The Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed, not as an action against Russia, but against Germany, writes journalist Seymour Hersh in a new report published on the first anniversary of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russian gas fields with Germany.
Hersh had published in February a bombshell exposé of the U.S. operation to destroy the pipelines, a piece that ends with a quotation from an official involved in the planning. “It was a beautiful cover story,” said the official. “The only flaw was the decision to do it.”
In this article, Hersh addresses that flaw.
The reporter reminds us that at the time of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, no gas was flowing through them. Nord Stream 1, which had been supplying gas to Germany since 2011, had been shut down by Russia in August 2022. And Nord Stream 2, which was completed in September 2021, was never made operational, due to decisions by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Hersh writes that the threat of destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was intended to deter Putin from moving into Ukraine. That was why then-Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, on January 27, 2022, and President Joe Biden, on February 7, told reporters, respectively, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward” and “If Russia invades… there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Olaf Scholz, at the February 7 event with Biden, explained “We are acting together. We are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps.”
The official told Hersh that the threat against the Nord Stream was conceived as “an extraordinary deterrent [against a Russian invasion of Ukraine] because of its economic impact on Russia.” But, Putin “did it despite the threat.”
The pipelines were not destroyed until seven months later.
“The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb,” an official told Hersh.
“The Biden administration blew up the pipelines, but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine,” Hersh concludes. “It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russian gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”
