A few weeks ago, I wrote about the theory – some would say ‘conspiracy theory’ – that the U.S. provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to sabotage Nord Stream 2. I said that although there is circumstantial evidence, there isn’t any direct evidence, “so for the time being it should be regarded with appropriate scepticism”.
Since my article was published, the ‘Nord Stream theory’ has been covered in at least two other places.
On September 15th, Sohrab Ahmari posted a brief interview he’d done with the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Discussing the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ahmari writes:
Is the United States really prepared to see Europe turn itself into an energy and economic basket case for no tangible gains against Moscow? … The most cynical Hungarian answer is that that is exactly what Washington wants to bring about: to downgrade German manufactures and sever the energy-manufacturing synergy between Russia and Germany, to end Europe’s aspirations to “strategic autonomy” and induce a total dependence on America.
These are Ahmari’s words, not Orbán’s. But they appear to be based on a conversation that took place between the two.
Then on October 11th, Thomas Fazi wrote a piece for UnHerd where he discusses the theory at length. He makes many of the points I made in my Daily Sceptic article, as well as several others that are of interest. Fazi quotes the American geostrategist George Friedman, who said the following in 2015:
The overriding interest of the United States, for which we have fought wars for centuries – the First, Second and Cold War – has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there they are the only force that could threaten us. And we need to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The theory is still far from proven, but Ahmari and Fazi’s articles are worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The US policy towards Europe described here would be a dramatic change, especially for Democrats.
For years Eurosceptics (as we were called) argued that the EU wanted to be in a position to challenge the US and Anglosphere and many of its leaders were anti-American. Despite this the US pressed the UK to get deeper and deeper into the EU and gaveall the encouragement it could to ever deeper political union. When the EU began to aspire to a security and military stance there was only encouragement from the USA.
Manywho might have chosen Brexit sooner were persuaded that if the USAsupported the EU it couldn’t be such a big threat to the west after all. When Trump presssed the European members of NATO to pay their way he was condemned by the Democrats. When he pointed out the way Germany and others were ripping off the US on manufactured goods trade he was condemned.
When Trump vetoed NordstreamII he was condemned and Biden gave the go-ahead so Germany and Europe would become ever more dependent on Russia.
Now it seems the penny has dropped within at least the Administration members of the Democratic Party. One wonders if the penny will eventually drop on China (where Trump was also critical) and on net Zero.
“the penny will eventually drop on China” … that’s assuming the Biden administration is not owned lock stock and barrel by China. China’s reach in the US appears to be quite substantial and it seems to have gone through the Dems.
The Marshal Plan, NATO and USA support for Europe was always about preventing Europe falling under the spell of Communism post-WWII – a reasonable concern since pre-1940 Communism was popular – and thus become part of the Russian Empire and challenge US global hegemony.
Post-1990, the USA’s big worry has been an emergent Russia to challenge it economically and militarily. The EU certainly has previously floated the notion that Russia could join the EU. The US would not want that.
However I don’t think current US behaviour is to prevent Russia & Germany joining up, but definitely it wants to destroy Russia. Europe has always been acceptable collateral damage to the US in its war of global supremacy with Russia. It is in Europe that a land war and limited nuclear war would have been waged against the USSR if need be.
So indeed Europe is expendable to advance US geopolitical interests against Russia.
Succinct analysis.
Germany simply is no sovereign country, yet.
Putin’s speeches in the Bundestag in 2001 and then again his editorial in the SZ in 2010 shed more light on the German/Russian history, relationship and how he envisaged it.
Like Erdogan with his EU membership application, he was hung out to dry instead.
Like Erdogan, he then started to give a fig.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21340
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html
With respect, I’m not sure how this can be taken as direct evidence of anything?
”Is the United States really prepared to see Europe turn itself into an energy and economic basket case for no tangible gains against Moscow? … The most cynical Hungarian answer is that that is exactly what Washington wants to bring about: to downgrade German manufactures and sever the energy-manufacturing synergy between Russia and Germany, to end Europe’s aspirations to “strategic autonomy” and induce a total dependence on America.”
The US administration seems perfectly happy to see the US turned into an ‘energy basket case’, so is it a stretch to doubt they’d pay the energy security of Europe any consideration?
…”the US provoked Russia to sabotage Nord Stream 2.”
You might want to have a look at this passage again, actually check/read the articles you linked to, which make no such reference, let alone posit such a theory, at all- to the contrary- and/or pull your piece.
Mackinder and Brzeszinski were the first to write this general observation and goal reg. Ukraine/Germany/Russia down not just as a theory, let alone a conspiracy theory, but as a goal and policy.
Later it was also most openly pursued by Wolfowitz, the Straussians, CFR&co.
The Unherd article mentions a lot of that and them, Condi Rice is also on the record regarding the explicit US energy goal, namely replacing Russian gas with US LNG for Germany, and her statement is over 5 years old.
