Investigating the terrorist attack on Nord Stream is a matter of Germany’s sovereignty - Sevim Dagdelen (John Menadue Blog)

 Um assunto intrigante, em face do qual devemos perguntar, como qualquer investigador policial: a quem beneficia o crime? 

Acho que a resposta é clara...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Defence and Security, International relations, Politics, Top 5

Investigating the terrorist attack on Nord Stream is a matter of Germany’s sovereignty

By Sevim Dagdelen

John Menadue Blog, Apr 1, 2023

https://johnmenadue.com/investigating-the-terrorist-attack-on-nord-stream-is-a-matter-of-germanys-sovereignty/

Who was behind the terrorist attacks on Nord Stream?

Half a year after the pipeline explosions, there is growing public interest in finally learning more about the circumstances of the attacks on what is important energy infrastructure for Germany and Europe. This is due to the versions of events published in the New York Times and the Hamburg weekly DIE ZEIT, in “research” collaboration with public broadcasting media, which came out almost simultaneously just days after Germany’s Chancellor Scholz and US President Biden met behind closed doors in the White House in early March. In contrast to the benign resonance this found in the press, the revelations by US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a few weeks earlier, stating that the United States and Norway were responsible for the terrorist attack, were either ignored or discredited – as was the latest follow-up from Hersh alleging that the US and German secret services provided the press with false information about the said alternative narrative. This is thoroughly strange, given that the accounts in the New York Times and DIE ZEIT give rise to more questions than they answer.

The story that a “pro-Ukrainian group” of six private individuals is supposed to be responsible for the complex terrorist attacks on Nord Stream on 26 September 2022, without being in contact with Ukraine’s leaders, contradicts the reports that the German Government and its subordinate authorities had previously given to parliament, according to which the only plausible perpetrators were state actors. Numerous experts, including Commander Göran Swistek, maritime security specialist at the government-aligned think tank German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, agree that a terrorist attack of this scale and complexity will have required not only time-consuming preparation but also, and above all, a lot of expertise and corresponding resources and could not have been carried out by a small group acting autonomously. It is indeed a stretch to imagine a small group without state or secret service support transporting two tonnes of explosives and diving equipment on a yacht only 15 metres long and then positioning them unnoticed, without possessing a decompression chamber, in several dives at what happens to be one of the deeper points of the Baltic Sea, 80 metres down.

Even a confidential hearing held by the Bundestag Committee on Foreign Affairs on 15 March 2023, to which the investigating Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Intelligence Service were invited at the initiative of the Left Party opposition parliamentary group, was unable to resolve the obvious contradictions in the supposed investigation findings and the circumstances of the terrorist attack. On the contrary, after that meeting, the impression has been reinforced that the German government and its investigative authorities by themselves lack the power and the will needed to illuminate the circumstances of the attack.

Getting to the bottom of the terrorist attack on Nord Stream is a matter of the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany in two respects. First, it was an unprecedented assault on Germany’s energy sovereignty. To anyone watching from outside, it must seem downright absurd that broad swathes of Germany’s political community and media apparently have no interest at all in having the circumstances properly investigated. On the contrary, the reactions of German politicians and journalists reveal pleasure – sometimes more blatant, sometimes less – at this infrastructure, unloved particularly in transatlantic-leaning political circles, finally being destroyed. The fact that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline caused a further rise in gas prices which have put vast additional pressure on private households and businesses and jeopardised the survival of some sectors has no place in that thinking.

Second, the German Government’s inability or unwillingness to brief parliament and the public with investigative findings that stand up to scrutiny, half a year after the terrorist act, raises serious doubts about its sovereignty in foreign and security policy. It stands to reason that the Government’s supine behaviour has its cause in Germany’s almost complete subordination to US interests. As with the incubation of and response to the Ukraine war, the German Government is not able to break free, in the interests of its own people, of its vassalage to the US Administration. Let us not forget, on that point, the remarkable press conference at the White House on 7 February 2022, when US President Joe Biden announced, without a word to the contrary from Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, that the United States would “bring an end” to the pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine. In the same spirit, at a hearing in the US Congress on 26 January 2023, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland revealingly told Senator Ted Cruz of her gratification at knowing that the terrorist act had left Nord Stream “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”.

