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Pipes at the landfall facilities of Nord Stream 1 in Lubmin, Germany, March 8 2022. Picture: HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/REUTERS
Pipes at the landfall facilities of Nord Stream 1 in Lubmin, Germany, March 8 2022. Picture: HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/REUTERS

News reports about how and why the Russians “may” have destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, including the one about adding self-destruct charges during construction, are simply red herrings.

Why destroy infrastructure that cost them billions of euros to build, not including the value of the escaped gas, when the flow could be terminated at a valve station?

Russia can no longer tempt the Germans with a resumption of cheap gas supplies to prise them away from the Nato anti- Russian bloc. 

All this disinformation when US President Joe Biden had made it quite clear that the US would destroy them, the former Polish foreign minister tweeted a “thank you” after the event, and US secretary of state Antony Blinken gave a positively ecstatic post-incident interview waxing lyrical over the opportunities for the US liquefied gas industry.

For those interested, delivery was probably via aerial torpedo. While an open secret at the Supreme Allied Command Europe headquarters, the public “neither confirm nor deny” stance must be maintained. How would the German public react to the news that a Nato ally had unilaterally decided to demolish  their economy and force them to freeze this winter?

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government would certainly be toast. More ominously, it would wipe away the illusion that Germany has actually been a sovereign democracy since 1955 and not an occupied state quietly directed via those heavily bemedalled US generals who have continuously run Nato operations.

Since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 Nato’s purpose became unclear, allowing a highly profitable German rapprochement with the Russian federation. The Ukrainian war has enabled the US-controlled Nato to reassert itself and bring Germany into line.

Apart from castrating a major “ally” and creating a market for US gas, I wonder if the power brokers have factored in what happens when the German economic powerhouse is no more? Who, for example,  is going to prop up the EU? Or do they see the EU as competition they could well do without? If so, are they really any better than the Russians?

James Cunningham, Camps Bay

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