Michael Hudson has written articles early on about weakening Germany being the real strategic goal of the Ukraine war-mongering, next to the obvious financial ones, and that is also going splendidly well.
Needless to say, that the other usual suspects in that regard, the UK, Poland and the unmentionable one(s), have the very same goal and are also pretty open about this, in particular and most expressively 1.3trln€ demanding Poland.
Sadly, the still guilt-complex laden, eco-fanatic, often poorly educated, always incompetent and to a good part nihilistic left/green German government and main opposition is either too stupid to see that, or, more likely, fully on board with the destruction, and sadly, the very same goes for most of the public, though the percentage of opponents is larger among the public than the politicians, particularly in the East and among the people who have to work in the private sector and do so in SMEs rather than in multinationals.
OK Noah, I noticed you fixed it.
Now it makes sense.
Excuse my strong language then.
Sorry, still makes no sense whatsoever for Russia to deliberately destroy a piece of important infrastructure that they have control over that gives them a big bargaining chip. At a stretch, you could see it being a false flag attack.
I’m still going with it was an accident due to poor/botched maintenance procedures. And yes it can happen twice in different locations if the situation/conditions are identical.
People say lightening doesn’t strike twice in the same place, but often it does and frequently for the same reason it struck first time.
I thought I read somewhere that the Poles had done it.
This isn’t about who sabotaged the pipelines. It’s about why the US got involved in Ukraine in the first place. See my article to which I referred.
Ah, yes, I see what you are getting at now. I interpreted your words “provoked Russia to sabotage Nord Stream” as “provoked Russia into sabotaging Nord Stream” rather than “provoked Russia in order to sabotage Nord Stream (the sabotage in this case not necessarily being destroying the pipeline but in some way derailing the project)”.
Thanks.
So he’s using the word “sabotage” in a way his readers won’t understand?
Why can’t he just write better English?
No worries. It seems you weren’t the only one who got confused. I’ve changed the opening sentence to “… the U.S. provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to sabotage Nord Stream 2”.
An article which is well worth a read.
Two other journalists with no new evidence speculate on who blew up the pipelines.
Not news.
Does something “gaining traction in the media” have any bearing on truth and reality?
This seems to be yet another example of Noah airing his personal opinions based on zero evidence.
We will never know who actually was behind it or did it.
But to think Putin would simply be provoked or manipulated by US policy alone is IMHO idiocy.
Russia believes – with good reason that its very existence is under severe threat.
No one has a bloody clue how this ends.
But it seems clear that :-
1 the USA is not interested in peace talks.
2.They and their poodles, especially the UK, are deliberately making matters worse.
3.Idiots in the West are theorising nuclear bombs. Unbelievable.
That said, we do live in Clown World.
We are being played by the USA and big tec/the Media. Again.
One can only wonder if these people actually ever came close to a history book. The USA fought in two world wars as part of the coaltion opposed to Germany which both had (among other things) the explicit goal of eliminating a nascent German hegemony in eastern Europe including large parts of Russia. During the second world war, it actually enabled the Russians to reach their traditional goal of a panislavist Russian empire in eastern Europe after large-scale ethnic cleansing (already a Russian policy during the first world war) of this area to remove its non-slavic (mostly German) population. Since then, Germany has been a global (and European) non-actor with very limited souvereignity on a tight, American leash. To this date, all German mainstream parties slavishly imitate whatever the Democrats do in the USA (while the informal party of the people who don’t even bother to vote in German elections has recently grown to 40% of the population).
I presume you don’t count AfD as mainstream. What’s your take on them?
They’re not mainstream insofar the older parties aren’t yet willing to enter into coalition governments with them (somewhat similar to the Greens until about 2000, ie, roughly twenty years after they started to show up in parliaments). Currently, they’re mostly serving as supposedly ‘right wing’ punching ball in lieu of the Republican party (which has no equivalent in Germany) for the more avid Democrats-cosplayers. Due to their east German heritage, they’re acting pro-Russia and pro-Putin at the moment and their political positions are essentially those the CDU abandoned during the Merkel era, eg Deutschland ist kein Einwanderungsland (Germany is not an immigration country, a CDU slogan of the 1990s. Nowadays, that’s considered an outright fascist proposition).
At the moment, they’re a pretty meaningless but firmly establishment pseudo-opposition party. Sooner or later, the laws of gravity will assert themselves, as they did with the Greens, and including them as part of some coalition government will become to convenient an option to keep ignoring it. They will then quickly fall completely in line because that’s how $$$ can be made and also, because people aspiring to become members of the class of professional (party) politicans will start to consider them a serious career option. They will then become another shell party which is really a vehicle for these (pretty interchangeable) people to get into lucrative positions of power and the only thing which will still distinguish them from all the other such vehicles will be that the colour blue is associated with them (CDU/CSU black, SPD red, Left pinkish red, Greens obviously green and FDP yellow).
