Can Europe Afford To Turn- A Blind Eye To Evidence Of US Role In Pipeline Blasts?
QUOTE
If Washington was involved, it would mark
a dangerous new stage not only in the Ukraine war but in Europe’s acceptance
of vassal status
The sabotage of the two Nord Stream pipelines leaves Europeans certain to be much poorer and colder this winter, and was an act of international vandalism on an almost unimaginable scale. The attacks severed Russian gas supplies to Europe and caused the release of enormous quantities of methane gas, the prime offender in global warming.
This is why no one is going to take responsibility for the crime – and most likely no one will ever be found definitively culpable.
Nonetheless, the level of difficulty and sophistication in setting off blasts at three separate locations on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines overwhelmingly suggests a state actor, or actors, was behind it. Western coverage of the attacks has been decidedly muted, given that this hostile assault on the globe’s energy infrastructure is unprecedented – overshadowing even the 9/11 attacks.
The reason why there appears to be so little enthusiasm to explore this catastrophic event in detail – beyond pointing a finger in Russia’s direction – is not difficult to deduce.
It is hard to think of a single reason why Moscow would wish to destroy its own energy pipelines, valued at $20 billion, or allow in seawater, possibly corroding them irreversibly.
The attacks deprive Russia of its main gas supply lines to Europe – and with it, vital future revenues – while leaving the field open to competitors.
Moscow loses its only significant leverage over Germany, its main buyer in Europe and at the heart of the European project, when it needs such leverage most, as it faces down concerted efforts by the United States and Europe to drive Russian soldiers out of Ukraine.
Even any possible temporary advantage Moscow might have gained by demonstrating its ruthlessness and might to Europe could have been achieved just as effectively by simply turning off the spigot to stop supplies.
Media taboo
This
week, distinguished economist Jeffrey Sachs was invited on Bloomberg
TV to talk about the pipeline attacks. He broke a taboo among Western elites
by
citing evidence suggesting that the US, rather than Russia, was the
prime suspect.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs [Columbia] on Bloomberg causing chaos saying US was most likely involved in Nordstream leaks according to data & other experts
“even reporters tell me …. privately of course …” and that we are on a pretty dangerous path to a nuclear conflict pic.twitter.com/U6FsC2tdp6
— detty (@0ddette) October 3, 2022
Western media like the Associated Press have tried to foreclose such a line of thinking by calling it a “baseless conspiracy theory” and Russian “disinformation”. But, as Sachs pointed out, there are good reasons to suspect the US above Russia.
There is, for example, the threat to Russia made by US president Joe Biden back in early February, that “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2” were Ukraine to be invaded. Questioned by a reporter about how that would be possible, Biden asserted: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”
Biden was not speaking out of turn or off the cuff. At the same time,
Victoria Nuland, a senior diplomat in the Biden administration, issued Russia much the same warning, telling reporters: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”................
That is the same Nuland who was intimately involved back in 2014 in behind-the-scenes maneuvers by the US to help overthrow an elected Ukrainian government that led to the installation of one hostile to Moscow. It was that coup that triggered a combustible mix of outcomes – Kyiv’s increasing flirtation with NATO, as well as a civil war in the east between Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and ethnic Russian communities – that provided the chief rationale for President Vladimir Putin’s later invasion.
And for those still puzzled by what motive the US might have for perpetrating such an outrage, Nuland’s boss helpfully offered an answer last Friday. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken described the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, and the consequent environmental catastrophe, as offering “tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come”.
Blinken set out a little too clearly the “cui bono” – “who profits?” – argument, suggesting that Biden and Nuland’s earlier remarks were not just empty, pre-invasion posturing by the White House...........
Blinken celebrated the fact that Europe would be deprived of Russian gas for the foreseeable future and, with it, Putin’s leverage over Germany and other European states. Before the blasts, the danger for Washington had been that Moscow might be able to advance favorable negotiations over Ukraine rather than perpetuate a war Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has already stated is designed to “weaken” Russia at least as much as liberate Ukraine.
Or, as Blinken phrased it, the attacks were “a tremendous opportunity once and for all to remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
Though Blinken did not mention it, it was also a “tremendous opportunity” to make Europe far more dependent on the US for its gas supplies, shipped by sea at much greater cost to Europe than through Russia’s pipelines. American energy firms may well be the biggest beneficiaries from the explosions.............
One can hardly be surprised that European leaders are publicly blaming Russia for the pipeline attacks. After all, Europe falls under the US security umbrella and Russia has been designated by Washington as Official Enemy No 1.
But almost certainly, major European capitals are drawing different conclusions in private. Like Sachs, their officials are examining the circumstantial evidence, considering the statements of self-incrimination from Biden and other officials, and weighing the “cui bono” arguments.
