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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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"Russia" is not a monolith. There are plenty of Russians, some quite powerful, with lots to gain from destroying the pipeline.

Restricting ourselves to people with access to sufficient ressources to pull off such an operation: who and for what reason? The non state actors with sufficient ressources that I know of don't seem to me like they would benefit.

Restricting ourselves to people with access to sufficient ressources to pull off such an operation: who and for what reason? The non state actors with sufficient ressources that I know of don't seem to me like they would benefit.

This restriction doesn't meaningfully narrow it down, since every power in the geographic neighborhood and many outside would qualify. It's not like boats and diving equipment and explosives are the sole scope of a superpower.

For motive, there can many multiple and even overlapping motivations, both externally oriented (geopolitical advantage) and internal (domestic political maneuverings). Simply hoping to have the Americans be blamed would be a motive.

https://twitter.com/BadBalticTakes/status/1623606025071783936?s=20&t=PXShQfsqToxfHV3qYYjzkg

Hersh himself acknowledges how the pipeline would be politically unviable during Russia’s full scale war. That means the continued existence of the pipeline is far more valuable only to someone who could replace Putin and change the course he wants Russia totally committed to. Putin’s top priority is remaining in power at all cost. He would sacrifice an incentive to replace him & end war.

Hersh himself acknowledges how the pipeline would be politically unviable during Russia’s full scale war.

How does he figure? Isn't Russia shipping gas to Germany via a surface pipeline through Ukraine right now? Doing the same thing but not transiting the war-zone should be just as viable.

That might have been Putins plan at the outset, but then (Wikipedia):

Scholz suspended certification of Nord Stream 2 on 22 February 2022 in consequence of Russia's recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and the deployment of troops in territory held by the DPR and LPR.[40]

Now, the Germans might theoretically have realized that it was pretty weird that they were still buying gas but not approving this specific pipeline, but in practice, it seems very unlikely that that Nord Stream 2 would ever deliver gas while the war was ongoing. E.g. this Metaculus question goes down to 5% after Sholz announcement: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5170/nord-stream-2-be-completed-before-2025/

Since we are basically mindreading Putin here, it kind of doesn't matter what metaculus or twitter randos think the likelihood of the pipeline being certified was -- I can't mindread Putin either, but "sell as much gas as possible on the international market" seems to best serve his war aims. And I can easily imagine a plan in which Germany caves during a hard winter, which again seems like the sort of thing Putin would like.

Sure, we are mindreading: so is Hersh and everyone else in this discussion: It's a discussion about motives, thus we are mindreading.

And I can easily imagine a plan in which Germany caves during a hard winter, which again seems like the sort of thing Putin would like.

Putins plan likely looked like your scenario above (or even "Germany is weak and decadent and they won't cancel Nord Stream 2 to begin with"). Then Germany made it very clear that they wouldn't reopen Nord Stream 2 (hence the 5% on the prediction market) and they managed to stock up on gas and otherwise prepare for the winter much better than expected. Also Russia seems to have underestimated the west in all their plans everywhere (thus the fiasco of the invasion) so they might realize from that general principle that they have likely been underestimating Germany in this specific case. So Putin realized that this plan wasn't going to work, so he went for another option.

Your argument seems grounded on that Nord Stream 2 was viable after the invasion. I have tried to present evidence to the contrary but it seems I haven't convinced you. What evidence would make you change your mind? Do you have any evidence for your position, beyond "I can imagine it"?

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