The United States Military Probably Bombed Nord Stream
Sensemaking the destruction of Europe's most important pipeline.
Facts
On September 26th 2022, two mostly simultaneous explosions equivalent to the explosive yield of approximately 500 kg of TNT destroyed both pipelines of Nord Stream 1 and one pipeline of Nord Stream 2, doing kilometers worth of damage to each. Because the interior of the pipelines do not have the same anticorrosion coatings of the exterior, sea water corrosion will destroy the entire length of both pipelines within a matter of months, making repair impossible. Nord Stream is irreparably dead and must be abandoned. Here’s FLIR video from the first Norwegian F-16 intercept of the detonation location:
Nord Stream 1 is majority owned by the Russian oil company Gazprom, and Nord Stream 2 is entirely owned by Gazprom. These are Russian corporate assets. While not technically owned by the Russian state government, Russia has a deep protectionist protofascist connection between its corporate and government sectors, as does the United States, China, and most other major nation states. Russia is in the process of losing their war against Ukraine, and has instituted a “partial mobilization,” which basically means they’re drafting conscripts to fight. The talking heads are all abuzz about nuclear weapons, and Putin is making speeches about neo-Nazis and Satan.
The United States alone has dumped over 12.4 billion dollars into arming Ukraine during the war as of the date of this article, and 70 other countries have provided some sort of aid. To put that in perspective, US aid alone would constitute a figure equal to 8% of Ukraine’s entire annual GDP. That’s over double the GDP ratio that the United States spends annually on maintaining a military that costs more than the next 9 countries combined. The amount of aid the US alone has pushed to Ukraine, so far this year, with more aid coming, roughly equates to the entire annual military budget of Iran. US aid to Ukraine alone, so far, not counting the contributions from the other 70 countries on the list, totals 19% of the entire Russian military budget. So when Putin says in a speech that he’s fighting the entire western military apparatus in this war, that’s a true statement. His stuff about Ukraine being Neo-Nazis is only partially true, and his stuff about gender ideology in the USA being Satanic is probably baseless hyperbole unless you listen to The Pope or the Church of Satan.
The Baltic Sea is a very high traffic area for shipping and military vessels, with some of the densest maritime traffic on the entire planet. Seasonally, 1900 to 2400 boats travel through the Baltic per day, not including ferries, fishing boats, or leisure craft. 200 a day are oil tanker sized. These are crowded waters, with lots of boats motoring over Nord Stream every day.
The United States Navy had boats parked over the detonation location in early August, and turned off their AIS (automatic ship identification) systems near Bornholm Island. Russian warships also infringed on Danish territorial waters near the detonation location.
Total Speculation I Swear
I believe at this time that the US vessel identified over the location was the USS Kearsarge LHD-3, a Wasp Class amphibious assault ship, based on data from marinetraffic.com. That might not be correct, but it sure looks like it to me.
Wasp class ships are designed to convey troops to beach heads, provide aerial support for military operations, and to deploy other smaller marine assets. They launch helicopters and VTOL fighters such as the McDonnel Douglas AV-8B Harrier II Jump Jets in the photo above operated by the US Marine Corps. The USS Kearsarge itself was involved in Operation Odyssey Dawn, enforcing the no fly zone over Libya in 2011, as well as many other very interesting military operations. Wasp class ships have one continuous “well deck” which can be used to house air cushion landing craft (hovercraft), or the entire boat can be flooded to lower it so smaller traditional boats can deploy out the stern bay.
If some state actor were to wish to deploy a subsurface explosive device without drawing too much attention, a boat similar to this would be the ideal boat to use.
Means
500 kg of TNT is a lot, but not insurmountable for a well equipped actor. Let’s
Motive
While it’s possible that a non-state actor could pull this off,
Big Deal?
This is probably not a huge deal for European energy supply in the short term since Nord Stream 2 never got kicked off and Nord Stream 1 was running well under capacity. The bigger deal is it puts international infrastructure sabotage on the table for state level players, corporations, terrorists, and Greenpeace fanatics going forward. Any rational nation state in 2022 and in the future must make energy independence its top priority or risk having its economy destroyed and citizenry killed by multilateral international fuckery completely outside of its control.
The U.S. has no strategic interest in blowing up Nord Stream. We are sending a comparative handful of 2nd hand weapons to Ukrainian forces and they are kicking the Russians ass with them, all without risking a single American soldier.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, Biden gave Germany the go ahead for Nord Stream 2. The European countries were already going to take a huge hit this winter with the shortage of energy. If there is any indication that the US blew up those pipelines then the damage to the alliance that supports Ukraine against Russia would be severely fractured, maybe permanently. Those and other downsides completely outweigh any potential upside.
Russia, on the other hand, has another motive that you missed. Russia is contractually obligated to provide gas through the pipeline, and as much as they would like to use the pipeline to continue to use energy to attempt to blackmail the west, they face too much financial risk. To quote Ariel Cohen in Forbes:
"If Nord Stream is shut down suddenly through “force majeure,” a sudden uncontrollable stop that is the fault of neither party, then Russia can void its obligations toward European stakeholders without legally breaking contracts, thus dodging the many penalties in doing so."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2022/09/29/russian-sabotage-of-the-nord-stream-pipeline-mark-a-point-of-no-return/?sh=3a0147bc5dba
So Russia gets to kill multiple birds with one stone:
1. Cut off energy to the west, punishing the countries standing up to his invasion of Ukraine and avoid any financial penalties;
2. Use the Cortez "burn the ships" model to attempt to cut off more possible Russian "defections" to Putin's strategy;
3. Use his "useful idiots" in the West to push the "U.S. blew up the pipelines" story to throw blame on his enemies and sow confusion.
4. Put new fears and paranoia into Western counties. After all, if he is willing to blow up his own pipelines, what's to stop him from blowing up someone else's pipelines, or communication lines?
Russia really has everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing it. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
The below is off by a factor of 10. Per your own link, "It was estimated that the explosion had a yield equivalent to approximately 1.8 Mg (4,000 lb) of TNT" 1.8 Mg = 1800kg
"Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb that destroyed the Murrah Building in 1995 had a blast yield of around 181 kg of TNT, a little over one third the yield of these explosions. If we presume that a non-state actor probably doesn’t have the ability to deliver two devices triple the size of McVeigh’s truck in an underwater enclosure, we can scratch non-state actors off the list."