Russia gets nothing from burning bridges. They profit from selling their oil and there are a lot of plausible scenarios where it allows them leverage to negotiate the lifting of sanctions in the winter if the gas runs out in Germany. The only thing Russia could benefit from is if it weakens cooperation between the US and Germany and the rest of the EU.
One interesting aspect of Russia’s response is that they are saying:
“The sanctions were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons: they moved onto sabotage,” Putin said. “It is hard to believe but it is a fact that they organised the blasts on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines.”
If it would be a propaganda move, I would have expected them to have a story about how the US did it prepared and not be as vague about who did it.
When I look at the situation, I find Poland a plausible actor as well. It’s interesting that Radoslaw Sikorski who’s a Polish MEP thanked the US for it. The timing of Poland opening its pipeline with Norway and them imposing more sanctions on Gasprom makes them seem like a plausible actor to me.
The United States profits from the attack as long as it doesn’t damage its relationship with Germany and other EU countries.
Russia gains nothing by burning bridges if you model Russia as a single actor, which can just choose not to turn the oil back on. Putin, however, has a strong motivation to burn bridges: it sets his preferred policy in stone, and removes a possible incentive to coup him. With the pipeline functional, there’s always the chance that a faction of the Russian government tries to remove him from office with the goal of picking up the money he’s leaving in the ground and spreading it among Team Defectors. Now that the pipeline is disabled, even if Putin were out of office, there’d probably no good way forward for his replacement but to continue the war, which means less motivation for disgruntled insiders to move against him.
He need not think a coup is likely, of course. He just needs to think that, as the war drags on, the pipeline’s existence will hurt him more than it helps him, which seems quite sensible.
I give 60% odds it was them. I am mostly impressed/surprised that a state actor (if it was a state actor) managed to do this without being publicly fingered by another intelligence agency. An insistence that this operation to be kept mostly secret even internally, among his own higher ups, could explain a lack of CIA/MI6/etc. informants or an unwillingness by western nations to give clues to those high level informants’ existence.
I’m pretty far in the other direction. I would give 90% odds it was done by the US or with our approval. These are the points that convinced me:
The prior on someone destroying their own infrastructure is pretty low
The US has a clear incentive to weaken Russia’s leverage over our European allies
There are old videos of Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland apparently threatening Nord Stream 2 in the event that Russia invades Ukraine
Also, a counterpoint to your coup-prevention theory. Let’s suppose Putin is worried about defectors in his ranks who may be incentivized to take over in order to turn on the pipeline. In that case, couldn’t Putin remove the incentive by turning it on himself? And wouldn’t that be a strictly better option for him than destroying it?
Let’s suppose Putin is worried about defectors in his ranks who may be incentivized to take over in order to turn on the pipeline. In that case, couldn’t Putin remove the incentive by turning it on himself? And wouldn’t that be a strictly better option for him than destroying it?
No? At least, not anymore. Not only do I think he doesn’t want to do so for ideological reasons, it would make him look weak to change his mind about this in the absence of any policy concessions from the west, and having the pipeline off is probably domestically popular among regular citizens. His replacement two years from now can say, “this whole war was disastrous; Putin has put ideals ahead of national interest”, because he’s not putin and didn’t start the war. But for Putin, any outcome of the conflict that isn’t winning or turning Russia into ashes trying to do so is going to be read as an ideological concession to insiders that he cannot afford to be seen making.
(I’m willing to bet at 50:50 odds that America didn’t do it, up to 1k, btw)
On the other hand, and for the same reasons, independent actors in the US or Poland may want to make sure that Germany has burned it’s bridge with Russia too.
Any faction that manages to pull off a regime change will profit if it can install itself as the new rules of Russia with or without the pipeline.
Blowing up Russian infrastructure is likely unpopular with a good portion of the Russian elite and it can be easily argued that it’s treason by Putin to do so. If powerful people in the Russian elite think that Putin felt the need to blow up Russian infrastructure to reduce the chances of a coup, that’s a signal of weakness.
It’s unclear to me what you expect Putin’s preferred policy outcome to be. I would expect him to want a ceasefire with Russia keeping the territory it currently holds. Having the pipeline means that there’s more room for negotiation especially if gas shortage really hurts in winter.
Any faction that manages to pull off a regime change will profit if it can install itself as the new rules of Russia with or without the pipeline.
