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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Breaking news from the Spiegel (German weekly center left newspaper) on the sabotage of the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline:

Sweden, Denmark and Germany, contrary to initial plans, will not form a joint investigation team to investigate the leaks at the Nord Stream pipelines. According to SPIEGEL information, Sweden refused to set up an international Joint Investigation Team (JIT). According to information from security circles, Sweden is said to have justified the rejection with the fact that the security rating of its investigation results was too high to share with other states.

While the article itself doesn't speculate at all what this could mean, commenters are less reluctant. General tenor: this indicates that the saboteur was a state actor within NATO, probably the US, maybe Poland with US backing, and Sweden is paying ransom in order to be able to join NATO.

So the counterfactual is that Sweden was super happy to form a joint investigation. In which case, I could well imagine some Motte-poster writing how this indicates that the saboteur was a state actor within NATO, as the likely explanation is that Sweden is paying NATO ransom by basically handing over the investigation to NATO Denmark and NATO Germany. The Motte-poster would go on: If Russia was the suspected culprit, Sweden would like to do its own, thorough investigation to verify against the statements of Denmark and Germany to check the trustworthiness of their old friends and hopefully-new allies (and also to hone their skills at these kinds of investigations). Such an thorough investigation would be dangerous if it risked finding the "wrong" culprit, as the investigation results might leak: much safer to involve NATO Denmark and NATO Germany if the results might be "wrong". Heck, it might even be the US pressing Sweden to do their own investigation, since they don't trust the Germans.

Did anyone say "Sweden not joining the investigation would indicate NATO culpability" before the news broke? Or just supply some stronger reasoning to as why this indicates a NATO culprit, taking the counterfactual into account?

Perhaps, but I think this is a bit too much speculation of hypothetical events, hypothetical responses of Motte-posters and unreasonable required predictions that really don't match what I have seen here. Most of the posts I have read here have been firmly against Russia in it's current invasion. I even read a highly voted post calling what is a complex geopolitical game, morally "black and white" in terms of there siding against Russia.

People are suspicious of the US because it tried for years to influence Germany to not go through with the pipeline. The sitting US President announced in February if Russia invaded Ukraine the US would shut down the pipeline and refused to give a means of how they planned to do so. Now Russia has invaded Ukraine, the pipeline has been sabotaged with explosives and Germany has just been excluded from the investigation into who caused it. It's not unreasonable to suspect the two largest losers from the pipeline sabotage, Russia and Germany, have been denied access to the investigation for some ulterior motives. Particularly when the impact of the investigation will affect the Russian's war in Europe that the Swedes have taken a firm opposition to alongside NATO.

That said, I have doubts that the Swedes have damning evidence in their report that they are hiding as to who sabotaged the Pipeline. It was a clandestine operation and I imagine that they only thing left would be telling what type of explosives were used that is unlikely to tie it back to a country. Nor do I believe Sweden needs a ransom to join NATO or not want to aid Russia at this time.

I'm not speculating, I'm just pointing out that this evidence doesn't point in any direction by considering the counterfactual. If my argument is wrong, please correct it.

Sure, that Germany is excluded from the investigation is suspicious. But Germany being included is also suspicious. This is a suspicious event, every action is suspicious. I can't update just based on a plausible story, when you can make a plausible story for either culprit. If I'm to shift my probability of blame, I need a story that is better than the counterfactual, and I'm not feeling like I'm getting it here.

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