Quote (Goomshill @ Sep 28 2022 11:18am)
China has the most direct motive, if not the most direct accessibility. Its very arguable for both US and Russian motives. They both have some possible gain, some possible loss, even if they 'get away with it', disregarding the risk of being exposed. The US should be wary of the EU energy crisis, and Russia still wants to reestablish that geopolitical leverage. But the US wants to remove that leverage and Russia wants to drive the dagger home this winter. Okay, pros and cons for them. But for China, that's all win:win. The rival powers are both weakened. But then again, China is risk adverse and has little means to actually carry out an attack in the Baltic so stealthily.
We do know, however, that the US was openly threatening to do this multiple times. Joe Biden went on camera and said something to the effect of 'we could blow up the nord stream 2' in masked language. So did victoria nuland. And karine jean-pierre deflected on our responsibility. And we clearly have the technical capabilities and the likely balance of being able to detect Russian attacks if they actually occurred.
In the absence of any other evidence, the weight of evidence is probably on the side of it being a US operation
sleepy joe literally said there "would be no more nordstream 2", if russia invaded and confirmed along the lines of "we can do it" when a journalist asked for specifics, well.....
that pipeline was probably the last bargaining chip for russia to push germany into the negotiation camp, now there is no way back really
and what a coincidence that poland got their pipeline to norway that provides them with gas without depending on germany, however we depend on their transit now after our direct pipelines got blown up