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by pragmar 1310 days ago
The ostensible motivation of a possible US/UK/Polish operation, as I understand it, was poisoning the well on peace negotiations. By removing the optionality of turning the lines back on, there is less for the Germans and Russians to work with, and therefore less to motivate diplomatic talks in the first place. The Germans may be committed to getting off Russian gas permanently, but they still have to get there from here without losing their economy.
1 comments
petre 1310 days ago
The UK would create unnecessary pressure on its own gas market by taking it down, so no. If the US did it, then it was most likely a CIA op done through third parties and they won't get caught, not anytime soon anyway. But the US does things professionally and they would have blown up all the pipes as opposed to 3 out of 4, so it's probably not them. Poland? Possibly, but it takes a lot of guts. If they did it, na zdrowie to them. I'd say that it's most probably Russia who did it in order to blackmail Western Europe during the winter and be able to declare force majeure on the contracts and also blame the UK/anglo saxons. Also how it was done, sloppy, with lots of explosives is typically Russian.
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miguelazo 1310 days ago
“The US does things professionally.”

Interesting take— have you seen what the US has done in the Middle East lately?

At the end of the day, if Russia were involved, no one would be holding their tongues about the results of their investigations. The only reason the results are being kept secret is because the European vassal states are afraid of publicly accusing the US. Which, given that the US was at least complicit in an attack on Germany, I can’t really blame them.

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aerostable_slug 1310 days ago
I think they were speaking in terms of operational proficiency, not strategic wisdom. Whether or not you think assassinating Qasem Soleimani was a good idea, we inarguably did a very good job of it.
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miguelazo 1308 days ago
Illegally assassinating a foreign official on another country’s territory, in a place where any military activity is prohibited, is not only ill-advised, it’s extremely unimpressive. And we all know very well whose help was involved.
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aerostable_slug 1307 days ago
Yes, dissident Iraqis. No need to blame Israel when that's not what occurred.
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miguelazo 1307 days ago
Oh? You sure about that? https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-12-20/ty-article/is...
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MichaelCollins 1310 days ago
> But the US does things professionally and they would have blown up all the pipes as opposed to 3 out of 4

That's a shakey presumption. 3 out of 4 may have been a compromise between the arguments for taking out the pipelines and the arguments against it. We cannot know for certain how many pipelines the attacker, whoever it was, intended to destroy.

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