 remaining does seem kind of significant to me. Hardly an accident.

The US pays Germany to be there. Germany leases the land US military bases are on to the US. For Germany this provides security guarantees as Germany doesn’t want to increase funding to its own military and provides economic booms to the local areas. This is far from an occupation.

Also as a German, I respectfully disagree with your opinion on this matter.

For the most part, I agree that the US occupation has been benign. Really, they are not protecting Germany from anything, but also not causing many problems. They are perhaps creating some jobs even.

However, when Washington starts blowing up critical national infrastructure to advance its narrow geopolitical interests, that changes.

To be clear, the economic fallout of Germany having to export LNG across the Atlantic instead of through already-existing pipelines is vastly more severe than US closing its military bases (which could be partially reappropriated by a growing Bundeswehr).

British Monarchists made the same arguments about royal troops in the soon-to-be United States of America.

What was true 75 years has long since stopped being true. Today no one can reasonably describe U.S. presence in Germany as an occupation. Please reconsider your sources of information. They are duping you and preventing you from understanding present day political reality.

You remind me of the leftists I met when I lived in Kreuzburg in Berlin.

Well, apparently Russia was also shelling the nuclear power plant they had already seized and where occupying, so who knows /s

Neither of the two sources you linked claim that Russia destroyed those pipelines.

Play out the game theory here. Russia has nothing to gain and lots of leverage to lose by destroying the pipelines. They can just keep the gas flows off FFS!

That doesn’t mean the US was involved but it makes zero sense for the Russians to do it to themselves.

My sources are the well-established historical fact that US has a permanent standing army of tens of thousands of soldiers inside Germany's national borders. There is no need to resort to name-calling.

It's important to point out here that Russia has done MANY brainless things during this war, things that actively harmed their position in the world. Miscalculating an attempt to change the calculus is definitely a possibility.

Or Russia did it for the internal audience: "Look at what they did the big evil US just wants europe to suffer we are the best"

I'm not sure it makes sense for either the US or Russia to have done it. I bet it was some smaller NATO country or ukraine just whistling in the corner and giggling a little as everyone points fingers.

British taxation of the colonies (e.g. the Stamp Act and others) was in the opposite direction. The British government was not paying the colonies for its presence in what would become the US.

And yet Trump threatened to pull out US troops from Germany because the Germans weren't contributing enough. What did he mean by that?

> However, when Washington starts blowing up critical national infrastructure to advance its narrow geopolitical interests

Well, that is an unsubstantiated opinion not held by the majority. I did not claim nobody with such opinions exist, one just has to look at the AfD.

Oh and it was Russia that stopped sending gas, long before the pipelines were blown up. You also conveniently don't address my last point, which does not fit the "the US was it" so that's understandable on some level.

> they are not protecting Germany from anything

And the reason for that is that we can hide behind Poland, which is protected by NATO.

> If they were gonna destroy critical international infrastructure wouldn’t it make more sense to blow up something else?

No, if they were going to make a threat and capacity demonstration against other, active natural gas pipelines in the region, destroying an idle natural gas pipeline makes a lot more sense than “something else”.

(There’s a certain extent to which it doesn’t make sense to make idle threats without the will to carry them out, but that clearly hasn’t factored into Russian action related to pressuring European countries over Ukraine policy.)

Are you listening to yourself? Trump threatened to pull out US troops, which the Germans didn't want. How is it an occupation when Germans are saying "please don't leave." Germans weren't contributing enough is 100% uncontroversially about German contribution to their own military / defense. US wants European countries to spend their own money on their own defense, at least 2% of GDP. Of course EU countries don't want to spend that money if they don't have to, because they're more than comfortable outsourcing it to the US having to spend $ on those countries' defense in the interest of Pax Americana.

That would be outright war, they don't need to threaten that at all, if it got to that point they might as well just nuke Berlin.

There is one thing that might point towards Russia blowing up their own pipeline: Before the pipes were destroyed completely, the Russians were coming up with all sorts of strange excuses for why they were reducing the amount of gas delivered through the pipes. Even though it was obvious to everyone that the reductions were for political reasons, the Russians kept insisting that there was force majeure. So its not completely unthinkable that they would blow up their own pipeline just to not have to announce they are stopping sales of gas to europe.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nord-stream-turbine-...