Especially in view of Seymour Hersh’s latest allegations that Federal Chancellor Scholz, irrespective of whether he had prior information about the destruction of the pipeline, “has clearly been complicit since last fall in support of the Biden Administration’s cover-up of its operation in the Baltic Sea”, we urgently need an international commission of inquiry under the supervision of the United Nations, not least so that the lead casting suspicion on the United States can even be followed up. Actual investigation of the explosions on the two Nord Stream pipelines is moreover a high global priority, as US economist Jeffrey Sachs rightly pointed out in a recent hearing on the matter before the UN Security Council. After all, not only did this act of international terrorism cause huge economic losses for the states involved; the attack is also a danger to peace and a threat to the security of the cross-border critical infrastructure of all states around the world.

US Democrat Dennis Kucinich has pointed out that, if the national investigative authorities responsible are unwilling or unable to discover the truth, this act of aggression ought to be investigated by the International Criminal Court. The fact is that neither Germany or Sweden nor Denmark, in whose territory the attack took place and which, as a State Party to the Rome Statute, comes under the remit of the International Criminal Court, have yet given any public account of the results of their investigations.

The lack of investigation into the Nord Stream terrorism is a millstone on the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany and the EU countries involved, and it has global ramifications. For the sake of all states and people around the world, such an act of international terrorism cannot be left uninvestigated.

Sevim Dagdelen has been a Member of the German Bundestag since 2005. She is the spokeswoman for the Left Party parliamentary group on the Bundestag’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, a deputy member of the Defence Committee and spokeswoman for international policy and disarmament. From 2017 to 2020, she served on the executive committee of the Left Party parliamentary group as vice chair. Sevim Dagdelen is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and a deputy member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

China: decoupling from the West and winning the long game - Geoff Raby (John Menadue blog)

 Uma visão australiana da irresistível ascensão chinesa, como exato reflexo do gigantesco erro estratégico americano ao tentar conter sua ascensão.

CHINA, ECONOMY, HEALTH, POLITICS, TOP 5, WORLD

China: decoupling from the West and winning the long game

By Geoff Raby

Mar 14, 2023

John Menadue blog

With the re-opening of China and with the ending of Covid restrictions, a new confidence seems to be surging through the country. While the next two years are seen to be a particularly dangerous time, with the real prospect of armed conflict with the US, beyond that it is felt that China’s time will have come. Australians are now largely denied this view since the timorous Australian media is no longer present in China.

At ten pm on Sunday, stuck in a massive traffic jam on Beijing’s second ring road, it was hard not to think the reality of China and the place as it is thought about from abroad are parallel universes.

The China of burgeoning middle-class consumption, a decade of 5 per cent plus economic growth, the biggest market for all East Asia and Oceania, and the pivotal point for global supply chains is unrecognisable from the China of Covid, severe economic disruption, imploding property sector, and local governments mired in debt.

The China Collapse propagators have always thrived on wishful thinking, but as the US moves more decisively towards containing China and whistles up a posse of allies to help the cause, it could lead to dangerous strategic miscalculation.

Back in China after 17 months absence, China is not going anywhere other than to become stronger and more powerful. Travelling in Shandong Province (pop.102m) and then by fast train to Beijing at 305 k/h, it seems as if the Chinese economy is resurging. Vast construction sites are populated by 50 plus cranes working, new high-speed rail lines are going up and eight-lane highways are being rolled out.

These are of course only anecdotal observations, but they give texture and colour to dry numbers such as pursuing a five per cent plus GDP growth rate. Equally anecdotal are conversations one has, but they also provide a feel for what is happening, something Australians are now largely denied since, timorously, Australian media is no longer present in China.

