Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipelines?

Who destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines?

After admitting that, “at first glance it seems as if the Russians have no incentive to destroy their ability to tempt Europe with surrendering Ukraine in exchange for turning the gas taps back on this winter,” Mark Wright laid out the case for believing that Russia sabotaged it. He argues it could be “a capability demonstration and a threat to Western energy infrastructure.” Or that it could be a message from Putin to the Russian deep state that the old economic model is dead and gone, and that ending the war in Ukraine won’t bring back normal relations with Europe anyway.

In response, Jim Geraghty writes about all the upsides for the United States, and for retaining Germany in its pro-NATO position. “Those pipelines running from Russia to Germany are a symbol of the German government and its energy policies effectively being purchased by Vladimir Putin,” he writes. And:

There were a whole bunch of elite Europeans, in both the public and private sectors, who had staked their literal and metaphorical fortunes on Russia being a long-term source for European energy needs, and who were likely still holding out hope that within a year or two, the war on Ukraine would end and the continent’s policies could start creeping toward the pre-war status. Those hopes are now going glub-glub-glub.

FWIW, I think Jim’s list of upsides for the U.S. cuts against a theory of Russia doing this.

Russia’s coercive diplomacy strategy was built upon these pipelines functioning, allowing Putin to turn off the taps and then turn them back on again when he gets what he wants. The EU — Germany in particular — was already showing signs of being tired of the energy war. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz continuously declines to send weapons his government has already promised to Ukraine. Arguably, EU’s wartime sanctions on Russia were already weakening. The European Union has already lifted its restrictions on Russian fertilizer coming into the EU, and Russia was asking them to lift the restrictions on Russian fertilizer being shipped to developing nations.

The first glance turns out to be sensible still. Russia is in the midst of an energy war with Europe. Why would it blow up its weapon in the months before it would have its greatest effect?  When you want to demonstrate your capabilities, you don’t deliberately bomb and sabotage yourself.

Mark asks: Who benefits? If it weakens Russia, Ukraine benefits.

But does Ukraine have the capacity to carry out attacks in the Baltic on critical infrastructure? Poland benefits, somewhat. Nord Stream was built precisely to cut Poland out of transfer fees and to diminish their power over energy flowing through its territory into Europe.

The former Polish foreign minister and current MEP, Radosław “Radek” Sikorski, initially went to Twitter to thank the United States for blowing it up. He also reticulated a video of President Joe Biden from earlier this year, apparently promising that the U.S. could take out the pipelines in the event of an invasion of Ukraine. Sikorski’s most endearing trait is his ability to troll and provoke. Was he trolling?

Wright thinks that if the U.S. has its fingerprints on such an operation, it would mean the end of NATO itself. No German government could withstand the anger of the German public at the subterfuge of the United States. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it’s not. What is the German response? The sensible one would be to rebuild as a nuclear-powered grid. I think the even larger and more immediate downside of U.S. involvement in the explosion is that it may force an already desperate Putin to begin treating the United States as a full belligerent and to begin attacking our infrastructure.

That’s all to say: I don’t know.