I'd imagine both the Swedish and Danish marines have already investigated the ruptures and it must be trivial to figure out whether the explosions were accidents or sabotage. A detonation using explosives placed on the pipe must cause different kinds of damage than if the tube ruptured from within.
Nordstream: An Accident?
101–110 of 176 posts
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#102Shaped charges are easy to make [0], and technical divers can go to 70 meters. I don't think it's out of line to think that German eco-terrorists could have done it. So the whodunnit list is quite long. [0] https://youtu.be/UHoqYi8XOA4?t=427
A non-state actor is possible, but unlikely. It would require an organization, a small group at least, that had the inclination, opportunity, skill and resources. Any one or two of those is easy, but to actually do it requires all of those simultaneously. Furthermore such a serious attack from eco-terrorists would be fairly unprecedented. It's a far cry from torching a resort or tree spiking.
Releasing colossal amounts of methane directly into the environment would be an odd choice for an eco-group too.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#103Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Just because it has a wikipedia article doesnt mean is isn't nonsense, but first we must agree on what we think the heuristic is. We observe a event that is harmful to us, and we have to decide whether that behavior was caused by a rational agent.
Hanlons Razor, as you are using it, says that is usually not the case.
There is a reason for the heuristic to hold for a time after a big change in human society. This usually corresponds to a time when the peoppe in power don't understand what was going on. They had strategies that were successful in the previous age and those strategies are obsolete now. The first usage seems to be approximately in the time of Napoleon, when gunpowder fundamentally changed feudalism. For another example, compared to its younger brother, World War 1 could have had Yakety Sax as its soundtrack.
There is also a really compelling machanism by which Hanlon's razor fails to apply. Eventually it is the case that competent, selfish strategies prevail and proliferate. They don't go away once they exist, they just accumulate. Eventually, behavior you encounter can be most easily explained by deducing the optimal strategy for the agents involved. This is roughly how biologists operate, and they only study things with comparatively low intelligence.
It should be noted that Hanlon's razor is, as a rule, completely incompatible with the equally popular Chesterton's fence heuristic. If incompetence is likely the correct explanation for the fence, then its fine to get rid of.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they would have to pay billions for not delivering the gas due to the breach of contracts. Legally, you cannot turn off the taps just because. Moreover, Russia can still supply very significant quantities of gas via Belarus and Ukraine, so they retain the leverage to blackmail the EU.
This just doesn't make sense. The pipeline's current and future value was worth more than any breach of contract. It's really just basic math and grade school logic. Somebody didn't want Germany making a deal with Russia after the reality of winter sets in.
Doesn't it? [1][2] suggest that Germany paid $25bn for fossil fuels to Russia in 2021, where a large portion of this must be gas. The cost of building Nord Stream 2 was less than €10bn and some of that was probably covered by Germans. So, it might cost something similar to one year supply. Keep in mind that gas contacts are often long-term.
Also, you assume the pipelines are irreparable, but we don't know that.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-ge... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-ger...
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#105This article is poorly informed opinion piece. Ignore it.
Could you elaborate? The article does.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#106It's clearly not an accident. It's also hard to believe it was Russia, since now they can't blackmail Europe. Both Biden and Victoria Nuland have both publicly threaded to take out the pipelines on video no less.
The best reasoning I've seen on the matter is this: Countries in Europe have been pretty clear that no-one is going to back down on supporting Ukraine in order to get some cheap Russian gas. So the pipeline is useless to Putin . However, a rival oligarch/military leader/whatever in Russia could try to cut a deal with Europe and say that they promise to kill Putin and get Russian troops out of Ukraine, in exchange for…
> Countries in Europe have been pretty clear that no-one is going to back down on supporting Ukraine in order to get some cheap Russian gas.
They've said it, but what prevents them from changing their mind when domestic political pressure during winter increases? Well, blowing up the pipeline helps prevent it..
It's called planning for contingencies. Even if there was only a remote possibility of Germany folding, that's a contingency worth planning for.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they would have to pay billions for not delivering the gas due to the breach of contracts. Legally, you cannot turn off the taps just because. Moreover, Russia can still supply very significant quantities of gas via Belarus and Ukraine, so they retain the leverage to blackmail the EU.
Legally, you can’t just invade another country but that didn’t stop Russia and it has never stopped the US. Do you think Russia is going to care about the legality of debts they owe to a system that is sanctioning them? What more can we penalize them with if they don’t pay, nukes? They are literally removing themselves from the system the west has set up and are creating a new one with other BRIC nations to try to co…
Russia won't but the West will. If you have a clear cut case of contract breach, then it's pretty straightforward to confiscate the property via courts and so on. The sanctions, on the other hand, are more complex, they might involve freezes (even if permanent, it's not confiscation), have different extent, not all countries subscribe to them, etc. The world is complex.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#108It was a nation-state backed attack imo, no accident.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#109These two pipelines have very different operational histories so the simultaneous formation of a 'methane hydrate plug' in both pipelines seems highly unlikely at best. There's also no apparent reason why such a methane hydrate plug should cause seismic-scale explosions in both pipelines. As far as motivation, the US agenda on Europe's fossil fuel market since at least 2008 has been to lock out Russian suppliers (who…
You're underestimating the sensitivity of seismic sensors. Bear in mind that they picked up not only the initial rupture, but also the noise of the escaping gas after the fact. I've been firmly in camp incompetence-before-malice since they went pop; the 17 hour gap just doesn't feel right for an intentional attack. Shoddy maintenance causing catastrophic failure by some mechanism even if it's not hydrate plugs makes…
> the 17 hour gap just doesn't feel right for an intentional attack
Why? 17 hours is enough time to figure out what happened, but not enough time to prevent it from happening again. If the attacks were calculated to have a psychological impact on political leadership, 17 hours or so sounds about right to me.
And keep in mind, the bombs might have been planted months ago. 17 hours isn't enough time to inspect the whole pipe for more bombs.
Re: Nordstream: An Accident?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
And who actually gains from this in the long run... Certainly not Germany or Russia... Should make it pretty clear. It could be UK as tradition of breaking down Europe, but they are having enough issues that the timing is entirely wrong... I don't think China cares, so maybe Arabs, but I doubt. Only really leaves USA and we know what they have historically been up to.
Factions in Russia do gain from it; specifically, Putin’s. There’s no point in overthrowing him to turn the pipeline back on if the pipeline doesn’t exist.
I doubt Putin's subjects would want to overthrow him because they want to be able to sell gas again. They might overthrow him, but for other reasons.