Maybe the winning thread needs to die?

As a "newbie" the forum is the weirdest place to be, open to ideas and conversation sometimes, but one look at the winning thread and I have no clue what's going on.

No one understands the Winning thread. Maybe it does need to die or maybe it needs an alternative.

@eisenhower - you “win” if you’re the third to last (second to last I get that confused) to post.

Winning thread is the only thing I block on the site!

Whom do people believe blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?

Who wanted it to be blown the most. That is the guy who did it.

Not necessarily. Ukraine or Poland would have wanted it blown up the most. I am not sure that I can claim to view Ukraine as a reasonable suspect.

I'm thinking it might be one of the Baltic states, perhaps Sweden itself. Maybe Russia did it, maybe USA. I'm waiting to hear whether or not the hole made in explosion shows signs of being blown-in or blown-out.

Events over the last day or two:

Jeff Sachs (academic at Columbia University) has publicly claimed that radar tracked helicopters flying out of Gdansk hovering in the area before the explosions. He further claimed that the US military has helicopters based in Gdansk.

When the press secretary for the US Defense Department (who generally covers security topics over the White House PS) was asked whether the US or a US proxy sabotaged the pipelines, he responded by saying that the US did not sabotage the pipelines. The journalist did not follow up to ask whether that was an admission that a US proxy did it.

So Poland may be the prime suspect.

Also, the NY Times reported this morning a leak from the CIA confirming that Ukrainian Intelligence did murder Darya Dugina. The leaker went on to assert that they did this without the knowledge or approval of the US and that US had strongly reprimanded them for recklessness in that action and unspecified other unilateral actions. So that may have been designed to establish plausible deniability with the Europeans.

I saw one bit of analysis that the underlying report was distributed much more widely in the last few days within the bureaucracy and that this is in practical terms how targeted leaking is done from above.

Several days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor a war plan called Rainbow Five was published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune and thus became national news that consumed the country. It explicitly disproved the central promise Roosevelt had made in his re-election campaign the previous year. Rainbow Five was a detailed plan with detailed timetables for the building of a 5 million man army and then deploying that army to Europe to fight Nazi Germany in coordination with the British.

The FBI quickly established that the leaker was Hap Arnold (the father of the US Air Force) who was not disciplined in any way. The war plan, which was certain to anger people associated with air power because of how it proposed allocating resources in a war with Nazi Germany, was made widely available in a seemingly deliberate manner as tensions were escalating with Japan and the US began moving all of our B-17s to the Philippines. The leak got all of the Isolationist politicians to publicly attack Roosevelt as a liar and a war monger right before the Japanese attacked. This neutralized them and enabled their sidelining once the war came. This is all covered in Fleming's The New Dealers' War, which actually goes so far as to claim that another part of the provocation was to induce Hitler to declare war on the US in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Fleming is a well-regarded American historian who conducted extensive interviews with Harry Truman before his death on this and other topics; he also interviewed the German-American army officer who was publicly hung out to dry as a probably leaker and borderline traitor despite knowledge by the government that he was completely innocent.

gopher27: Why would the CIA leak matter? The Russians already believed that Ukraine was responsible.

I personally would have thought the US were behind it.

@JECE....I can only speculate. My thought would be to shape how European policymakers view events or perhaps to shape future Ukrainian behavior. Leaks are also frequently used to provide justifications for other internal bureaucratic actions.

@Lord Saviour....Why would the US care at all about Alexander Dugin much less his daughter? He is a buffoon who, if anything, helps US propaganda.

@Gopher, the US I am saying has interest in blowing up Nord Stream. It would cut trade for gas between Russia and Europe and the only way to get gas to Europe is though Ukraine. This is immensely bad for Russia as they have lost a soft power in that respect. Good for the US as they can increase support they give Europe. Russia has no interest in blowing it up as they have the power to just turn it off. The only reason why they would blow it up is to escalate tensions with the West. Ukraine have little reason to blow it up. In my opinion it is one of the US' consistent non-sensical power plays.

The US have always had tensions with Russia and previously the USSR. It is akin to England and France before the 1900s. Although England and France were a lot worse. A war that lasted 100 years, need I say more? They would do as much in their power to paint the other in a bad image.

Or we are all wrong and it was some rogue Russians who did it somehow...

Ukraine has the most interest in cutting Nord Stream. Their existential fear should be Europe defecting and cutting a separate deal with Russia to sell out Ukraine in exchange for getting the gas turned back on. If Russia cannot turn the gas back on and Ukraine can tighten the market further, then the Europeans have no reason to defect in the dynamic game. Once Russia turns off the gas, Ukraine had every reason to want the gas turned off permanently. The entire purpose of Nord Stream from the beginning was to deprive Ukraine and Poland of leverage.

The argument for Russia would be that Putin or some rogue element within Russia fears defection within the regime to cut a deal with the West to get back to business.

@ Gopher, I can see your point but that seems a bit risky to me. If it was confirmed that Ukraine did it would Europe come to their senses and realise that Ukraine is the reason why Nord Stream was cut off and why so many people are going cold this winter and possibly dying in extreme cases? If they were so desperate to do do that then they better be willing to take that risk because I reckon Europe would revoke support for Ukraine.

Sabotaging Nord Stream closes and locks a door through which Europe and Russia could negotiate a separate peace (think Minsk II). So its primary effect is to dramatically reduce the payoff to Europe of defecting within this multiplayer dynamic game. So Ukraine, Poland and the US have obvious concerns about the Western Europeans being unreliable partners. Now that the Europeans are screwed irrespective of what strategy they follow, they have every incentive to maintain what is called commitment in game theory and follow through with their publicly announced strategy.

I have never expressed a belief that Ukraine did it. I simply said that they have the most incentive to want it to happen.

Remember that the people who are going to suffer from Nord Stream are in Pakistan and Bangladesh not in Europe. Europeans are going to spend a ton of money and run up debt. The freezing and starving is going to happen in poorer countries that are getting outbid by the Europeans.

That is fair enough. But regardless, the debt is still an issue.

With pay-as-you-go public pension schemes and a demographic death spiral, a couple more tons of debt probably don't make that much of a difference. :oP

The bigger danger may be the long term effects on shutting down industrial activity. I worry about a doom loop of de-industrialization across Europe and the possibility that portions of the ruling class are inclined to view it as a benefit from the crisis.

Just to add some more possible info - may be only superficial damage?
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russia-Claims-Natural-Gas-Could-Still-Flow-Through-Nord-Stream-2.html

gopher27: And speculate you did, but I still don't see the connections that you were trying to draw with your long post.

I agree

well it looks like it worked

Yeah.

Yep, forums are truckin' along nicely now.