Agree that it seems insane and risky for the US to do this but there is an actual geopolitical benefit that is fairly straightforward to see. The only conceivable benefit to Russia is maybe they can declare force majure and not pay penalties for not delivering gas through NS1. How much would those penalties be? Was Russia paying them these past few months? Would they really pay them this winter? The West has no more sanction levers to pull, what the hell leverage would Europe have to enforce these penalties? It seems pretty far fetched to me: permanently destroying an asset that you spent billions of dollars on, and already control the flow of gas through. And balancing this very thin and questionable benefit is the very real harm to Russia, by losing the leverage of being able to move gas through these pipelines in exchange for concessions from the Europeans.
Ukraine is probably happy to see those pipelines destroyed, but do they have the capability to carry this out? Maybe, I don’t know. Buy a fishing boat, drive it to the Baltic, you’d only need a few frogmen to set the charges and diving to 300 feet or whatever isn’t all that hard probably. Ukraine doesn’t have any submarines in their navy, which is probably what you’d want to use for an operation like this. But Ukraine doing this seems far fetched and I’d imagine there’d be some record of a ship loitering around there in the recent past.
Well Mearsheimer said that he didn’t think that Russia would invade Ukraine because he thought that the forces they had available would not be up to the task of conquering and occupying even large parts of eastern Ukraine. And because he thought that Russia could get more or less what it wanted with a saber rattling demonstration. So he was wrong about Russia not invading but right about what led him to that conclusion: that Russia didn’t have sufficient forces deployed to carry out an invasion. And I think he called Russia a declining and marginal great power, which seems roughly correct.
It is better to think if Putin personally benefits, not if Russia benefits. Because Putin is clearly going to value his personal interest in maintaining control of Russia over Russia’s geopolitical interest.
From that perspective, I think the explanation that this takes away the ability of any successor regime to turn the pipeline back on makes the most sense.
Not saying this isn’t what they’re trying to signal, but it seems pretty dumb. Like, we know they have scuba divers or torpedoes or whatever they used to blow it up. And blowing up your own shit is like the deplorables who blow up their own yeti coolers or kuerigs or whatever.
This seems very tenuous. In this scenario you’d be looking to deter a coup from a faction that wants to end the war and restore the status quo ante business relationship with Europe? Just want to clarify what you’re suggesting.
David Goldwyn, who ran the State Department’s energy program under former President Barack Obama, said it was “unequivocal” that Russia was behind the attack, noting it executed something similar on a gas pipeline in Turkmenistan in 2009.
Russia’s message is clear, Goldwyn added: “Prepare for a life without Russian gas. … It’s a threat of a complete cut-off.”
The state with the most obvious interest in attacking the pipe is Ukraine. The water is shallow enough they just need a fishing boat, scuba gear and explosives.
What I am suggesting is that maybe Putin believes he will be unable to turn the pipeline back on because he thinks the West will make it a prerequisite to end his war and maybe also an end his regime.
In this scenario Putin wants to make sure that, if he is ousted, Russia still cannot turn Nordstream on. This makes any potential internal challenger less attractive to the west and less able to promise Russians a return to normal economic relations with the west.
I guess you have my position right but I also think there doesn’t need to be a particular faction in Russia that Putin is actively worried about, this just generally makes Russia more committed to the war and to him because it is more difficult to return to how it was.
this is not correct. pipeline itself is protected and weighed down by underwater soil. it is not easy to set off an explosion to sever two pipelines next to each other at any depth, and 70m down even more so. the speculation is that a specialized submarine is needed. eg losharik. basically, only russia and a handful of others have such subs. only russia has them in the region.
this is conflating timelines and situations. there are important differernces between cuba and nato expansion. tech/military advancements are only a part of the balance. nato expansion did not put nuclear assets in the expanded territories. to date, even east germany has no silos etc. in that sense, nato’s nukes did not move one each east. even more importantly, cuba letting missiles in essentially gave ussr a base, which is not the case within nato. member states run their own bases, and usa isn’t invited to just amass troops and batteries on the border like that.
