This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Breaking news from the Spiegel (German weekly center left newspaper) on the sabotage of the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline:
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.
I just don't understand how there's any confusion as to who's behind the sabotage. We know there were explosions - Danish and Swedish seismologists reported fairly substantial explosions of 100 kg of TNT or more.
We know the US benefits a great deal from this - they said so themselves. The US has consistently opposed Nordstream 2 and wants these pipelines shut down.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/10/03/blinken-deems-the-bombing-of-nord-stream-pipelines-a-tremendous-opportunity-n2613896
The US had many methods to blow up these pipelines. People have raised the P3 overflights over the area, US navy in the region. My personal favourite is the USN's minelaying exercises just off Bornholm Island in June, in the precise part of the Baltic Sea where the explosions happened. Leave a few mines (or the advanced underwater drones they were testing) from the exercises behind, just in case Putin does escalatory moves like mobilizing more troops for Ukraine. Lo and behold, shortly after he mobilizes, the pipelines explode.
If it were the Russians, why would they blow up their own pipeline and not an enemy pipeline? They control Nordstream, they don't control the Norwegian-Polish pipeline or other pipelines that reduce their leverage and fuel their enemies. Why would they do something that creates a 'tremendous opportunity' for the US to sell LNG to Europe and render them more dependant on America? Why do they reduce their own leverage over Europe? People have suggested that it was Putin's plot to secure himself from regime change by denying a revenue source that a successor could draw upon by rapprochement with the West. But a successor to Putin can draw upon the resources of the entire Russian state! There's hundreds of billions of dollars worth of seized foreign currency reserve that they could angle to get back. And there are many other oil and gas pipelines and opportunities for graft in Russia. These pipelines in particular might add a few marginal tens of billions on top of an already vast sum of loot. The burning-bridges theory is not compelling, nor is the signalling theory. If you want to show you can blow up a pipeline, you blow up an enemy pipeline not your own.
The argument that Putin blew up his own pipeline that gives him leverage over Europe is silly. The US has both the means and the motive. When Iranian nuclear facilities are sabotaged we don't imagine that it might be the Iranians blowing up their own facilities - we know it's the US or Israelis or both.
In this case, it's the US either directly or via Poland. Poland and the US have identical interests and are very closely aligned. They're basically the same entity. It's not reflexive anti-Americanism to blame America for sabotage that advances their perceived strategic and commercial interests and hurts one or perhaps two US rivals. If it were the Polish-Norwegian pipeline that exploded, I'd blame Russia.
This sort of limited imagination is why you won't understand.
A lot of people have both the means and the motive, including the Russians, despite your protests otherwise and past arguments that NATO presence in the Baltic means that all of it is constantly and effectively monitored and thus couldn't possibly happen without American sanction or agency. This sort of prescription of American omniscience and incapability of anyone else is a rather blunt indication you're not actually familiar with the capabilities that would be required, as is self-centered style of dismissing other actors as candidates because you deem the cost-benefit silly or unreasonable... as if this weren't happening in the context of a Ukraine conflict that was only a surprise to so many Very Serious People because it seemed silly and unreasonable Russia would ever try such an obvious strategic mis-stake and mis-read as invading Ukraine.
And shooting down an airliner. And expecting pro-Russian candidates to win elections and deliver pro-Russian negotiations after taking the most pro-Russian regions out of the Ukrainian electorate. And invading Ukraine again, but bigger, and expecting a lot of things that were really, really silly in both prospect and retrospect. And this is without the other silly things, like using radioactive poisoning assassinations in countries with capabilities to detect it, or drilling holes in walls to steal piss to dope your people for the Olympics, or sacking your own military reformer for political expedience in the midst of a major military modernization campaign.
'There's no way that someone would do something really, really stupid' is not the defense you seem to think it is, especially it's not even the second, third, or fifth time said person would have done something really really stupid. And especially not when, from other perspectives or considerations you reject, may not even be as stupid as that.
