One Year After the Nord Stream Bombing

One year ago, on Sept. 26, 2022, a series of explosions destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russian gas fields and Germany. This outrageous act of terrorism against civilian energy infrastructure helped to usher in an enormously expensive winter for Germany and Europe generally, after energy prices increased by an order of magnitude for several months. Since then, energy-intensive industries have been fleeing Germany, relocating production to China, the United States and elsewhere. With the cumulative cost of over a hundred billion euros, one might expect that Berlin would act swiftly to find the culprits, but the opposite has happened. The entire affair has has been shrouded in the utmost secrecy.

In an article published on the anniversary of the bombings, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh looks back on the elaborate cover-up. The narrative about Russians somehow operating undetected in waters controlled by NATO is preposterous, just as is the German story about a few Ukrainian amateurs pulling off the ultra-sophisticated attacks. But Seymour Hersh, after months of investigation, is convinced that the decision came from the Biden Administration. The conclusions of his research were presented in an article last February titled: “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” (cf. SAS 7, 8/23).

He recalls, in his new article, how President Biden had threatened Russia on Feb. 7, 2022, that “If Russia invades [Ukraine]… there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it”. He was speaking at the time at a press conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who meekly added: “We are acting together. We are absolutely united.” A few weeks later, Putin launched a military operation in Ukraine, but the pipelines were not destroyed until seven months later.

Hersh concludes that the eventual target of the Nord Stream destruction was not Russia, but in effect Germany, and Europe. “The Biden administration blew up the pipelines, but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russian gas…. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”