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Soriek  5mo ago (text post)   838 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 29

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Finland & China

Not two countries I thought I would be listing side by side, but Finland has been conducting its investigation into the early October incident that ruptured the gas pipeline between them and Estonia and the telecom wires between them and Sweden. Unfortunately for international stability, they seem to be pointing the finger at China.

An investigation by Finnish authorities identified as the main suspect Chinese container ship Newnew Polar Bear, which is believed to have dragged its anchor across the Baltic Sea seabed, cutting through the cables and gas lines. The anchor — which weighs 6,000 kilograms — was retrieved a few meters from the site of the damage.

Finland and Estonia have since been in touch with Chinese authorities seeking their cooperation with the investigation. The Baltic Times reported earlier this week that the two European countries have asked to send representatives to Beijing to investigate the vessel, which is currently en route to a Chinese port.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur expressed similar sentiment in an interview with Swedish public broadcaster SVT last month, saying the captain of the ship surely "understood that there was something wrong" after dragging an anchor for over 180 kilometers.

Coming more than a year after the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany were damaged by several explosions, the Balticconnector incident raises more concerns over the safety of undersea critical infrastructure and possible measures to protect them from external sabotage. No culprit has been identified for the Nord Stream attack despite an international investigation.

I’ll leave that last sentence hanging just to remind everyone how much weirdness there has been about figuring out who is to blame in all this (the west seems the most likely to have benefited from Nord Strom; pretty unclear who benefits here).

Being a sailor myself, it pains me to admit that the most plausible explanation is that the skipper of the Newnew Polar Bear did, surely, understand something was wrong--but hoped it was no big deal, and no one would notice. In fact, finding an anchor that was dragged for nearly 200 klicks on the floor, just "a few meters" from the damaged cables and gas lines makes it just to easy for me to know exactly what a Newnew Polar Bear sailor felt like after two or three hours on the deck crew trying to get the anchor hauled up when the XO shouts over the 1MC, "Fuck the anchor, we're about to hit an seabed pipeline--cut the chain NOW!"

They almost made it.

So much for the Skipper's dream of commanding the more prestigious ship, Oldold Polar Bear.

You have a point, although it's still negligent to wait until the last second.

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