The Nord Stream Whodunit

By Mark Antonio Wright

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

 

“Cui bono?” Cicero once asked.

 

Yes, indeed. In examining the Great Nord Stream Whodunit of 2022, we must ask along with our favorite Roman orator, “Who benefits?”

 

The answer to that question isn’t as easy to elucidate as one might expect.

 

The BBC reports that “the Nord Stream 1 pipeline — which consists of two parallel branches — has not transported any gas since August when Russia closed it down for maintenance. It stretches 745 miles (1,200km) under the Baltic Sea from the Russian coast near St Petersburg to north-eastern Germany. Its twin pipeline, Nord Stream 2, was halted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.”

 

In short, Europe is experiencing an energy crisis — but these explosions are not the cause of it. A combination of Western sanctions and Russia’s turning off the taps had already cut the flow through these pipelines to Europe.

 

Therefore the question must shift to “Who benefits from putting the Nord Stream pipelines out of commission when they weren’t currently delivering much gas to Europe?”

 

Most public statements from European leaders blamed Russia or at least cast suspicion the Kremlin’s way.

 

Here’s the New York Times report:

 

Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, blamed Russia for the leaks, saying they were an attempt to further destabilize Europe’s energy security. He spoke at the launch of a new undersea pipeline that connects Poland to Norway through Denmark.

 

“We do not know the details of what happened yet, but we can clearly see that it is an act of sabotage,” Mr. Morawiecki said. “An act that probably marks the next stage in the escalation of this situation in Ukraine.”

 

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said that sabotage could not be ruled out. “It is too early to conclude yet, but it is an extraordinary situation,” she said during a visit to Poland to inaugurate the pipeline from Norway.

 

“There is talk of three leaks, and therefore it is difficult to imagine that it could be accidental,” she said.

 

The leaders of Poland and Denmark just happened to say this at the commissioning ceremony for a “new undersea pipeline that connects Poland to Norway through Denmark”? This is no coincidence. And, of course, this comes just days after German chancellor Olaf Scholz returned from the United Arab Emirates after securing a deal to import more energy from the Gulf. According to the AP:

 

Germany is trying to wean itself off energy imports from Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, while avoiding an energy shortage in the coming winter months.

 

To do so, the German government has sought out new natural gas suppliers while also installing terminals to bring the fuel into the country by ship. . . .

 

German utility company RWE announced Sunday that it will receive a first shipment of liquefied natural gas from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company this year.

 

So it was Russia in the Baltic with a submersible — all in a fit of pique — right?

 

Well, Radek Sikorski — the pro-American Polish member of the European parliament, former Polish minister of foreign affairs, and a onetime contributor to the pages of National Review (!) — tweeted what many took as an admission that the United States was behind the cutting of the pipelines.

 

Thank you, USA. pic.twitter.com/nALlYQ1Crb

— Radek Sikorski MEP (@radeksikorski) September 27, 2022

 

I’m not sure if Sikorski was being provocative — Sikorski has, along with the United States, opposed the building of the pipeline for years — or if he genuinely thought that the U.S. could be behind the covert action.

 

It shouldn’t need to be said, however, that the fingerprints of the United States on this incident would break the Western alliance. Whether or not it was bad economic and geopolitical policy on the part of the Germans to build this pipeline (and it surely was), the Germans would never forgive America for such an action. Do you think that German politicians would be able to withstand the political pressure from a very cold German public during a very cold German winter if America could be shown to be responsible for some of that trouble? I don’t. The Germans would throw the Ukrainians overboard, and the United States would have surrendered the moral high ground and probably lost this war in a single stroke.

 

Of course, the Russians lost no time jumping on the opportunity to blame the United States.

 

Dmitry Polyanskiy, a member of Russia’s delegation to the U.N., immediately thanked Sikorski “for making it crystal clear who stands behind this terrorist-style targeting of civilian infrastructure!”

 

Pro-Kremlin media took up the argument.

 

True, at first glance it seems as if the Russians have no incentive to destroy their ability to tempt Europe with surrendering Ukraine in exchange for turning the gas taps back on this winter.

 

There are, however, plausible reasons for suspecting the Russians. The best argument for the Kremlin’s ordering this operation is that destroying Russian-owned infrastructure in international waters wouldn’t be an attack on NATO countries or NATO assets — with all the fallout that might entail — but could still be seen as a capability demonstration and a threat to Western energy infrastructure, such as to the major pipeline systems originating in Norway that provide much of the U.K.’s and Western Europe’s remaining gas supplies.

 

This could also be the Kremlin “burning the ships”: a message to the Russian public and oligarchy that Russia must win in Ukraine.

 

“There will be no return to the antebellum economic environment,” is Putin’s message. “So stop pining for it.”