Hey, a bit of good news. This week, the Washington Post admitted that Ukraine-USA blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. After 15 months of Joe Biden, his admin and his lackey, Anthony Blinken, telling us that Putin did it. That we were conspiracy nuts or Russian agents if we even questioned why. That Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersch was a liar for saying it was us. Well, guess what? Tony and Joe WERE lying. And The WaPo admitted it. No retraction, no apology....just an article, almost as if they had actually done some investigative journalism. Like they had just discovered what everybody in Dipstick, Idaho knew.....(everybody but the democrats.) So newsflash: Vlad Putin did NOT blow up his own pipeline. We did....and now we are supplying high cost energy to Europe. What's next? !0% for The Big Guy? ..........FWB
The most recent article I saw in the Washington Post (November) put the likely blame on the Ukrainians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/11/nordstream-bombing-ukraine-chervinsky/ Perhaps you read a newer one?
That said, whomever and however it was accomplished, very few people in the West with any understanding of the situation did anything but quietly applaud. I think
@rigbymauser is spot on in his analogy to the British attack on the French Fleet at Mels-el-Kebir in July 1940. France had just fallen, and the French fleet, allied to a newly triumphant Germany, would have dominated the Mediterranean likely making the British position in Egypt untenable. The British gave the commander of the French fleet the option of placing the ships under British control or sailing them to the French West Indies. Darlan equivocated, and the British struck putting the French fleet out of action for the remainder of the war and killing over a thousand French sailors (and recent allies) in the process.
Nord Stream was a deal with the devil. I think even most Germans realized that it represented a "bargain" that along with cheap natural gas, limited Germany's ability to fully exercise its sovereignty - particularly with regard to Russian aspirations. I have no doubt that factored greatly in Putin's strategy for recreating a Soviet-like empire.
Cutting that umbilical cord did not result in near the economic dislocation predicted by many, and witness the recent deployment of a combat brigade to the Baltics, Germany is already exercising a more aggressive role in Europe than at any point since the Second World War. That probably doesn't make France entirely happy, but it is good news for the West's collective national interests,
The notion that the Biden administration could make such a decisive move has never seemed very likely to me. Joe Biden is no Winston Churchill, and the hyper cautiousness Jake Sullivan and his other advisors have shown with regard to every other aspect of the Ukraine conflict, would argue against such a decisive move with regard to Nord Stream.
Eventually, someone will tell the story, and historians will render their judgement. Regardless how it was accomplished, I suspect most of those historians will conclude it was an important waypoint in Europe's economic independence. Whether it was an important waypoint in Ukraine's waits to be seen.
But who knows, we may achieve your standard yet. From a world management perspective, it isn't that high a bar.
