Quote (Black XistenZ @ Nov 21 2022 07:49pm)
By this logic, the US should have blown up Nord Stream right at the start of this war, or in late spring when Germany was one of the more reluctant countries in Europe to get behind a gas embargo. Why do it in late September, after the Russians had voluntarily shut the pipelines down and Germany had already spent several billions (on, e.g., floating LNG terminals) to become independent from Russian gas?
In early summer, Russia started tampering with the gas tap to create soaring gas prices and sow uncertainty and fear in Europe. In late summer, they escalated by closing off the gas tap entirely. Gas prices peaked, but then, 6 weeks later, by late September, they had begun coming down again and it was increasingly looking like Europe would get over the winter without Russian gas. And that's when the Nord Stream pipelines got blown up. If it were the Americans, why at that specific point in time? If that's your explanation, the timing makes no sense whatsoever.
They didn't blow it up right away because, as is always the case, every charge leveled against the enemy by the West is an inverted admission of guilt.
The West put out charges that Russia was planning on 'winning the war in 3 days'. No Russian ever said this, but it's now unchallenged common knowledge. The inverse is true: The West thought that Russia really was a gas station with nukes, and that sanctions would devastate the Russian economy, leading to either a Russian collapse in fighting ability or a even a coup against Putin.
It didn't happen. The Russian economy is doing much better than any major European economy. It never got hit the way the West thought it would, and it recovered much quicker than the West thought was even possible. Wasn't it you that got into a big fight over Russian car manufacturing with Djunior? Well, Lada production is almost back up to pre-war levels, and the higher end market is doing just fine without BMW and Mercedes, easily supplanted by Chinese and Korean brands.
Looking at this, and rising anti-sanction sentiment starting on the fringes of the political spectrum, a decision had to be made in Washington. Would the next round of sanctions work where the last round had actually *backfired*? Would the protests remain marginal heading into a winter of uncertain intensity?
Safest choice: kablooie.
This post was edited by kusotarre1 on Nov 21 2022 09:59pm