EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Will Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage Prove One Step Too Far?

Sept. 29, 2022 (EIRNS)—The blowing up this week of both Nord Stream pipelines through which Russian natural gas could flow to European nations, leaving, it is now reported, four separate ruptures in the pipelines which may take months to repair, if at all, marks a turning point in the global breakdown crisis which threatens all Mankind. Whether that turn leads even more quickly to direct NATO-Russia conflict and a resulting global nuclear war, or proves to be a trigger for the people of Europe and the United States to finally say “enough is enough,” and act to overturn the current murderous policies of destruction and the elites imposing them, is the question of the day.

Quickly review the rapidly shifting situation on the Western battlefield in the wake of the sabotage.

Neither NATO nor Russia questions that the pipelines have been put out of commission by deliberate sabotage. It is also much discussed that doing that kind of damage required technical capabilities which only a State could provide. Which state (or states) is the decisive issue in dispute—and that can only be competently addressed by asking the question, cui bono?

On Thursday, NATO prepared the way to charge Russia with responsibility. Its governing political body, the North Atlantic Council, issued a statement which did not name Russia, but stated menacingly that NATO allies “have committed to prepare for, deter and defend against the coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and non-state actors,” and specified that “any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response.” The formulation echoes NATO’s Article 5 collective action clause. On cue, NATO and intelligence assets began explicitly pointing the finger at Russia.

Russia’s Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the accusation against Russia as ridiculous—what does Russia have to gain by destroying its own gas capabilities?—but he also suggested that the sabotage seems to be “some kind of terrorist attack, possibly at the state level.” Russia has called an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss an investigation of the incident, now expected to be held this Friday afternoon, Sept. 30. But as Peskov warned, conditions for the kind of close cooperation required for a serious investigation appear to be virtually non-existent.

“Washington is pushing the situation towards a direct confrontation of the major nuclear powers fraught with unpredictable consequences,” Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov warned in his Sept. 28 article in The National Interest, titled “Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 Over Ukraine?” Antonov took on the delusion of those American and British military planners breezily discussing options for “limited” nuclear conflict, as if “only” Europe would be hit, not the United States. Antonov reminded: “This is an extremely dangerous ‘experiment.’ It is safe to assume that any use of nuclear weapons could quickly lead to an escalation of a local or regional conflict into a global one.”

Retired American Col. Richard Black issued an Open Letter this week to the U.S. Congress similarly warning of the growing nuclear risk in the Ukraine conflict. Col. Black warned that “loose talk about launching a nuclear attack on Russia” by senior Republicans and Democrats appears to be “a deliberate effort to acclimate Americans to the idea of nuclear war.” But there will be no limited, retaliatory nuclear exchanges to any U.S. use of these weapons. “Russia would launch an immediate, massive nuclear response, including air and ground-based hypersonic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Each Russian submarine would shower down 100 nuclear warheads, sufficient to incinerate the entire National Capital Region or the Western European industrial heartland.... Nuclear war is unthinkable; peace is a better course of action,” he urged the Congressmen and women.

This horrific nuclear danger, combined with the accelerating collapse of people’s ability to access food, housing, electricity, medical care, and decent education, either because of their prohibitive cost or because those necessities are no longer available, have created the tinder for a general explosion by the people of Europe and the U.S. Now, on top of that crisis, comes the news that NATO and Western governments may well have deliberately pushed the Ukraine conflict into direct NATO-Russia confrontation by blowing up pipelines which could have brought affordable gas into Europe.

The belief that the United States is behind the attack is dominating discussion in well-read alternative media sites such as NachDenkSeiten, (in German) whose motto is “For Everyone Who Still Has Their Own Thoughts.” Consider the implications for Trans-Atlantic relations of what Albrecht Müller, editor of that site and an institutional figure who formerly served as chief of planning for two Social Democratic Chancellors and served in the Bundestag for seven years, wrote today:

“It is not yet 100% certain that the U.S.A. is behind the sabotage of the two Baltic Sea pipelines. But the evidence and the interests speak for it.... Are we actually aware of what that would mean? Our main ally, whom most Germans and official Germany consider a friend in politics and the media, is destroying the transport route for our most important energy supply and with it an important base of industrial activity in our country.... To permanently weaken an industrial competitor in Europe. To withdraw industrial companies from Germany to the U.S.A.! To document that the U.S. claims to be the only world power. We should be clear about what that means. It is the brutal termination of a friendship.... Our problem is the U.S.A. You have also ensured that the understanding with Russia is torpedoed. Millions of Germans will suffer as a result.”

Within the United States, too, there are signals some institutions recognize that the lies have gone too far, and the stakes are too high, and the American people better mobilize against the war drive. On Tuesday night, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson broadcast a frontal attack which raised the possibility, even likelihood, that the United States had blown up the Nord Stream pipelines, thus “enter[ing] a new phase. One in which the United States is directly at war with the largest nuclear power in the world.” On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump weighed in, warning “World War III anyone?” in response to the video of President Biden promising to shut down Nord Stream 2 in February, one way or the other. U.S. leaders must “remain ‘cool, calm, and dry’.... Do not make matters worse with the pipeline blowup,” Trump warned. A negotiated deal must be “done NOW. Both sides need and want it. The entire World is at stake.” He volunteered to head up negotiations.

If it turns out that NATO and the United States were in fact responsible for destroying the Nord Stream pipelines, driven to such madness by their collapsing trans-Atlantic financial system, the dawning realization of what that really means may be enough to arouse the populations of Europe and the United States sufficiently to force their political leaders to act to stop the madness.