Why does anyone question that America blew it up? Occam’s Razor, people! They promised multiple times that they would stop NS2 if Russia invaded Ukraine. They have the (rare) technical capability. They put a surveillance Boeing Poseidon in the area at the time it happened. That plane refuelled over Poland, and a Polish MEP thanked the US for blowing it up. It escalates a war that has been one of their strategic goals. It puts pressure on Germany to stay in line against Russia. It allows them fleece Europe for the energy they will now sell them. It furthers their Great Reset agenda: impoverishment of everyone but the elite, pouring taxpayers’ money down the drain, rationing of absolutely everything on the pretext of energy shortages, etc etc.
What does this mean “the U.S. provoked Russia to sabotage Nord Stream 2.” ? Who did the sabotaging in this statement ?
See my post below and NC’s reply and my reply to his reply.
About a week after Nordstream I saw a poll in a German Newspaper, (I will try to find it) where @90% of the people that responded said they thought America was the culprit..I think that really matters….
I don’t think America gives a fig whether Europe implodes or not..they are only interested In their own imperialist goals. The idea that they care about Ukraine and it’s people other than as a political tool, is I believe, laughable.
This study, by the Government think tank Rand….”over extending and unbalancing Russia”..is worth a read…..it’s like a ‘how to’ manual…and is eerily close to what is happening. In the full version one of its first comments is that ‘the first step would be stopping Nordstream 2’.…..?
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
I agree that the idea of Germany, the largest economy in Europe, and the fourth largest by GPD in the world, flourishing with the use of cheap plentiful fuel from Russia is something the Americans have hated for a very long time..it’s inconceivable that they are not happy about the current situation, and wish it to continue.
Re ‘the U.S. provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to sabotage Nord Stream 2.’
Why didn’t the Americans just carry out the clandestine destruction of a couple of (admittedly deeply submerged) metal pipes;
Instead of the much more complicated and lengthy process of surveilling, compromising then blackmailing Putin’s personal physician into injecting a doze if the CIA’s recently developed top-top secret Total Mind Control Nanobot Serum into the President’s brain;
Then using mice and keyboards in Langley to literally manipulate Vladimir’s voice and writing hands into ordering the mass build up of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders throughout 2021 followed by the full invasion in February 2022?
Re:
‘Fazi quotes the American geostrategist George Friedman, who said the following in 2015:
So to be clear this latest attempt to blame the United States for the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine revolves around the idea that the US was deeply concerned about totalitarian Russia and democratic Germany forming a military alliance to attack them from across the Atlantic Ocean – so (via nanobots or otherwise) forced / instigated Russia’s 24 February ‘Special Military Operation’ to put a stop to this dastardly plan?
Top marks at least for ‘out of the box’ thinking;
But the fact remains that Russia (not the US) invaded Ukraine.
And has gone on to threaten the entire population of the world with nuclear annihilation if anyone stands in their way.
Thank heavens for some common sense on here.
Can anyone on this site really think that governments and their agencies as demonstrably incompetent as those running most major economies could possibly arrange the effective sabotage of even a whelk stall?
Look at the lethal buffoons working for Putin actually admitting on the telephone to their victim (who rang them up pretending to be their boss!) that they had put a lethal chemical agent into his underpants while he wasn’t looking.
John Cleese foray into journalism is clearly to pick up some new material. He will be spoilt for choice.
Yes, the Navalny documentary was one of the the best and most revealing pieces of film-making of all time.
An amazingly courageous man who only just escaped assassination and is now languishing in jail on trumped up charges exposing the brutal and murderous nature of the Putin regime.
The same totalitarian government we’re all meant to agree has ‘legitimate grievances’ over Ukraine, other former Soviet states, NATO, and the democratic West in general
LOL!
This morning in the office….
Sergeant Sontol!
Sir, yes Sir!….
I need you to change tack with your posts today….the ones we gave you, the ‘faux morally superior’ ones we’ve been using don’t seem to be having any effect..it could be the fact that the bloody USA blew up the Nordstream, that the majority of people know and believe it, and that there is evidence, both written and spoken, of dozens of the idiots saying exactly that! Or it could be that the Ukrainians, after blowing up the Kerch Bridge in a terrorist attack then celebrating within hours with tweets, texts, a stamp and selfies…I think this is turning people off….!
It looks like ordinary people are now realising that the Ukrainians are still continuing to bomb the Donbass daily, killing innocent civilians…damn those independent reporters……it’s a hard one to sell, seeing as though we’re supposed to be pretending that these people want the Ukrainians to save them…..and we’ve got to pretend we care…
No we need another plan…let’s go with calling them crazy conspiracy people…I mean it’s all we’ve got against Putin, but we’re getting plenty of people to believe that…?
