The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.
Well, for most people anyway.
When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go.
And in that game we’ve reached an inflection point where some factions are coalescing and others are splintering. The faction that is unwilling to compromise on their future is the most dangerous one at the table.
My conclusion then was that those ‘who think they are entitled to run the world’ will flip the game board.
They will change the rules of the game without remorse or a case in the world for those they harm and the aftereffects of their actions. In fact, the chaos they engender is preferable to them than losing.
We got the first inkling of this when the West didn’t just freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves but seized them.
Now undersea assets in international waters are fair game. The good news it that this flipping of the game board was only a couple of gas pipelines. The potential is still for something far more unthinkable, not that that’s off the table.
In the immediate aftermath of proof the pipelines were blown up everyone (including myself) came forward with their theory as to who did it. Sadly, I can construct arguments for nearly every major player in the game having done this.
But understand the significance of this act. Another redline in international commerce and relations was crossed. The burning question is by whom?
We can rule out the most idiotic takes, like the Russians blew up the pipelines themselves. Why blow up an asset which is literally your biggest piece of leverage on this particular game board when you can do what Putin has already done, shut off the taps?
The only people putting forth this idea are frothing neocons who never met a global problem they couldn’t blame on Putin. Their arguments simply confirm what we already knew, they are jumping for joy at the news.
Many are reflexively pointing to statements by Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland about getting rid of the Nordstream 2 pipeline before the war in Ukraine broke out. But, so what? Why wait seven months to make good on that threat? And why also take out Nordstream 1 at the same time?
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