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<h1 class="reader-title">Can Europe Afford to Turn a Blind Eye
to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts?</h1>
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<p>The sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines leaves
Europeans certain to be much poorer and colder this
winter, and was an act of international vandalism on an
almost unimaginable scale. The attacks severed Russian
gas supplies to Europe and caused the release of <a
href="https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/nord-stream-risk-of-gas-pipeline-leak-was-estimated-to-be-one-in-100000-year-event-30-09-2022/">enormous
quantities</a> of methane gas, the prime offender in
global warming.</p>
<p>This is why no one is going to take responsibility for
the crime – and most likely no one will ever be found
definitively culpable.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the level of difficulty and sophistication
in setting off blasts at three separate locations on the
Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines overwhelmingly suggests a
state actor, or actors, was behind it.</p>
<p>Western coverage of the attacks has been decidedly
muted, given that this hostile assault on the globe’s
energy infrastructure is unprecedented – overshadowing
even the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>The reason why there appears to be so little enthusiasm
to explore this catastrophic event in detail – beyond <a
href="https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-a-un-security-council-meeting-on-leaks-in-the-nordstream-pipeline/">pointing
a finger</a> in Russia’s direction – is not difficult
to deduce.</p>
<p>It is hard to think of a single reason why Moscow would
wish to destroy its own energy pipelines, valued at $20
billion, or allow in seawater, possibly corroding them
irreversibly.</p>
<p>The attacks deprive Russia of its main gas supply lines
to Europe – and with it, vital future revenues – while
leaving the field open to competitors.</p>
<p>Moscow loses its only significant leverage over
Germany, its main buyer in Europe and at the heart of
the European project, when it needs such leverage most,
as it faces down <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-seeks-keep-up-support-ukraine-despite-economic-damage-2022-07-18/">concerted
efforts</a> by the United States and Europe to drive
Russian soldiers out of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Even any possible temporary advantage Moscow might have
gained by demonstrating its ruthlessness and might to
Europe could have been achieved just as effectively by
simply turning off the spigot to stop supplies.</p>
<h2>Media taboo</h2>
<p>This week, distinguished economist Jeffrey Sachs was
invited on <i>Bloomberg </i>TV to talk about the
pipeline attacks. He broke a taboo among Western elites
by <a
href="https://twitter.com/0ddette/status/1576916509766451200">citing</a>
evidence suggesting that the US, rather than Russia, was
the prime suspect.</p>
<p>Western media like the <a
href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-nato-united-states-baltic-sea-b837ae25021807a3caef4aa3043a8013"><i>Associated
Press</i></a> have tried to foreclose such a line of
thinking by calling it a “baseless conspiracy theory”
and Russian “disinformation”. But, as Sachs pointed out,
there are good reasons to suspect the U.S. above Russia.</p>
<p>There is, for example, the threat to Russia made by
U.S. president Joe Biden back in early February, that
“there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” were Ukraine
to be invaded. Questioned by a reporter about how that
would be possible, Biden <a
href="https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1574685985115607040">asserted</a>:
“I promise you, we will be able to do that.”</p>
<p>Biden was not speaking out of turn or off the cuff. At
the same time, <a
href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/victoria-nuland-hand-in-every-us-intervention-past-30-years/275272/">Victoria
Nuland</a>, a senior diplomat in the Biden
administration, issued Russia much the same warning, <a
href="https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1574912267434409984">telling</a>
reporters: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or
another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”</p>
<p>That is the same Nuland who was <a
href="https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/25/nuland-pyatt-tape-removed-from-youtube-after-8-years/">intimately
involved</a> back in 2014 in behind-the-scenes
maneuvers by the U.S. to help overthrow an elected
Ukrainian government that led to the installation of one
hostile to Moscow. It was that coup that triggered a
combustible mix of outcomes – Kyiv’s increasing
flirtation with NATO, as well as a civil war in the east
between Ukrainian <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right-fighters-ukraine-neo-nazis">ultra-nationalists</a>
and ethnic Russian communities – that provided the chief
rationale for President Vladimir Putin’s later invasion.</p>
<p>And for those still puzzled by what motive the U.S.
