Joe Biden may very well have wanted to blow up the Nord stream pipelines, but I don’t think he’s got the capability. Moreover I don’t think his team’s got the smarts.
And yeah, Tucker Carlson talks about how Biden was making threats along those lines, and even showed his tape of him doing so. But I’m not buying it. The Democrats talk a good game about this stuff, but they never seem to deliver . I’m suggesting that’s what happened here. That’s particularly true given who’s in the White House at the moment. Let’s face it we’re talking about somebody that can’t string together coherent sentences.
Add to that, the enviro- whacko contingent which seems inexorably attached to the Democrat party. There is no way I can see any of them endorsing the kind of environmental damage caused by the attack on those pipelines.
So, here it is:
I am convinced that Russia blew up its own pipelines.
John Sexton over at Hot Air lays it out this way, and I think correctly:
Russia had already cut off the supply of gas through Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 was never operational. So there was no real change in the amount of gas going through the pipeline (or the revenue it produced) before or after the sabotage.
Gas flow had reached zero and it was going to stay there for at least the duration of the war and likely well beyond that. Germany has finally learned its lesson and was signing agreements with Canada and other nations to replace the gas supply from Russia for the duration.
Putin knew all of this. He had pulled the Nord Stream lever as far as he could to wreak havoc on the German energy market with some success. But once the gas flow hit zero there was nothing more he could do.
Still, why blow up an expensive piece of infrastructure even if it is useless for the foreseeable future? Here many observers point to saber rattling or “signaling,” which you may have noticed is something Russia is doing a lot of lately. By blowing up the pipeline, Russia put Europe on notice that it had other options besides nuclear warfare to raise the stakes. It could in fact, attack vulnerable infrastructure in the region including other pipelines and communications cables.
The pipelines weren’t in use. Understand, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by blowing up his own Pipeline and then blaming everybody else for his misdeed. It’s clear that his military isn’t the answer to his problems… in fact they are a large part of his problems. So, he had to do something else.
Boom, boom.
I observe this has all the ear marks of a Soviet misinformation operation, and it has been noted elsewhere that Putin still very much thinks like a “new Soviet man”… Which is precisely why he invaded the Ukraine in the first place.
Does this mean that he won’t be hurling nukes at the rest of the world? Well, probably not in the short term, but the real answer lies in how desperate he becomes between now and the end of the Biden administration.
That last point is not just a wise crack. It’s no fluke of timing, no random chance, that Putin waited until Joe Biden was firmly in the White House before making his move on Ukraine. So whatever he’s going to do, he will do before the next Presidential election takes place here in the states.
