Biden Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines but Did He Allow the Ukraine War to Go Ahead to Justify the Covert Operation?

All the signs were there for American journalists to arrive at the conclusion of Hersh. But they didn’t, fearing this would be an anti-patriotic act.

What does Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan all have in common? These are all countries which either have vast energy reserves – or are believed to have them but are untapped – and whose regimes don’t fall in line with U.S. hegemony and its American leaders’ demands. Or, in other words, they are countries which have been invaded and bombed, or at the very least in the case of Iran sanctioned (which is a form of warfare) due to their resistance to let Uncle Sam have cut price oil and gas, which in some cases in effect is intended to be free.

And all these countries are a stain on U.S. hegemony and its floundering model, as they have all been failed interventions which have cost America dearly.

The theme is always the same for U.S. intervention as energy keeps coming up time and time again as the basis of its policies. And pipelines. This word is really the one keyword which we see emerge repeatedly in this dark area of America’s post-war history.

And so it should come as little surprise that in Seymour Hersh’s excellent investigative piece recently, that the award-winning journalist lifts the lid on the Biden administration and shows the whole world just how much American presidents lie while in office, not only to the world but to those who vote for them. Biden planned the attacks on the two Russia pipelines Nord Stream meticulously for months, probably from his inauguration into office in January 2021 and, in fact, was not even discreet about keeping his intentions from public view.

In fact, Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had even talked openly about their loathing of these pipelines which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in north-eastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.

In many ways, Hersh’s epic investigation shouldn’t have even come about as if U.S. journalists had done their job correctly, they would have joined up all the dots, right from the Biden’s first days in office when Ted Cruz was banging on the drum to do something about these pipelines, to later on when both Biden and his undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland practically admitted to journalists that the pipelines were in the Biden administration’s crosshairs. All the signs were there for American journalists to arrive at the conclusion of Hersh. But they didn’t, fearing this would be an anti-patriotic act and that it would be easier to stay in the comfort zone of accusing Russia of the act and deriving the internet traffic which is spurned. Amazing that not one singular American hack could be heard asking “why would Putin blow up his own pipelines, when he could just turn off the tap?”.

Hersh’s fascinating and detailed piece is a mark of stellar journalism for its detail alone. He has access to a bevy of highly placed officials in the military and intelligence community who give him blow by blow excruciating accounts of the covert operation by U.S. navy divers to place the bombs on the four pipelines off the coast of a Danish island during an annual NATO exercise but leave the explosives and the technology to detonate them in sleep mode to be activated months later at the right moment of Biden’s choosing. The right moment, of course, needed to give Biden maximum plausible deniability and fool the American people that, when ultimately the truth came out that it was the U.S. which did it, there was good cause. And what could be that justification? Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, of course. Biden didn’t have to wait for long.

On February 7, less than three weeks before the invasion, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who typical to his craven character “wobbled” as Hersh put it before getting on board Biden’s plans. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Even Nuland had spoken earlier about the pipeline, but again, no U.S. journalists feared to report the obvious steps which were clearly being taken to go ahead with what many will call a blatant act of war against Russia.

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland said the same at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

It’s as though Biden knew, through years of experience as Obama’s Vice President that covert operations which the U.S. carries out seldom remain secret for too many years and so prepared the ground. The invasion by Putin would satisfy his NATO partners and the U.S. people that it was a correct response aimed at a double whammy of reducing Putin’s oil and gas revenues and breaking Germany’s dependency of cheap gas which was fuelling its formidable economy. Add to that, American LPG producers could clean up with new contracts to supply many European countries while Europe is pushed to its knees and looks to the U.S. as the dominant leaders once again since the end of the second world war.

There are so many questions now which arise from the epic Hersh piece and we should not be surprised by the character assassination by the U.S. establishment which will follow in the coming weeks. But the sheer level of greed and Machiavellian thinking behind the navy operation will not resonate well with Global South countries, in particular Africa, whose leaders will be disgusted by the rank desperation of America to hold on to its superpower status as its hegemony is failing and its elite in Washington struggle to accept a new multipolar world is emerging.

Was the long-term plan by Biden and his chief advisers to push Putin towards the trap of invading Ukraine? Was the invasion itself really all about destroying the pipelines and cleaning up on the profits? Biden’s naked lust to boost the U.S. economy at the expense of Europe’s sacrifice and suffering is clear. But even Biden couldn’t have planned or expected that the EU sanctions against Russia would so sensationally backfire on EU governments. Presently, there is a certain air of desperation by the Europeans who want an end to the war in Ukraine as they have woken up to the idea that the war of attrition plan only works in America’s favour and not Europe’s?

In recent days, there have been reports of the Ukraine government staging false flag attacks on one particular town where western journalists have already been bussed into and hospitals have been evacuated of staff, warned by Kiev. Such false flag attacks might increase the pressure on the west to use longer-range artillery on Russian targets and convince world leaders that they need to increase the support with both tanks and aircraft. There has even been in recent days debate at NATO level of “boots on the ground”, an idea considered unpalatable for so long given that this would amount to a full-out WWIII scenario pushing Putin to consider ballistic and even nuclear options with any western country a legitimate target.

But this frenzied new level of action and dialogue is not born from a feeling that victory is near for the West. Quite the opposite. It’s more a panic that victory is more far than ever before and European countries cannot sustain the longer game, while Uncle Sam just gets fatter and richer as each day passes. The Hersh piece is a must read for anyone who needs convincing that nearly everything we see and read about the Ukraine war from western media is really at best dismally sloppy and partisan reporting or at worst just a baptism of tawdry lies.

Original article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/02/11/biden-blew-up-nord-stream-pipelines-but-did-he-allow-the-ukraine-war-go-ahead-justify-covert-operation/