The point is that the faction can credibly promise everyone more resources/etc. than Putin can, rather than just a different distribution of resources (“don’t worry, you’ll be one of the monkeys on the winning team, I promise”), because Putin insists on burning state capacity and money, which could be spent on banditry, on failed attempts at rebuilding the Soviet Union. It’s always good to be on the inside of a coup, yes, but why give potential enemies a natural incentive to dispose of you, if you’re not going to turn back on the oil any time soon?
Blowing up Russian infrastructure is likely unpopular with a good portion of the Russian elite and it can be easily argued that it’s treason by Putin to do so. If powerful people in the Russian elite think that Putin felt the need to blow up Russian infrastructure to reduce the chances of a coup, that’s a signal of weakness.
Putin is a dictator; he has a direct line to the special branch of his intelligence services that handles secret operations. He would of course have kept this operation a secret from his direct inferiors, and as I said, the fact that it’s been so long without any nation state being definitively accused raises my suspicion that it was done with a remarkable lack of insider knowledge for a government. Otherwise why hasn’t a spy given the game up yet?
I will admit that the fact that he has to blow up his own infrastructure without the knowledge of the rest of his government makes this considerably more risky, but it’s not obviously a stupid play, and it seems to have worked if that’s the case.
Even if other people within the Russian elite don’t have direct knowledge, they have a much better model of Putin than we do.
Imagine the conversation between two people in the Russian elite:
Alice: What do you think, did Putin blow up the pipeline?
Bob: I don’t know for certain, but with him, you never know...
Alice: Yes, the other day he did XYZ which was really crazy...
Bob: What motivation do you think he could have?
Alice: I think he’s afraid of a coup because of YZX.
Bob: It’s right for him to fear that because of ZYX.
Neither Alice nor Bob committed treason by saying anything they said but they managed to build shared knowledge that makes it easier to agree to do a coup together.
The point is that the faction can credibly promise everyone more resources/etc. than Putin can, rather than just a different distribution of resources (“don’t worry, you’ll be one of the monkeys on the winning team, I promise”)
Getting rid of Putin likely involves more than just getting rid of Putin, a lot of other people that are currently in power will lose their power as well. People who currently have power by virtue of having shown loyalty to Putin over decades have a good chance to lose that power even if more resources are available.
Making a deal to get rid of the Western sanctions and stop the costly war already allows credibly promising that there are more resources to be distributed.
It’s always good to be on the inside of a coup, yes, but why give potential enemies a natural incentive to dispose of you, if you’re not going to turn back on the oil any time soon?
The pipeline provides leverage for negotiations with Germany. It also allows for more room to navigate in case, Russia needs the money to buy the loyalty of whoever is hurt by the war. With money, it’s easy to pay unemployed workers at car factories their salaries. Having that option available is useful for scenarios where he actually needs the money.
Otherwise why hasn’t a spy given the game up yet?
Intelligence agencies generally are not in the habit of wanting to give information to the public. I don’t think you can deduce much from secret services not sharing information with the public.
Russia gets nothing from burning bridges. They profit from selling their oil and there are a lot of plausible scenarios where it allows them leverage to negotiate the lifting of sanctions in the winter if the gas runs out in Germany. The only thing Russia could benefit from is if it weakens cooperation between the US and Germany and the rest of the EU.
One interesting aspect of Russia’s response is that they are saying:
If it would be a propaganda move, I would have expected them to have a story about how the US did it prepared and not be as vague about who did it.
When I look at the situation, I find Poland a plausible actor as well. It’s interesting that Radoslaw Sikorski who’s a Polish MEP thanked the US for it. The timing of Poland opening its pipeline with Norway and them imposing more sanctions on Gasprom makes them seem like a plausible actor to me.
The United States profits from the attack as long as it doesn’t damage its relationship with Germany and other EU countries.
Russia gains nothing by burning bridges if you model Russia as a single actor, which can just choose not to turn the oil back on. Putin, however, has a strong motivation to burn bridges: it sets his preferred policy in stone, and removes a possible incentive to coup him. With the pipeline functional, there’s always the chance that a faction of the Russian government tries to remove him from office with the goal of picking up the money he’s leaving in the ground and spreading it among Team Defectors. Now that the pipeline is disabled, even if Putin were out of office, there’d probably no good way forward for his replacement but to continue the war, which means less motivation for disgruntled insiders to move against him.
He need not think a coup is likely, of course. He just needs to think that, as the war drags on, the pipeline’s existence will hurt him more than it helps him, which seems quite sensible.
I give 60% odds it was them. I am mostly impressed/surprised that a state actor (if it was a state actor) managed to do this without being publicly fingered by another intelligence agency. An insistence that this operation to be kept mostly secret even internally, among his own higher ups, could explain a lack of CIA/MI6/etc. informants or an unwillingness by western nations to give clues to those high level informants’ existence.
