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Firstly, it doesn't matter even if they did blow up the pipeline with another method. I explicitly said that was possible in my first post. They could've used an aircraft or various other methods. The unusual proximity of the NATO exercises to the explosions just off Bornholm Island and their UUV mine warfare element is what raises the issue. 90% of the weight behind my argument is that the US obviously has the most to gain and the most capabilities to achieve and conceal this activity. The exercise is the cherry on top.
So when winter comes and the Germans realise they really do need more gas and public opinion shifts in favor of Nordstream, the US should blow the pipeline then? When it's even more obvious (if that's possible) that it's the US behind it?
The Russian strategic goal is to get Europeans using THEIR energy. If they favour renewables, it's because it means gas is needed for reliability, gas that they supply. If they attack nuclear, it's to ensure there's a market for their fossil fuels. If they attack fracking... it's so they export more and Euros are less self-sufficient. Notably, they do not attack their own gas infrastructure! This does not create revenue or achieve leverage.
If you're doing minesweeping exercises, you have to lay some mines. Fake mines, but mines nonetheless. We have loitering munitions in the world of aviation, why not underwater too? Wouldn't defending against Russian loitering munitions make a lot of sense as part of your official mine-warfare tests?
I wouldn't trust the Russian navy to do anything correctly, let alone detect stealthy underwater UUVs and divine their mission.
No. The third is YOUR accusation, that Russia blew up its own pipeline. This is obviously contrary to its own interests! You can be cruel, thuggish, corrupt and misinformed but still recognise your own strategic interests and not blow up your own pipelines that you built and paid for, that provide you with leverage on other countries, that you control! How is this so hard to understand? Saddam Hussein spitefully burned Kuwaiti oilfields to temporarily disrupt them, denying them to the West as his forces retreated from Kuwait. He did not start blowing up Iraqi oilfields or Iraqi infrastructure.
'I don't know or care how they did it, but they totally did it since they were in the geographic neighborhood' has been a good part of why your theory hasn't been taken as seriously as you'd like.
Substituting your theorizing and opinions on what's reasonable for other people's viewpoints and assuming their views accordingly is why you're not going to understand. I believe I raised this before.
If it's not going to make a difference in attribution, then obviously yes, since doing it before it's needed pre-empts all the other measures and options to prevent paying a lesser political cost.
In your argument of if the US being responsible, the US is presumed from the start to be willing to be obviously responsible for blowing up the pipeline if it judges it necessary. This would support doing it when necessary, but would not justify doing it before it's necessary, or doing it before other actions that might be less attributable. Like, say, a cyberattack.
In my argument of if the US is responsible, the US waits the maximum amount of time until it pays an unavoidable cost, while attempting other efforts across the elements of national power to prevent the activation without having to pay the cost of such an overt action. The American concept of government power pretty clear- Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic measures are all means of national power to affect others, and as one of the more expensive for the US military is not the first resort against allies, especially those who are already doing the desired action.
Accepting a cost only when necessary is not silly. Incurring an unnecessary cost earlier than necessary when other elements of the state paradigm of national power are working is silly. If sillyness is to be minimized...
Substituting your theorizing and opinions on what's reasonable for other people's viewpoints is why you're not going to understand other people's viewpoints of other people's viewpoints.
Aside from that you actually don't, are you even aware of how mines are laid in practice versus how they would have to be laid for your theory to work?
Repeat 'I don't know how they did it, but they totally did it!'
The question is not capability. The capability is not hard, even if you prefer to insist that it's beyond the scope of the Russians.
I graciously accept your concession of Russian capability to deploy loitering munitions that could cause this incident by your standards of capability.
Since your trust is irrelevant to their capability, this falls back under projecting your own presumptions of what other people perceive as reasonable.
I am not accusing Russia of blowing up the pipeline.
I accuse Russia, and Putin in particular, of the sort of strategic shortsightedness and malice that has repeatedly led them to do self-destructive stupid decisions in the recent past, to the point that blowing up their own (inactive, defunct, politically un-activatable, not-meeting-it's-strategic-function) pipeline for various reasons many would consider unreasonable is not a disqualifier for considering them in the slightest. But I am not accusing them, or anyone, as I wait for facts to emerge.
You have not provided any new facts, even weeks later, and continue to regress from anything resembling a falsifiable claim for a charge that would be very atypical of how the Americans normally go about resolving disputes with allies.
It's not obviously contrary to their own interests. You reject other alternative frameworks of the prioritization of relevant interests where it's rational, but this is why your opening post here was 'I can't understand,' and I agreed, that, indeed, you will not understand.
This is your limitation, self-confessed even. As long as you retain this inadequacy, you will continue to not understand and resort to silly justifications instead.
From your perspective, likely very, but that's the demonstration of how you're struggling, and not the reason why. Among other analytic failures, this specific analytic model objection rests on the model's assumption that the Nordstream pipeline was actually giving Putin the leverage he wanted.
Your presumption that it did is, again, projecting your own beliefs onto others.