might have for perpetrating such an outrage, Nuland’s
boss helpfully offered an answer last Friday. Secretary
of State Anthony Blinken <a
href="https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1576326018893492225">described</a>
the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and the
consequent environmental catastrophe, as offering
“tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to
come”.</p>
<p>Blinken set out a little too clearly the “cui bono” –
“who profits?” – argument, suggesting that Biden and
Nuland’s earlier remarks were not just empty,
pre-invasion posturing by the White House.</p>
<p>Blinken celebrated the fact that Europe would be
deprived of Russian gas for the foreseeable future and,
with it, Putin’s leverage over Germany and other
European states. Before the blasts, the danger for
Washington had been that Moscow might be able to advance
favorable negotiations over Ukraine rather than
perpetuate a war Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd
Austin, has already <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/25/russia-weakedend-lloyd-austin-ukraine">stated</a>
is designed to “weaken” Russia at least as much as
liberate Ukraine. Or, as Blinken phrased it, the attacks
were “a tremendous opportunity once and for all to
remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to
take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of
energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”</p>
<p>Though Blinken did not mention it, it was also a
“tremendous opportunity” to make Europe far more
dependent on the U.S. for its gas supplies, shipped by
sea at much greater cost to Europe than through Russia’s
pipelines. American energy firms may well be the biggest
beneficiaries from the explosions.</p>
<h2>Meddling in Ukraine</h2>
<p>U.S. hostility towards Russian economic ties with
Europe is not new. Long before Russia’s invasion,
Washington had been <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjBhD-TW_QI">quite</a>
<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/world/europe/nord-stream-2-germany-us-russia.html">openly</a>
seeking ways to block the Nord Stream pipelines.</p>
<p>One of Blinken’s recent predecessors, Condoleezza Rice,
expressed the Washington consensus way back in 2014 – at
the same time as Nuland was recorded <a
href="https://consortiumnews.com/2022/05/25/nuland-pyatt-tape-removed-from-youtube-after-8-years/">secretly
meddling</a> in Ukraine, discussing who should be
installed as president in place of the elected Ukrainian
government that was about to be ousted in a coup.</p>
<p>Speaking to German TV, Rice <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF0uYIjaTNE">said</a>
the Russian economy was vulnerable to sanctions because
80% of its exports were energy-related. Proving how
wrong-headed American foreign policy predictions often
are, she asserted confidently: “People say the Europeans
will run out of energy. Well, the Russians will run out
of cash before the Europeans run out of energy.”
Breaking Europe’s reliance on Russian energy was, in
Rice’s words, “one of the few instruments we have… Over
the long term, you simply want to change the structure
of energy dependence.”</p>
<p><span>.</span></p>
<p>She added: “You [Germany] want to depend more on the
North American energy platform, the tremendous bounty of
oil and gas that we’re finding in North America. You
want to have pipelines that don’t go through Ukraine and
Russia.”</p>
<p>Now, the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2 has achieved a
major U.S. foreign-policy goal overnight.</p>
<p>It has also preempted the pressure building in Germany,
through <a
href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/environment/thousands-march-in-eastern-germany-to-protest-soaring-energy-prices/2696034">mass
protests</a> and mounting business opposition, that
might have seen Berlin reverse course on European
sanctions on Russia and revive gas supplies – a shift
that would have undermined Washington’s goal of
“weakening” Putin. Now, the protests are redundant.
German politicians cannot cave in to popular demands
when there is no pipeline through which they can supply
their population with Russian gas.</p>
<h2>‘Thank you, USA’</h2>
<p>One can hardly be surprised that European leaders are
publicly blaming Russia for the pipeline attacks. After
all, Europe falls under the U.S. security umbrella and
Russia has been designated by Washington as Official
Enemy No 1.</p>
<p>But almost certainly, major European capitals are
drawing different conclusions in private. Like Sachs,
their officials are examining the circumstantial
evidence, considering the statements of
self-incrimination from Biden and other officials, and
weighing the “cui bono” arguments.</p>
<p>And like Sachs, they are most likely inferring that the
prime suspect in this case is the U.S. – or, at the very
least, that Washington authorized an ally to act on its
behalf. Just as no European leader would dare to
publicly accuse the U.S. of carrying out the attacks,
none would dare stage such an attack without first
getting the nod from Washington.</p>
<p>That was evidently the view of Radek Sikorski, the
former foreign and defence minister of Poland, who <a
href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdrfRLHWIAACvVT?format=jpg&name=large">tweeted</a>
a “Thank you, USA” with an image of the bubbling seas
where one pipeline was ruptured.</p>
<p>Sikorski, it should be noted, is as well-connected in
Washington as he is in Poland, a European state bitterly
hostile to Moscow as well as its pipelines. His wife,