But Sir, the people on DS have been called that before, you know when our office was pretending that the vaccines worked and we were on here trying to persuade them, without any good evidence, that they needed to be jabbed….?
Sorry lad it’s all we’ve got so just go with it. In fact make sure you keep a copy because it’s exactly the reason we are going for China next..you know that they really are going to attack us with nano bots!
Do we have any proof Sir, I mean China hasn’t attacked any sovereign countries in the last forty years, whereas the USA and NATO??
Careful lad, remember the script!
Sir, yes Sir, sorry Sir!!!
……LOL!!!!
Re ‘This morning in the office….Sergeant Sontol!‘
Thanks for the promotion!
‘It could be the fact that the bloody USA blew up the Nordstream, that the majority of people know and believe it, and that there is evidence, both written and spoken, of dozens of the idiots saying exactly that!‘
I have no idea what happened to these pipelines (one of which is still intact) – if it was deliberate destruction who was responsible, or whether there were in fact natural implosions caused by a lack of gas / internal pressure countering sea pressure.
In any case if you are appalled by the resultant severage of the gas supply between Russian and Europe, presumably you are equally outraged by President Putin’s previous decision to cut it off at source (unless certain conditions were met) – effectively the same thing.
‘Or it could be that the Ukrainians, after blowing up the Kerch Bridge in a terrorist attack’
If you wish to label the attempted disabling of a bridge which was illegally built between a conquering country and the province of an independent state that it had illegally annexed and was now being used as one of the main supply lines for its armed forces that have since invaded the entire independent state, this infrastructure attack resulting in the deaths of three people (still obviously regrettable) as ‘terrorism’-
What word would you use to describe sending vast armed forces into a neighbouring much smaller country to engage in mass destruction and murder (casualties almost certainly already in the tens of thousands), annexing / incorporating further provinces of this attacked nation, and threatening on an almost daily basis to wipe out the entire population of the world through initiating nuclear armageddon if anyone dares to directly intervene militarily (as the world’s nations are called on to do by the UN Charter)?
‘It looks like ordinary people are now realising that the Ukrainians are still continuing to bomb the Donbass daily, killing innocent civilians…damn those independent reporters……it’s a hard one to sell, seeing as though we’re supposed to be pretending that these people want the Ukrainians to save them…..and we’ve got to pretend we care…’
It was completely false to characterise the Russian backed Donbas insurrection and resulting civil war from 2014 on as Ukraine unilaterally shelling / bombing the region and especially targeting civilians (a total of 7 of whom died in the year preceding Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’).
To do so now in the context of an invasion followed by defensive military action by the invaded country (including in the 5 provinces illegally annexed by the invading state) is absurd.
‘No we need another plan…let’s go with calling them crazy conspiracy people…I mean it’s all we’ve got against Putin, but we’re getting plenty of people to believe that…?’
In my nanobot injection satire above I wasn’t attacking anyone personally or implying the existence of ‘crazy conspiracy theories’ but rather highlighting the fact that every single one of the ‘the US engineered the Russian invasion of Ukraine for x y and z reasons’ rests on the fallacy that President Putin and all the other decision makes / participants in this military and ideological strategy have no free will and are being manipulated like puppets.
‘But Sir, the people on DS have been called that before, you know when our office was pretending that the vaccines worked and we were on here trying to persuade them, without any good evidence, that they needed to be jabbed….?’
Whilst I don’t believe the more extreme allegations about the health threats posed by coronavirus vaccines (any more than I did about the health threats posed by this flu-like infection itself) I opposed not only all jab mandates but any sort of pressure whatsoever on individuals to get them.
I similarly opposed lockdowns, mask mandates and all the other economically catastrophic, illiberal and coercive aspects of this whole disastrous episode.
And it is for exactly the same anti-state oppression reasons that I even more vigorously oppose the vastly more illiberal and directly harmful activities / underlying ideological nature of outright totalitarian regimes such as those of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Oh dear…..
Very well said
Tumbleweed
Things go bang when not maintained.
https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html
I think this was in your news round up, Noah. My cousin checked with an ex-Navy clearance diver who said this made more sense than the conspiracy theories. Also, Toby, passim.
Very well said.
The world would be a much better place without the US Deep State. They are the enemy.
I think its pretty clear now who started this war don’t you?
Former Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four-star US Army General Jack Keane admitted live on Fox News: “For just $66 billion, we dragged Ukraine into a war with Russia.”
These “investments” have been made since February of this year. And they turned out to be “very profitable, because for relatively little money in the interests of the United States, not Americans, but Ukrainians die in the war with Russia.”
Well it does make sense. It also explains why Senile Joe encouraged Putin to invade by hinting that the USA would ignore “a small incursion.”