Or could be Putin cementing his position. Even if you do a coup there is no thawing of energy policy with Europe so now the elites as less likely to try

If your standard of proof is that Russia admits it this conversation won’t go far. Russia is the only one that benefits.

Russia weaponizes energy. Many people assume Russia is rational but it’s just not true. Like John McCain said, it’s a gas station run by gangsters.

> They can just keep the gas flows off FFS!

Russia would have to pay penalties in the contract. They don’t want to do that.

> That doesn’t mean the US was involved but it makes zero sense for the Russians to do it to themselves.

See above points. It is clearly not “zero.”

> That would be outright war

Uh, yeah, Russia already describes the current war in Ukraine as against “the collective West”.

> they don't need to threaten that at all,

Whether or not you think Russia needs to issue war threats to Western states, rhey’ve been doing it a lot inn last year.

> if it got to that point they might as well just nuke Berli

The point of a threat is to dissaude an opponent before it becomes necessary to execute on. Yhe threat. So other attacks that they might do if the threat fails don’t really effect whether the threT might be seen as useful. Also, Russia has made implicit nuclear thrrats to Germany, most, recently over the decisions to send MBTs to Ukraine.

> Play out the game theory here. Russia has nothing to gain and lots of leverage to lose by destroying the pipelines. They can just keep the gas flows off FFS!

Keeping the gas flows off has manifestly not given the leverage they are seeking over Ukraine policy, Considering that there is every reason to believe (whether or not this was initially the case, but note that is one of the explicit Russian justificafions foe the war) that Putin sees Western assistance to Ukraine as both an imminenr ans existential threat to Russia, or at least the present regime, scarificing leverage that had already been exhausted without effect on that issue foe something that has a chance, even remote, Of budging that can be worthwhile.

> Washington defeated Germany and Japan in the 1940s and proceeded to demilitarize them and occupy them with its own forces.

Yes, part of Germany was occuppied by the Western Allies until 1955. And there were sone technical restrictions on the sovereignty of Germany-as-a-whole until the 2+4 Treaty went into full effect in 1991.

But even the later of those dates was almost 17 years before Obama became President.

> It was all part of a coherent strategy to contain and confront the rival USSR

The occupation of the Axis Powers by the Allies, including the USSR, was not part of a strategy to contain the USSR. It may have formed part of the context of such a strategy, but that’s a different thing.

The leverage had not been exhausted. Gas flows had been reduced, and the possibility of restoring full gas flows is the bargaining chip Russia had to offer to the EU.

This was why Germany was hesitant to impose full sanctions requested by the US and other NATO countries. They were hesitant to supply tanks and other military equipment.

Since the destruction of the pipelines Germany has capitulated on the tanks issue. Now there’s nothing to gain by working with the Russians because their industrial gas-dependent economy cannot benefit from renewed gas flows.

> If your standard of proof is that Russia admits it this conversation won’t go far.

The sources themselves do not make the assertion that Russia destroyed the pipelines. I’m not looking for an admission from Russia!

> Russia weaponizes energy.

100% agree. Destroying the pipelines eliminates Russia’s ability to continue weaponizing gas flows. The German economy now has nothing to gain by easing sanctions or military aid to Ukraine.

> Russia would have to pay penalties in the contract. They don’t want to do that.

Destroying a pipeline in foreign economic zones does not absolve you of your contractual obligations. That would be a massive escalation and an overt act of war. It’d be much easier and less risky to manufacture justifications for reduced gas flows.

I don’t know who destroyed the pipelines but Russia seems to be the least likely perpetrator of all the players.

The most logical explanation of why you have so much karma is that you write anything that will get you upvoted, no matter how stupid it is.

> The sources themselves do not make the assertion that Russia destroyed the pipelines. I’m not looking for an admission from Russia!

There are no other suspects and Russia does benefit.

> 100% agree. Destroying the pipelines eliminates Russia’s ability to continue weaponizing gas flows. The German economy now has nothing to gain by easing sanctions or military aid to Ukraine.

What makes you think Germany doesn't want gas from Russia? That's the whole reason they sent a few thousand helmets to Ukraine at the beginning of the war. I think the German dream is that the war ends and they get their cheap gas again from Russia.

> Destroying a pipeline in foreign economic zones does not absolve you of your contractual obligations. That would be a massive escalation and an overt act of war. It’d be much easier and less risky to manufacture justifications for reduced gas flows.

No one can prove that you did it. That's the whole point. I really don't understand your comment here.