I’m pretty far in the other direction. I would give 90% odds it was done by the US or with our approval. These are the points that convinced me:
The prior on someone destroying their own infrastructure is pretty low
The US has a clear incentive to weaken Russia’s leverage over our European allies
There are old videos of Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland apparently threatening Nord Stream 2 in the event that Russia invades Ukraine
Also, a counterpoint to your coup-prevention theory. Let’s suppose Putin is worried about defectors in his ranks who may be incentivized to take over in order to turn on the pipeline. In that case, couldn’t Putin remove the incentive by turning it on himself? And wouldn’t that be a strictly better option for him than destroying it?
No? At least, not anymore. Not only do I think he doesn’t want to do so for ideological reasons, it would make him look weak to change his mind about this in the absence of any policy concessions from the west, and having the pipeline off is probably domestically popular among regular citizens. His replacement two years from now can say, “this whole war was disastrous; Putin has put ideals ahead of national interest”, because he’s not putin and didn’t start the war. But for Putin, any outcome of the conflict that isn’t winning or turning Russia into ashes trying to do so is going to be read as an ideological concession to insiders that he cannot afford to be seen making.
(I’m willing to bet at 50:50 odds that America didn’t do it, up to 1k, btw)
On the other hand, and for the same reasons, independent actors in the US or Poland may want to make sure that Germany has burned it’s bridge with Russia too.
This is a good time to revisit “The Dictator’s Handbook”
Any faction that manages to pull off a regime change will profit if it can install itself as the new rules of Russia with or without the pipeline.
Blowing up Russian infrastructure is likely unpopular with a good portion of the Russian elite and it can be easily argued that it’s treason by Putin to do so. If powerful people in the Russian elite think that Putin felt the need to blow up Russian infrastructure to reduce the chances of a coup, that’s a signal of weakness.
It’s unclear to me what you expect Putin’s preferred policy outcome to be. I would expect him to want a ceasefire with Russia keeping the territory it currently holds. Having the pipeline means that there’s more room for negotiation especially if gas shortage really hurts in winter.
The point is that the faction can credibly promise everyone more resources/etc. than Putin can, rather than just a different distribution of resources (“don’t worry, you’ll be one of the monkeys on the winning team, I promise”), because Putin insists on burning state capacity and money, which could be spent on banditry, on failed attempts at rebuilding the Soviet Union. It’s always good to be on the inside of a coup, yes, but why give potential enemies a natural incentive to dispose of you, if you’re not going to turn back on the oil any time soon?
Putin is a dictator; he has a direct line to the special branch of his intelligence services that handles secret operations. He would of course have kept this operation a secret from his direct inferiors, and as I said, the fact that it’s been so long without any nation state being definitively accused raises my suspicion that it was done with a remarkable lack of insider knowledge for a government. Otherwise why hasn’t a spy given the game up yet?
I will admit that the fact that he has to blow up his own infrastructure without the knowledge of the rest of his government makes this considerably more risky, but it’s not obviously a stupid play, and it seems to have worked if that’s the case.
Even if other people within the Russian elite don’t have direct knowledge, they have a much better model of Putin than we do.
Imagine the conversation between two people in the Russian elite:
Alice: What do you think, did Putin blow up the pipeline?
Bob: I don’t know for certain, but with him, you never know...
Alice: Yes, the other day he did XYZ which was really crazy...
Bob: What motivation do you think he could have?
Alice: I think he’s afraid of a coup because of YZX.
Bob: It’s right for him to fear that because of ZYX.
Neither Alice nor Bob committed treason by saying anything they said but they managed to build shared knowledge that makes it easier to agree to do a coup together.
Getting rid of Putin likely involves more than just getting rid of Putin, a lot of other people that are currently in power will lose their power as well. People who currently have power by virtue of having shown loyalty to Putin over decades have a good chance to lose that power even if more resources are available.
Making a deal to get rid of the Western sanctions and stop the costly war already allows credibly promising that there are more resources to be distributed.
The pipeline provides leverage for negotiations with Germany. It also allows for more room to navigate in case, Russia needs the money to buy the loyalty of whoever is hurt by the war. With money, it’s easy to pay unemployed workers at car factories their salaries. Having that option available is useful for scenarios where he actually needs the money.
Intelligence agencies generally are not in the habit of wanting to give information to the public. I don’t think you can deduce much from secret services not sharing information with the public.