And like Sachs, they are most likely inferring that the prime suspect in this case is the US – or, at the very least, that Washington authorized an ally to act on its behalf. Just as no European leader would dare to publicly accuse the US of carrying out the attacks, none would dare stage such an attack without first getting the nod from Washington.................
But if Washington is the chief suspect in blowing up the pipelines, how should Europe read its relations with the US in the light of that deduction? And what does such sabotage indicate to Europe’s leaders about how Washington might perceive the stakes in Europe? The answers are not pretty.
Demand for fealty
If the
US was behind the attacks, it suggests not only that Washington is taking
the Ukraine war into new, more dangerous territory, ready to risk drawing
Moscow into a round of tit-for-tats that could quickly escalate into a
nuclear confrontation. It also suggests that ties between the US and Europe
have entered a decisive new stage, too.
Or put another way, Washington would have done more than move out of the shadows, turning its proxy war in Ukraine into a more direct, hot war with Russia. It would indicate that the US is willing to turn the whole of Europe into a battlefield, and bully, betray and potentially sacrifice the continent’s population as cruelly as it has traditionally treated weak allies in the Global South.
In that regard, the pipeline ruptures are most likely interpreted by European leaders as a signal: that they should not dare to consider formulating their own independent foreign policy, or contemplate defying Washington. The attacks indicate that the US requires absolute fealty, that Europe must prostrate itself before Washington and accept whatever dictates it imposes.
That would amount to a dramatic reversal of the Marshall Plan, Washington’s ambitious funding of the rebuilding of Western Europe after the Second World War, chiefly as a way to restore the market for rapidly expanding US industries.
By contrast, this act of sabotage strangles Europe economically, driving it into recession, deepening its debt and making it a slave to US energy supplies. Effectively, the Biden administration would have moved from offering European elites juicy carrots to now wielding a very large stick at them.
Pitiless aggression
For
those reasons, European leaders may be unwilling to contemplate that their
ally across the Atlantic could behave in such a cruel manner against them.
The implications are more than unsettling.
The conclusion European leaders would be left to draw is that the only justification for such pitiless aggression is that the US is maneuvering to avoid the collapse of its post-war global dominance, the end of its military and economic empire.
The destruction of the pipelines would have to be understood as an act of desperation: a last-ditch preemption by Washington of the loss of its hegemony as Russia, China and others find common cause to challenge the American behemoth, and a ferocious blow against Europe to hammer home the message that it must not stray from the fold.
At the same time, it would shine a different, clearer light on the events that have been unfolding in and around Ukraine in recent years:
- NATO’s relentless expansion across Eastern Europe despite expert warnings that it would eventually provoke Russia.
- Biden and Nuland’s meddling to help oust an elected Ukrainian government sympathetic to Moscow.
- The cultivation of a militarized Ukrainian ultra-nationalism pitted against Russia that led to bloody civil war against Ukraine’s own ethnic Russian communities.
- And NATO’s exclusive focus on escalating the war through arms supplies to Ukraine rather than pursuing and incentivizing diplomacy.
None of these developments can be stripped out of a realistic assessment of why Russia responded by invading Ukraine.
Europeans have been persuaded that they must give unflinching moral and
military support to Ukraine because it is the last rampart defending their
homeland from a merciless Russian imperialism.
UNQUOTE
The American Deep State is terrorising its
slave states in Europe. It is also forcing them to pay
over the odds for oil and gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland
Victoria Nuland ex Wiki
Victoria Jane Nuland (born July 1, 1961) is an
American diplomat currently serving as
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Nuland, a
former member of the foreign service, served as the
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
at the
United States Department of State from 2013 to 2017 and
US Permanent Representative to NATO from 2005 to 2008.[2][3]
She held the rank of
Career Ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the United
States Foreign Service.[4]
She is the former CEO of the
Center for a New American Security, (CNAS), serving from
January 2018 until early 2019, and is also the Brady-Johnson
Distinguished Practitioner in Grand Strategy at
Yale University, and a member of the board of the
National Endowment for Democracy. She served as a
nonresident fellow in the foreign policy program at the
Brookings Institution[5]
and senior counselor at the
Albright Stonebridge Group.[6]
Early life and education
Nuland was born in 1961 to
Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon born to
Ukrainian Jewish immigrants,[7]
and a Christian British native mother, Rhona McKhann, née Goulston.[8]
She graduated from
Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979.[9]
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from
Brown University in 1983, where she studied Russian literature,
political science, and history.[10]
Career
From 1993 to 1996, during
Bill Clinton's presidency, Nuland was
chief of staff to
Deputy Secretary of State
Strobe Talbott before moving on to serve as deputy director for former
Soviet Union affairs.[11]
From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy
adviser to Vice President
Dick
Cheney, exercising an influential role during the
Iraq War.[citation
needed] From 2005 to 2008, during President
George W. Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. ambassador to the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, where she
concentrated on mobilizing European support for the U.S. occupation of
Afghanistan.[12]
In the summer of 2011, Nuland became special envoy for