Anne Applebaum, is a staff writer at <i>The Atlantic</i>
magazine and an influential figure in U.S. policy
circles who has <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-nato-pays-a-heavy-price-for-giving-russia-too-much-credita-true-achievement-under-threat/2014/10/17/5b3a6f2a-5617-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html">long
advocated</a> for NATO and EU expansion into Eastern
Europe and Ukraine.</p>
<p>Sikorski hurriedly took down the tweet after it went
viral.</p>
<p>But if Washington is the chief suspect in blowing up
the pipelines, how should Europe read its relations with
the U.S. in the light of that deduction? And what does
such sabotage indicate to Europe’s leaders about how
Washington might perceive the stakes in Europe? The
answers are not pretty.</p>
<h2>Demand for fealty</h2>
<p>If the U.S. was behind the attacks, it suggests not
only that Washington is taking the Ukraine war into new,
more dangerous territory, ready to risk drawing Moscow
into a round of tit-for-tats that could quickly escalate
into a nuclear confrontation. It also suggests that ties
between the U.S. and Europe have entered a decisive new
stage, too.</p>
<p>Or put another way, Washington would have done more
than move out of the shadows, turning its proxy war in
Ukraine into a more direct, hot war with Russia. It
would indicate that the U.S. is willing to turn the
whole of Europe into a battlefield, and bully, betray
and potentially sacrifice the continent’s population as
cruelly as it has traditionally treated weak allies in
the Global South.</p>
<p>In that regard, the pipeline ruptures are most likely
interpreted by European leaders as a signal: that they
should not dare to consider formulating their own
independent foreign policy, or contemplate defying
Washington. The attacks indicate that the US requires
absolute fealty, that Europe must prostrate itself
before Washington and accept whatever dictates it
imposes.</p>
<p>That would amount to a dramatic reversal of the
Marshall Plan, Washington’s ambitious funding of the
rebuilding of Western Europe after the Second World War,
chiefly as a way to restore the market for rapidly
expanding U.S. industries.</p>
<p>By contrast, this act of sabotage strangles Europe
economically, driving it into recession, deepening its
debt and making it a slave to U.S. energy supplies.
Effectively, the Biden administration would have moved
from offering European elites juicy carrots to now
wielding a very large stick at them.</p>
<h2>Pitiless aggression</h2>
<p>For those reasons, European leaders may be unwilling to
contemplate that their ally across the Atlantic could
behave in such a cruel manner against them. The
implications are more than unsettling.</p>
<p>The conclusion European leaders would be left to draw
is that the only justification for such pitiless
aggression is that the U.S. is maneuvering to avoid the
collapse of its post-war global dominance, the end of
its military and economic empire.</p>
<p>The destruction of the pipelines would have to be
understood as an act of desperation: a last-ditch
preemption by Washington of the loss of its hegemony as
Russia, China and others find common cause to challenge
the American behemoth, and a ferocious blow against
Europe to hammer home the message that it must not stray
from the fold.</p>
<p>At the same time, it would shine a different, clearer
light on the events that have been unfolding in and
around Ukraine in recent years:</p>
<p>• NATO’s relentless expansion across Eastern Europe
despite expert warnings that it would eventually provoke
Russia.</p>
<p>• Biden and Nuland’s meddling to help oust an elected
Ukrainian government sympathetic to Moscow.</p>
<p>• The cultivation of a militarized Ukrainian
ultra-nationalism pitted against Russia that led to
bloody civil war against Ukraine’s own ethnic Russian
communities.</p>
<p>• And NATO’s exclusive focus on escalating the war
through arms supplies to Ukraine rather than pursuing
and incentivizing diplomacy.</p>
<p>None of these developments can be stripped out of a
realistic assessment of why Russia responded by invading
Ukraine.</p>
<p>Europeans have been persuaded that they must give
unflinching moral and military support to Ukraine
because it is the last rampart defending their homeland
from a merciless Russian imperialism.</p>
<p>But the attack on the pipelines hints at a more complex
story, one in which European publics need to stop fixing
their gaze exclusively at Russia, and turn round to
understand what has been happening behind their backs.</p>
<p>Feature photo | Police officers accompany a
demonstration against sanctions on Russia while a banner
with the inscription “Open Nordstream 2 immediately” is
held, September 05, 2022. Sebastian Willnow | DPA via AP</p>
<p><em><strong>Jonathan Cook</strong> is a MintPress
contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special
Prize for Journalism. His latest books are <a
href="https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Clash-Civilisations-Remake-Middle/dp/0745327540">Israel
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle East</a> (Pluto Press)
and <a
href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Palestine-Israels-Experiments-Despair/dp/1848130317">Disappearing
Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair</a> (Zed
Books). His website is <a
href="http://www.jonathan-cook.net/">www.jonathan-cook.net</a>.</em></p>
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<p> The views expressed in this article are the author’s own
and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial
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