Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.
Exact full quote from CNN:
“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063
I didn’t say Russia did it. I mean it probably did but Germany isn’t off the table. Unlike the US Germany actually has the stealth subs to pull it off undetected, but all in all Russia is still the more likely option I’d say. Of course, the presence of ships in that area etc. is only circumstantial evidence.
And in your analysis you’re making a crucial mistake, a mistake I myself made directly before the invasion when Russian soldiers were getting itchy underwear on Ukraine’s border because I thought if they’re going to attack, they’d already have done it: You assume Russia is a rational actor. Or, maybe better put, that it considers the same things as rational as you do.
Blowing up NS2 from Russia’s side could have the motive of a) knowing or suspecting that you don’t need it any more – though it also wouldn’t be terribly hard to repair which people are constantly overlooking and b) to provide an excuse to stop deliveries. Russia was playing around back at that time with NS1 maintenance and turbines being needed which were stuck in the sanctions regime etc, allthewhile Germany was filling its gas storage and nationalising Russian gas assets on German soil. They might’ve thought that they need to disable NS2 so Germany wouldn’t say “well if NS1 doesn’t work why don’t we use NS2”.
As to the US threats: What was probably meant was sanctions. It’s true that the US has levers it can pull to force such an issue. Those would come at a cost to the US itself but they’re there and can be pulled if the cost is deemed acceptable.
And btw one thing is for sure: Germany will never again buy any (noticable) amount of Russian gas. Even if they retreat to their own borders tomorrow that ship has sailed, Germany is in full swing to replace all that fossil infrastructure with ammonia and hydrogen. NS2 is dead no matter whether it’s operational or not.
Oh another thing is for sure: Ukraine is way more important to Russia, or maybe better put Putin, than some gas pipeline. Pretty much the moment Germany changed laws to legalise sending weapons into crisis territories, i.e. Ukraine, Russia knew where Germany stood, and will continue to stand. We don’t tend to flop easily and they know it. As such it also might simply have been Putin being stroppy, expecting Germany really to go for that Duginesque1 division of Europe between great powers things, with Germany taking a forceful lead in Europe. He did later on comment that “siding with Ukraine was Germany’s mistake of the millennium” or something to that effect. So much for Putin’s rationality, he’s living in a completely different world than us, thinking state relations and decisions work on fundamentally different principles than they actually do.
1 not really, Dugin never came up with that stuff he’s not a theorist he just rehashes nationalist bullshit those theories actually date back to the German Empire trolling the Russians to bait them it’s a long story.
Fair enough on the rest, it seems like a weak motive given that Russia could simply not send the gas or disable it on their end, but that’s my opinion not a fact.
Out of curiosity, where did you pick up “seppo”? I’ve only heard Australians use it before, maybe the occasional brit.
Agreed on Dugin being full of nationalist BS.
Type 212, German-Italian, 214 is the export version without anti-magnetic dishwashers. I’m quipping, the exact differences aren’t really known but 212s do have antimagnetic diswashers and 214s are lacking some secret sauce but are still very capable.
Hydrogen fuel cell air independent drive, they’re not fast but very quiet, undetectable via active or passive sonar as well as magnetic sensors. Which makes them undetectable because there’s no such thing in the real world as gravimetric sensors (with range that doesn’t mean you’ve bumped into them anyway). Can traverse very shallow waters allowing combat divers to exit to shore, can also dive very deep because the Mediterranean is actually quite deep – strange combination of capabilities due to joint German/Italian design. Definitely capable of dropping two mines on pipes without anyone noticing.
By contrast US submarines are nuclear, meaning they’re glorified steam engines, quite loud. The Danes would have heard you enter the Skagerrak and then kept eyes on you, wondering WTF a nuclear deterrent submarine is doing in the Baltic Sea. Only alternative route would have been via the Kiel Kanal and… no.
A particularly foul-mouthed gooseberry pudding.
Thanks for the submarine lesson, that was an interesting read.