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/r/stupidpol is abuzz with news of both NordStream pipelines being damaged, in what mainstream sources openly speculate to be an attack:
tagesspiegel.de (google translated)
welt.de (google translated)
Stupidpol being stupidpol, blames it all on the west (either the US or UK)... but it feels like the kind of have a point? Russian performance in the war doesn't exactly scream competence, so it would be surprising, if they pulled something like this off, so deep in NATOs turf.
When we were discussing the coming winter, some people were saying "the European gas storage is filled up, it'll be fine", but isn't the gas storage more like a buffer, designed to take advantage of the decreased demand over the summer, to even out the increased demand in winter, working on the assumption that there will still be a constant supply of gas coming in? Does this change the calculus at all?
This is obviously an American op. The Poles know:
https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915
Biden made the threat:
https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1490791554088321024
The Scandies say it was explosives:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/mystery-gas-leaks-hit-major-russian-undersea-gas-pipelines-europe-2022-09-27/
And best of all, the US had mine-planting/explosives forces right on Bornholm island in June! The bombs we're talking about detonated just off the coast of Bornholm island!
https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunity-for-research-and-resting-new-technology/
How much more clear could it be? A few mines were left behind.
With friends like America, Europe doesn't need enemies. The US-initiated war on terror got them targeted for terrorist attacks. The US destabilization of Syria and Libya got them a flood of refugees. Yes, the Europeans were partially complicit in these foreign adventures but they were really just being dragged along. The Prime Mover was Washington. When NATO made that fateful statement that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join the alliance, the French and Germans were trying to tone it down. They didn't want to antagonize Russia. Thanks to the US, Western Europe has been pushed into a proxy war against their energy supplier. Now, the US is making sure Russia can't supply Germany with energy, that it will be dependent upon US puppet states in the Middle East or expensive fuel from America directly.
I don't even think this is a wise strategy for American interests. If you try to weaken your allies so they can't form a viable bloc to oppose you, you're antagonizing them. You're giving them a reason to oppose you and sabotage you. Why should the US expect much help from Europe on the main front against China in the Pacific? 'You're fighting your main industrial supplier? Tough - we'll sell you some overpriced goods. Good luck!'
No this is still very much thanks to Russia, the US may benefit from this, but Russia chose to launch this utterly idiotic and needless invasion in the first place.
But for the encroachment, coup, and 8 years of shelling rebel oblasts, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened.
Like most wars, this one is not mono-causal. We can certainly blame Hitler for invading the Sudetenland, but we can also blame the Allies for creating the conditions that would lead the Germans to rally behind a strongman.
This one absolutely is, it stems entirely from a Russian inability to face reality and accept that it is no longer a great power and that Ukraine is no longer inside its orbit. If Russia was serious about the whole "multi-polar world" thing they would have recognised that their best bet was becoming part of Europe, instead they launched a war that will impoverish Russia and Europe, strengthening China and the US.
You think that Russia would've invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022 if Yanukovych had never been deposed?
Why would they bother?
Without the coup, there would have been no rebel oblasts. With those oblasts continuing to participate in elections there probably would have been no government elected that would seriously entertain the idea that Ukraine join an anti-Russian military alliance.
On Russia and Europe: Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin have all floated the idea of Russia joining NATO. No one in NATO has ever appeared to like that idea, with American Presidents and Secretaries of State dismissing it. It was the Americans that pledged there would be no NATO expansion into former Soviet states after the fall of the Soviet Union, "not one inch eastward." That was obviously a pledge broken, and not even in response to any Russian hostilities.
I'm American and I can't make any sense of our foreign policy strategy in regards to Russia. It all seems like dick-waving with potential nuclear consequences. What do we even get if we "win?"
It doesn't seem so hard to understand to me. Russia is openly defiant of the Western order and props up our military adversaries like North Korea, Syria and Iran. Even Turkey, ostensibly a NATO member, became a patron of Russian defense systems. Adding insult to injury, Western Europe voluntarily made themselves dependent on Russian energy and starved their own militaries of funding and capabilities necessary to pull their weight in furthering the US's foreign policy goals.
Now, Russia is isolated, its military has been revealed as an underperforming anachronism, its brand has suffered in the arms marketplace, the Russian energy link to Western Europe has been perhaps permanently severed, Europe is committing to nuclear energy and US LNG imports as fast as it can, Putin is facing domestic political troubles, NATO is expanding to include wealthy Nordic nations that have resisted membership for decades, China has distanced itself from Russia and is probably rethinking its ability to take Taiwan by force, Russia's ability to maintain its support of its military client states (e.g. Azerbaijan) is faltering, and all of this has been achieved with no more cost to the US than a few hundred billion dollars of military equipment and some intensive military consulting with Ukraine. Europeans will shiver through the winter and Ukraine's streets are red with blood, but those are other people's (and peoples') problems. Even if Putin uses nuclear weapons, it seems unlikely that he'd target US territory, it's an open question how effective they would be, and he'd open the door for a much firmer response that would further accelerate all of the above.
If you're an unsentimental partisan of US interests, what's not to like?
The ever-present risk of nuclear escalation for middling gains. Russia has been inflated as a geopolitical enemy for decades; they were not a serious thorn in our side or a yoke holding us back before the war with Ukraine, and they won't be after, but maybe there's a big ol' fireball along the way and that'll suck.
Like, yeah, undeniably, this has weakened Russia. From where I'm standing Russia was already very weak compared to us.
I think the US foreign policy establishment is actually doing a pretty good job of threading the needle and avoiding the risk of nuclear escalation. It is possible that Putin will resort to a tactical nuke, but (1) I suspect it'll be less effective than the conventional wisdom has it, and may actually deflate some of the mystique around nuclear weapons and lower the odds that they're used in the future, (2) I'm sure we'll have a very sharp response but will avoid retaliating with nuclear weapons of our own, and if NATO is not directly kinetic on (actual) Russian territory and Ukraine constrains its kinetics only to military resources on Russian territory, then Russia will have every incentive not to use nukes outside of Ukraine, and (3) breaking the nuclear taboo will make it even harder for Russia to come back from its isolation even after this has all blown over.
Sure, a fireball in Ukraine would suck, and the mountains of rubble and shattered bones in Ukraine already sucks, but neither really damages US interests.
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