Are we even allowed to comment on this if we're not in commodities

Once you understand that the leaders of countries don't care about their citizens, then a new world of possibilities opens up.

If other pipelines can't be defended then it makes total sense

Probably pretty vulnerable.

Whether the Russians did this to the pipeline or not, they do have the ability to use subs to start cutting underwater fiber optic cables all over the place. To me, there's a bigger risk of that than them using a tactical nuke in Ukraine.

Not so much in this instance. And I wasn't assuming that world leaders were subordinating their personal interests.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/...ent-site-in-se

No claims by me re the accuracy of these reports or the flight tracking data discussed

I agree with your point, but, for the most part the Western Countries have not done this. Finland is a bit of an exception, but not much. A few other Western Countries have taken a few thousand Russians. Georgia, Kazakstan, and I forget the other Central Asian country have taken a fair amount of Russian refugees/asylum seekers.

And as far as I've seen, I've been the one pointing to countries in these threads and how many people they are taking, while you're making some abstract arguments, which may be good arguments, but the West just isn't opening wide to Russian asylum seekers. The simplest explanation for that is that citizens in countries like Germany, France, UK would get pissed if there were a lot of Russians coming in.

Ukraine is at war with Russia and has already attacked Russian infrastructure. It makes sense for them to attack more.

Poland and other countries benefit from shutting down the Nord Stream because it promises to increase flow of gas through other pipelines, which is taxed.

Western fossil fuel companies benefit from continued increased prices for fossil fuels.

Green terrorists may feel that damaging the pipeline speeds up the transition from fossil fuels.

Lots of explanations make sense. The only one that doesn't is that Russia blew up their own pipeline that makes them money and they could just shut off whenever they want.

You are describing how various groups might benefit. But you aren't accounting for the risks. If you take the benefits and the risks into account, would it make sense for Poland, Kazakhstan, etc., to sabotage the pipeline? I'm no expert in this area, but it is far from obvious to me that the answer is yes.

That doesn't mean this was an accident. Sometimes none of the remotely plausible explanations makes sense. But nonetheless, the act occurred. So one of those seemingly improbable explanations must be the actual explanation. As I said, leaders, states, and other groups sometimes miscalculate or act irrationally out of desperation.

It is also indisputably true that I don't have enough expertise in this area to understand all the implications of damaging the pipelines, so take anything I have to say with a large grain of salt.

There have been several non-ridiculous explanations as to possible Putin motives upthread.

Back to US involvement: The most plausible way I can see them having their hands in this at all is simply that they were aware of some other actor planting bombs on the pipeline and chose to do nothing to stop them.

There's not a lot of risk if there's the tiniest bit of plausible deniability and it's so easily foreseeable that people will be looking to blame Russia, whether that makes sense or not.

I don't think Poland is especially likely, but it's possible. Doubt they would do it without US support. Same goes for Ukraine really, though they are much more likely as they are in the middle of blowing stuff up all the time right now. Fossil fuel companies would be unlikely to act directly, but certainly have all kinds of influence - and wouldn't necessarily be too concerned with risks. Green terrorists/activists would obviously be taking a lot of personal risk, but might not worry about the risks I think you are thinking about.

I suspect that if the US did do it, that that would be widely known by the people whose business it is to know such things. People have claimed that it would be too risky for the US to do it--- as if getting caught would actually matter.

Dunno what you are talking about. Putin doing it to protect himself seems especially ridiculous. He became perhaps the richest person in the world through Gazprom and Rosneft and now he's going to destroy the pipelines they built to protect himself?

The actor with the most risk would be Ukraine because they could get blamed for rising energy prices which might cost them support in Western Europe. That may happen regardless. I think people are really keen to just blame Russia. But, Ukraine is at war and are by far the most likely to have just done it because they are actually at war and doing something like this wouldn't be a wild conspiracy kind of thing...just a not-crazy decision on what to target.

I just don't see the upside for the current administration.

Further ****ing up the economy just doesn't seem like a good political move if you want to get reelected, even if you think you can get away with blaming Russia.

Disgruntled employee, one time!

We'll have to see. I've seen pipeline welds that wouldn't fly in an off-the-books back-alley car garage, so I'll await more information.

I would be very surprised if there was any kind of security at all. In terms of looking for sabotage, that is.

Getting caught would matter a lot in terms of US relationships with countries that may have hoped on that pipeline flowing again in the future and it would matter if that decision was made without their involvement. It would also matter in terms of optics if a president from the party championing the environment wilingly let a bunch of methane loose into the atmosphere.

The day before the attack there was a rally in Germany demanding that they get the gas flowing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.ya...050655816.html

And political pressure on this was only going to continue as winter approaches.

This is fringe stuff on the level of antivax rallies and not representative of the larger population.

it counters the idea that Ukraine and NATO are at all what you perceive them to be. in fact, it counters your entire premise.

whats the saying? if my Aunt had balls...

Kim Dotcom has an interesting Twitter thread on US-German politics from earlier this month

According to wiki this pipeline destruction almost happened in 2015 as well:

"In November 2015, Nord Stream found a disabled underwater drone with a small amount of explosives on the pipeline near Öland, and requested the Swedish Navy to remove it."

I don't see that it makes make sense for anybody to destroy the pipeline in this way. You have to be crazed, irresponsible maniacs to do something like this. It will cost NATO countries plenty of money to contain the leak though.

ya its completely mind-bottling that people think the USA is worried about rik or blowback. we did the Iraq War ffs. abu gahrib, extraordinary rendition, torture, drone strikes killed 90% of civilians.

these same people would say Trumpers are brainwashed.

If the US were "caught" you'd see op-eds within a week titled "Here's why blowing up the Nordstream pipeline was a good thing" and people here would defend it.