Other actors make decisions based on their perception of the context and conflict and relative cost-benefit, not yours. That people do not share your cost-benefits-contexts does not mean the premise that they did it is any sillier than the idea that the US used an overt exercise months ago to lay mines to sabotage German infrastructure in response to for a checks notes Russian partial mobilization, as opposed to any actual sign that the Germans were actually going to restart a pipeline the Americans had already pressured them to stop. Or only laying mines, covertly, after such a resumption, thus mitigating the risk that other actors/collectors, including the Russians might discover the mines in routine maintenance/monitoring over the course of several months.
This is, whether you feel it is or not, very silly. Which is fine, in and of itself, but if silly can be applied in one direction, it's not an objection in another.
There were German protestors demanding the pipelines be turned back on. I don't know if you've seen German gas prices recently - they're pretty high!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/germans-call-nord-stream-2-050655816.html
The US was testing sophisticated underwater unmanned vehicles along with its mine-clearance exercises, exercises which presumably involve laying mines. It's easy to imagine that a few of them stay under, hidden to the best of their ability on the seabed, awaiting the order to strike. If they're discovered by anyone before they strike - well the US was conducting exercises there and they lost a few drones! Mechanical problems, these things happen. If you think I'm envisioning big obvious mines stuck directly onto Nordstream, visible to any inspection, then perhaps your familiarity with these capabilities is less than you think.
You know perfectly well that there's a difference between false knowledge 'the Ukrainians will collapse easily', cruelty such as 'let's ensure this guy we hate has a torturous half-life' and random bizarreness like 'let's blow up our own pipelines'. The latter is not like the former.
Yes. And? Were you going to actually going to try and imply that an unspecified number of protestors in a democratic society meant an imminent government reversal of its own policy?
The fact that the Germans have high gas prices is not news, and neither is the point that general German popular opinion was not in favor of activating Nord Stream 2, nor is it now.
Nor does this actually serve as evidence of who bombed the pipeline in the way you seem to imply it does. This observation is absolutely compatible with a Russian-responsible-but-trying-to-divert-the-blame-to-divide-the-west hypothesis argument, especially since trying to encourage energy concerns political movements more favorable to Russian strategic interests has been a long-running Russian strategic line of effort. That does not make it proof, but it is compatible.
This would not serve as proof of a US-does-this-to-prevent-Nordstream-Reactivation, however, as there is not immediate cause-and-effect of higher energy prices- or even anti-government protests- and the German government re-activating the pipeline, let alone why- if the imminently divided German political establishment WAS coming to a pipeline consensus- the US wouldn't do other actions to keep the status quo, which was no pipeline activation, if the bombs were allegedly planted months ago with a command-activation capability.
If the bombs are supposed to be remote-activated, triggering them before they are needed would be a bit of a goof.
Substituting your imagination for evidence or other people's rationals that might drive their own decisions is why you are being silly.
You're suggesting that American mine sweepers in a NATO exercise are covering specialized American underwater mine-laying drones, in an announced military exercise with multinational participation and observation including by the same state you alleged they were deploying the drones against. You're not even alleging anyone saw these drones, or even what mine-laying drones they are, when mine-laying vessels and mine-clearing vessels have, shall we say, slightly different functions and thus forms, none of which you claim were observed for any modifications to mine sweepers suggesting they were modified to carry/deploy said unspecified drones. You offers no rational for why- if it were the Americans- they wouldn't just let an unmarked CIA boat do it during a German federal holiday while everyone's distracted and no one else is looking. The exercise itself has been your proof.
This is silly, as it's just an isolated demand for stupidity to conflate correlation with causation without actually proving a causal relationship.
Well, yes. Two actually happened, establishing a pattern of spiteful strategic incompetence, and the third is an accusation you've expressed confusion about why people won't accept as true without evidence.
As far as trying to waive away a charge of selective appeal for stupidity goes, this is pretty silly.
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link