Quote (Black XistenZ @ Sep 28 2022 11:55am)
After weaponizing gas shipments through Nord Stream 1, Russia is discredited and proven once and for all as an unreliable supplier. The vague prospect of opening NS again was a much smaller carrot to dangle in front of Europe than you might think. Particularly since doing a public about-face would come with great political cost and risk to any European leader. The course Europe was on prior to the pipelines being blown up is the same one they are still on: "if we can get through the winter without Russian gas and not run into outright gas shortages, then Russia can go fuck itself". The only thing that could shake up this calculus is if LNG terminals or the pipelines from Norway to Europe got taken out.
That's not how the Russians see it, though, and we're talking about Russia's motivations when we're trying to find some way to pin these attacks on Russia.
Russia wants the sanctions to end and to resume selling gas to Europe without having to worry about their income from those sales being seized. They believe that the pressure will mount internally to Europe and provide an excuse for the US-aligned EU leadership to break with the US and drop at least some parts of the sanctions. In this scenario, the dropping of sanctions doesn't come with a political cost, it comes with a political
dividend. Buoying this interpretation is that just two days ago, on the 26th, there were protests in Germany demanding that NS2 be turned back on:
https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1574489634071105536 That is in addition to so many major companies and industrial consortiums and lobbying groups begging for NS2 to be turned on.
Russia is/was hoping that this pressure would grow, and as it did the carrot of NS2 would be dangling right in front of Scholz and the other EU pawns.
The fundamental thing to understand here is that being able to turn NS2 on at any time is something that Russia (and anyone being objective) sees as a strong piece of leverage for Russia. Now that the pipelines are rendered inoperable for long periods of time if not forever, that leverage is gone.
So from Russia's standpoint, before the bombings they had leverage heading into winter, after the bombings they do not.
Have to reiterate that I feel even having to lay this out is astounding. It so obviously benefits America, matches America's prior actions and lines up with contemporaneous American military action in the area that anyone suggesting it wasn't America should be laughed at, but instead this forum is trying to find the most bizarre, reaching cope. For what? It's not like it matters that America did it lol
This post was edited by kusotarre1 on Sep 28 2022 01:15pm