Given the course turn of the German government from before and after the war, and Putin's many repeated failures for the last half-decade to try and insert Nord Stream approval/activation as a solution to a variety of situations (including post-2014 Ukraine, the Belarus migration crisis, 2021 'offramp' negotiations, and more), it would be quite reasonable for people-who-are-not-you to come to the conclusion that no, Nord Stream was not providing Russia sufficient leverage over Germany to advance Putin's prioritized interests. German not only did not embrace neutrality on Ukraine, but continued to provide significant financial and even some military support despite Russian pressure attempts, german lobbying efforts, and not-very-subtle demonstration energy cutoffs. In fact, with the 2022 turning point and massive, deliberate shift of energy import strategy to gas import terminals despite the higher cost, the relevant time window for the leverage argument was rapidly shifting, as once the Germans did complete gas infrastructure much of the economic logic of bucking the EU and NATO would dissolve once the German capital investments were complete.
If a pipeline that is not supplying gas, is not providing the demanded geopolitical leverage (German neutrality on Ukraine), has a very visible shelf-life of geopolitical relevance (use-it-or-lose-it), and is not providing the effect of dividing the Germans from their NATO allies... well, by golly, it sure is lucky for Russia that some NATO ally decided to obviously blow it up before the Germans completed their import infrastructure! That sort of direct sabotage and attack might actually get the Germans to oppose supporting Ukraine, and break with Europeans out of righteous anger and look to reactivate the pipelines that can be reactivated! Including those non-bombed parts of the previously dead assets!
...no Russian President with a history of strategic shortsightedness would ever entertain the thought of when trying to grasp at straws to turn around a losing war he thinks he can win if he breaks European support for Ukraine.
Once you take away the assumption that it was actually providing geopolitical leverage, the rest of your 'it couldn't happen because it makes no sense' argument starts to fall apart. That money was spent to build and pay for is irrelevant- that applies to the military as well, and the state of the Russian economy as a whole which Putin's oligarchy consistently loots via corruption, and the economics of Nordstream itself from the start. If money were the goal, the Russians wouldn't have been selling the Germans cheap gas in the first place, but market-value gas for more money, nor would they have done pretextual shutdowns.
Because the Americans were very clearly not following him, and they were still of use for him. When the Americans did follow him, and it was of no further use, he absolutely did start trying to blow up Iraqi infrastructure.
This comes back to the assumption that the Nord Stream pipeline sections bombed were providing more use to Putin as they were at the time (inactive, not generating concessions, losing value over time) compared to, say, some other option that might deliver strategic benefits.
Even if/when Germany does finish developing LNG infrastructure for ships, importing it by ship from the US would still be hugely more expensive than getting it via pipeline from Russia. That's why pipelines exist in the first place. Liquefying natural gas to -160 degrees to fit on a ship and then regasifying it at the other end is energy-intensive!
Even if Nordstream was not providing sufficient leverage over Germany to achieve Russian policy goals at this point in time, it could do so in the future as a bargaining chip, strengthening the Russian negotiating position. Germany has historically been amongst the most pro-Russian countries within NATO. They and France were less enthusiastic about arming Ukraine prewar, they were unwilling to bring them into NATO and even today it's the UK and US who provided the majority of weapons to Ukraine. Germany is still amongst the most pro-Russian countries in NATO, it is only that everyone dislikes Russia more than before.
There is no 'use it or lose it' for Russia. They control the flow of gas in that pipeline, which is innately cheaper than anything anyone can do with ships. They can just shut it down but leave the pipeline there. The US is not substituting this pipeline with their own, they're selling their gas at much higher prices by ship.
This argument that Nordstream was not providing leverage to Russia simply does not hold up. Germany would inherently prefer cheap gas to expensive gas. That is leverage, it allows Russia to impose costs by not providing cheap gas. That is the whole point of turning the pipelines off. There is no shelf-life and its presence does split Germany from the rest of NATO to some extent. This may not be visible and may be outweighed by other factors but it's present nonetheless.
There are no strategic benefits to Russia from this. The Germans are now more dependant on the US. US energy exporters are making a lot of money. The media seems happy to imply that the Russians are to blame for this, so even the false-flag angle isn't working out for Russia.
It seems obvious to me that you and Dean are operating with different definitions of leverage (potentially, among other things).
Dean is disputing that a contributor that is "outweighed by other factors" can meaningfully be called leverage. To paraphrase:
"I've got a tool to help me accomplish a task."
"If you use the tool, can you accomplish the task?"
"No."
"Then how is the tool meaningfully useful in this context?"
In this case, despite the existence of the pipeline in a non-functional state, Germany was continuing to support Ukraine. The aid of the tool (non-functioning pipeline) was not accomplishing the task (getting Germany to bail on Ukraine). Might this have changed as winter sets in and Germany becomes more desperate for fuel? Maybe! Or maybe not, perhaps Germany decides that support-for-Ukraine remains their preferred position.
The point is, there's no evidence that turned-off-pipeline was going to be a winning move for Russia in terms of swaying German policy. There is a logical argument to that end, which you've made, but logical arguments can be wrong all the time.
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