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe[13]
and then became
State Department spokesperson.[14]
In May 2013, Nuland was nominated to act as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs[15] and was sworn in on September 18, 2013.[16] In her role as assistant secretary, she managed diplomatic relations with 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia, as well as with NATO, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Ukraine
Nuland was the lead U.S. point person for the
Revolution of Dignity, establishing
loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in
2014, and the provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military
and border guard.[17][18]
Along with Secretary of State
John
Kerry and Secretary of Defense
Ash
Carter, she is seen as a leading supporter of defensive weapons delivery
to Ukraine. In 2016, Nuland urged Ukraine to start prosecuting corrupt
officials: "It's time to start locking up people who have ripped off the
Ukrainian population for too long and it is time to eradicate the cancer of
corruption".[19]
While serving as the Department of State's lead diplomat on the Ukraine
crisis, Nuland pushed European allies to take a harder line on Russian
expansionism.[20]
On February 4, 2014, a recording of a phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on January 28, 2014, was published on YouTube.[21] [22][23][24][25][26] In their phone conversation, Nuland and Pyatt were having a discussion about the make up of next Ukrainian government. Nuland told Pyatt that Arseniy Yatsenyuk would be the best candidate to become the next Prime Minister of Ukraine.[22][23] Nuland suggested the United Nations, rather than European Union should be involved in a political solution in Kiev, saying that “So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it and you know ... fuck the EU”. The following day, Christiane Wirtz, Deputy Government Spokesperson and Deputy Head of the Press and Information Office of the German Federal Government, stated that German Chancellor Angela Merkel termed Nuland's remark "absolutely unacceptable."[27] The president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, condemned the remark as "unacceptable".[28][29] Department of State spokesperson Jen Psaki said the discussion was not evidence of any American plan to influence the political outcome, remarking that "It shouldn't be a surprise that at any point there have been discussions about recent events and offers and what is happening on the ground".[30]
During a June 7, 2016, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing titled "Russian Violations of Borders, Treaties, and Human Rights", Nuland described U.S. diplomatic outreach to the former Soviet Union and efforts to build a constructive relationship with Russia. During her testimony, Nuland noted Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine which she said, "shattered any remaining illusions about this Kremlin's willingness to abide by international law or live by the rules of the institutions that Russia joined at the end of the Cold War."[31]
Trump administration
Nuland left the State Department in January 2017, amid the departure of
many career officials who left in the early days of the
Trump administration.[32]
On January 24, 2018, The Washington Post published an interview with Nuland where she opined on the work of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She described an exodus of career foreign service officials and dysfunction within the State Department, and stated that the American judiciary and media were under assault. Nuland also decried a trend towards American isolationism, stating: "When we withdraw and say it's every nation for itself, you open the door for countries dissatisfied with their territorial position and influence in the international system — or with the system itself." She encouraged whole-government responses to international issues, stating, "Military leaders would be the first to say military solutions alone result in more and longer military entanglements. The role of American diplomats and political leaders is to work concurrently with the military to bring to bear all of the political tools we have."[33]
In January 2018, the Trump administration began new high-level engagements with Russian government officials by scheduling a meeting between Russia's top general Valery Gerasimov and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti. Nuland stated, "These channels are especially vital at a time when relations at the leader level are so unpredictable." She said Scaparrotti was "uniquely positioned" to address concerns about Russia's "ongoing military role in Ukraine, its INF treaty violations, its active measures to undermine Transatlantic democracies and the other strategic tensions that are driving the US and its allies to take stronger deterrent measures."[34]
Biden administration
On January 5, 2021, it was reported that President-elect
Joe
Biden would nominate Nuland to serve as
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Secretary-designate
Antony Blinken.[3]
Hearings on Nuland's nomination were held by the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 15, 2021. The committee
favorably reported Nuland's nomination on April 21, 2021. On April 29, 2021,
her nomination was confirmed by the entire Senate by
voice
vote, and she started her work as Under Secretary of State on May 3,
2021.[35]
In March 2022, Nuland expressed concern that Russia would get control of Ukraine's biological research facilities during its invasion of Ukraine.[36][37][38]
Nuland visited Delhi in March 2022 and suggested that there was an "evolution of thinking in India". She said that the US and Europe should be "defense and security partners" of India, and that Russia's invasion of Ukraine presents a "major inflection point in the autocratic-democratic struggle".[39].
Personal life
Nuland's husband,
Robert Kagan, is a historian, foreign policy commentator at the
Brookings Institution, and co-founder in 1998 of the
neoconservative
Project for the New American Century (PNAC),[40]
with whom she has two children, David and Elena. She speaks Russian and
French, and some Chinese.
UNQUOTE
The Wiki says that Nuland admitted publicly that America had biowarfare labs
in the Ukraine; a "fact" strenuously denied by the
Mainstream Media.