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notinfuriated | 3 years ago

While the Seymour Hersh story seems unbelievable to me, so does the initial explanation that was being thrown around, that Russia did this as sabotage, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-....

The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines. (To use that language, nearly anything can be a "weapon.") I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.

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aredox|3 years ago

One of the pipelines is still undamaged. Why would the US be this sloppy?

manimino|3 years ago

No opinion on whether the US did it.

But Hersh's essay indicates there were last-minute changes to the detonation method. That adds risk, which could have manifested as failure of some detonations.

mrtksn|3 years ago

Why wouldn't be sloppy? Remember the Afghanistan pull out? The US is capable of screw ups. Unless of course people were falling down from planes and busses with kids and women were droned tactically?

HybridCurve|3 years ago

>The utter stupidity of that idea is along the sames lines as rhetoric, also present in OP, that Russia "weaponized" its gas pipelines

Cutting off energy a nation's energy supply in violation of an established trade agreement, as a response to an escalating conflict between nations, is economic warfare. The term "weaponized" is used correctly in this sense and the author was not engaging in hyperbole.

Modern hybridized warfare is fought across a number of spaces: legal, political, economic, ecological, informational, 'cyber', etc, etc. We no longer have the luxury of believing the warfare only involves weapons with purely kinetic effects. This is not the way Russia conducts war anymore nor has it been for the last few decades if not more. Conventional military action is always the last resort or the culminating event in modern campaigns.

>I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say that I won't take seriously anything that doesn't immediately address how insane those initial accusations, of Russian sabotage of its own pipelines, were.

Can you honestly justify any actions that Russia has taken openly over the last few years as sane? Countries run by viscous autocrats who have consolidated power often make decisions which suit their personal interests more than the those of the nation. Many in Europe and the US have made the mistake of assessing Putin's strategies as being 'Russia's strategy' and therefore unlikely because it would be bad for Russia. When in fact Putin's strategies serve him just fine because he doesn't give a shit about Russians.

postingawayonhn|3 years ago

Somebody destroyed them and there is a limited nber of candidates who would have both the motive and means to do so.

macintux|3 years ago

The idea that Russia would use it as a reminder that they could sabotage other pipelines doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

ed25519FUUU|3 years ago

Can you name a single other instance in history where a country at war significantly damaged its ability to raise money for the war to “send a message”? What exactly is the message? The US didn’t think Russia had a submersible and some C4 and now they do?

pydry|3 years ago

It is ridiculously far fetched. It was extremely expensive asset and provided a source of leverage.

This is why the US publicly hated on the pipeline.

notinfuriated|3 years ago

Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons.

Building a pipeline is not cheap, not in money or time or bureaucratic effort. It's easier to just stop supplying the gas if you want to make an obvious threat.

kornhole|3 years ago

Part of the credibility of either account lies in the source. The source of one is a highly awarded investigative journalist legend with a history of verifying his anonymous sources in government and never published anything false TMK. The other account comes from a publication owned by a billionaire contractor to the department of defense.