Act of war by USA? (equivalent if done through ally)
I'm uncomfortable with light hearted talk about the US and NATO being involved in this. Clearly people speaking so cavalierly about that possibility do not understand the implications of such an act in the alliance system. The purpose of an alliance is not to surprise your partners. It's to ensure your partners are not surprised.
On a completely unrelated note: /s
Brazil, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana. Property markets had been a little crazy as they are everywhere. I didn't think there was much upside in these markets, but I'm starting to see that perhaps these might be good places for long term residential investment afterall?
Probably offer some moderate but steady returns as the insurance policies of the rats, and enormous returns as the most likely places the rats would run if things nosedive. Now I understand the USD4 million condos in Nairobi.
Gigantic risk for the US and would eventually be found out which would destroy any semblance of relations with the EU and significantly strengthen Russia's hand.
US companies (and others) are going to sell LNG to Europe for huge profits anyway.
These pipelines weren't deliving gas anyway
The US would prefer energy markets to be stable and not have sky-high prices
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was one of the greatest foreign policy gifts in United States history and it significantly strengthened US alliances across the globe and put the entire west in lockstep with each other with regards to Russia and China. Placing that gift at risk is beyond foolish.Then again, Russia might not have the monopoly on stupidity.
Why would Russia invade and annex Ukraine? The answer can be stupid people making stupid decisions, don't assume everything done by a nation-state is logical.
They had good reasons to maybe want to dominate their neighbor. What good reasons were there to risk everything over an all out land war, and what reasons remain for continuing a fight they are losing ?
This is predicated on the assumption that the US intelligence community would leak it anytime soon (within the current presidency). That seems like a very poor assumption. If it's never proven they did it, there's no real risk because people who don't want to believe will invent other explanations. You see it happening in this thread already - it's not the country that literally said they had ways to ensure NS2 would never activate, no, it must be the country that built it. 4D chess!
"These pipelines weren't deliving gas anyway"
No, but that could have been changed very quickly if wanted. All three pipelines were pressurized. NS2 was all new equipment, ready and waiting to go.
"The US would prefer energy markets to be stable and not have sky-high prices"
The US has consistently and strongly opposed European dependence on Russian natgas under (at least) two different presidents. Neither of them seemed to care much about the question of what to replace it with. At any rate such an operation would be signed off by Biden and highly classified, so it's not like "the US" would have an opinion on what matters more anyway, just a senile old man.
Some kind of small underwater drone, however ... hmmm
Some people think the 'official story' isn't right. Like it's often the case, and sometimes for good reasons.
This wasn't done to coerce European countries. This was done to stir chaos and make it look like someone other than Russia committed sabotage.
I don't want to say US isn't making stupid things, but this would be a whole new level of stupid...
Nobody actually did this. 10% of extreme "patriotic" losers wanted to do this. It did not happen.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/congress-french-freedom-fr...
The US is not homogeneous or even close.
As an example:
I remember warning people when visiting over seas: Trump is many things. Stupid is not one.
I stand by that statement. I don't agree with the man. But I will never mistake him for a total fool. Did he mis-calcuate. Thankfully, so far yes. But 2024+ will tell the truth on that, alas.
Many in the US consider Trump a fool. I do not.
See Biden recently: https://twitter.com/ah114088/status/1574435558675316737
German policy has always been that this pipeline is a stranded assert once russia shuts it down.
Keeping this as a lever and credible threat is vastly important for maintaining a somewhat secure supply of gasoline for east germany. When speaking about a energy catastrophe you really, really want this pipeline shut.
In fact germany has taken measures to make sure that the pipelines will not become operational again. Confiscating and removing compressors and reuse them for the planned LNG terminals.
If anybody profits from these explosions, it's germany.
And russian natural gas revenues hit ground and are now searching for oil themselfs, now.
What do you expect the politicians to do? Say that we're fucked because they didn't want to negotiate? ...so we can protest and replace them before we're actually fucked? Or lie about being ready, until it's obvious we're not ready and we're fucked, and with a destroyed pipeline, we cannot even negotiate anymore.
We're talking about people who couldn't even get masks during covid.
The vast majority of weapons and support to Ukraine is coming from the US, Britain and Eastern European countries, not Western ones. Even if Germany and France started taking in gas from Russia it would only marginally affect the amount of support coming in for Ukraine and certainly wouldn't come even close to ending the war. The energy catastrophe is unlikely to happen too beyond what is already happening (ie companies having to shutdown due to high energy prices). See: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
Anyways, by next winter France's nukes should be back online and they'll have had 2 years to make structural changes to ween off Russian gas. Likely means more US LNG in the short term, and more green energy/tech in the long term. Only chance I see of them getting back to Russian energy is if Russia gets toppled by a democratic regime that wants to be westernized. I see this as very unlikely in the next 2 years.
https://twitter.com/abc/status/1490792461979078662?s=46&t=kJ...