So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.
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The other pipelines. Their shadow oil fleet. There are lots of options. But to my knowledge, only the British, French and Americans are capable of the long-range clandestine operations.
https://windward.ai/knowledge-base/illuminating-russias-shad...
Would be a shame if they started having engine troubles in the middle of the ocean.
The real question is, should security and defense concerns be placed on hold? If our basic freedoms and rights are being attacked, how big of a deal would be a shadow fleet tanker catastrophe?
If the CIA or US Navy don't have the technical means to blow up the Crimea bridge with plausible deniability they haven't been paying attention.
As long as we're all playing silly only-kinda-deniable games, that's an option on the table.
2. It's not exactly in the interests of NATO to have those ships start spilling tons of oil in the North Atlantic
The problem of that "shadow fleet" is precisely that those are old, uninsured vessels that cause environmental risks.
The gas sold by Russia to France, Germany, etc. is transported using normal vessels, AFAIK.
Since when did engine troubles cause an oil spill?
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
Add to that a natural conservative tendency in the US to jump at isolationism whenever there's an easy excuse (the guy you like is doing the "bad thing" so you don't actually want to stop him, the war is literally somewhere else and doesn't exactly involve us)
So it's hard for people like me, who used to be pretty pacifist, to decide that yeah maybe violence is the right option sometimes?
Also, the entire time we are trying to shake off bullshit "Democrats are warhawks" nonsense from the party that did the desert bombing just because Bush wanted to defend his daddy's memory. The same people who call the Dems warhawks spent the 2000s screaming that "you're either with us or against us" and calling anti-war people pussies so I guess they don't have very good memories.
So for various reasons, some good, the US is extremely gunshy right now. Even those of us wholeheartedly in support of Ukraine, wishing we gave them a thousand Bradleys and tanks, feel uncomfortable with the idea of boots on the ground. Meanwhile Europe has forgotten what intervention is, and seems utterly unwilling to do anything, lest they have to get off their holier than thou pedestal.
Appeasement definitely doesn't work, but the middle east is full of examples of "just bomb them all" also not working very well. Everyone is very nervous. It sure seems like Russia won't stop their horseshit until someone makes them stop, but that's going to require a million dead.