With the re-opening of China and with the ending of Covid restrictions, a new confidence seems to be surging through the country. Contemporary art exhibitions are being launched across Beijing, new bars, restaurants are also popping up. Cinemas are full. When speaking with people who are well placed within the political system, the sense is one of confidence not only in the economy but in China’s ability to weather US containment.

While the next two years are seen to be a particularly dangerous time, with the real prospect of armed conflict with the US, beyond that it is felt that China’s time will have come. It is felt that China’s strength is in its investments in engineering, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, application of 5G, and green energy.

In Shandong Province, longwall underground coal mines are operated remotely by two engineers sitting at computer screens on the surface using Huawei’s 5G. An energy company employing 220,000 staff has digitalised and centralised its entire operations and is now paperless. A green energy centre near Changsha in Hunan Province reportedly employees 10,000 engineers.

The US led global semi-conductor ban on exports to China is clearly seen as a head wind, but as China is the world’s biggest market it will slow development outside China as Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands lose their main market, and hence drivers of innovation and investment. China will divert even more resources into this sector to catch up by old-fashioned import substitution. In view of the huge disparity now in China’s favour in engineering capacity it is expected that the US bans will turn out to be counterproductive.

Meanwhile, obedient robots assist with clearing mountains of dishes from Chinese banquet tables, deliver packages to hotel rooms and continually polishing lobby floors. An innovation at Beijing’s 798 art district, is a robotic cake shop that tours the crowded laneways selling bakery items paid for by smart phones and QR codes. Cash and credit cards have all but disappeared. Of course, none of this existed at the time the Australian media vacated China.

One Chinese business executive in Beijing told me that after looking at several different manufacturing sites around the world, the company decided to build it after all in China. ‘In China things happen and get done. If the phone rings at 11 pm it is answered. People won’t say it is the weekend I’ll get around to it on Monday. Ask for something and it will be actioned, not delayed.’

In 1960, Walt Rostow published his book the Stages of Economic Growth. Later he was a member of President Kennedy’s ‘Best and the Brightest Group’ of advisers that deeply embroiled the US in the immoral and futile Vietnam War. As controversial as his analysis of the process of economic growth was, it has a certain relevance today to understanding China’s economic development. His fourth stage, after ‘take-off’, when economies reach maturity was what he called the ‘the age of high-mass consumption’, well describes China today.

China has reached that point of development underpinned by the rapid growth of advanced manufacturing. Gone to Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Cambodia, and elsewhere, are the low value-added industries of toys, cigarette lighters and cheap clothing which have been replaced by advanced, digitally controlled, manufacturing. US generals are now complaining that China can build naval vessels faster and in bigger numbers than the US.

China leads the world in electric vehicles. Tesla is expanding its production in China. Green energy is a major priority, not least because China now so deeply mistrusts the West that it is determined for security reasons to slash its reliance on imported oil and LNG.

The success of the US alliance to sanction Russia over its invasion of Ukraine has made Beijing even more determined to find domestic sources of energy, which includes green energy.

The complete breakdown in trust between Beijing and Washington has made the Chinese leadership intent on decoupling from the West. A containment policy against China is a lose-lose strategy. The Chinese leadership seem convinced that its advanced manufacturing already has the lead, and it will continue to open an even bigger gap. This week’s National Peoples’ Congress will focus on these themes.

A view is now entrenched that the US is determined to provoke conflict over Taiwan. Ironically, that could make conflict even less likely as the Chinese leadership will not allow themselves to be drawn into a suicidal action. Instead, the strategy will likely be bellicose language while building national resilience and self-reliance based on outcompeting the US economically and winning the long game.

In these circumstances, the Australian Government will come under even more pressure from the US to join in provoking China. The US’ campaign of interference in Australia is well-oiled. It has just been ramped up with SMH’s Red Threat series published this week.

Geoff Raby 

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Geoff Raby AO was Australia’s ambassador to China (2007–11); ambassador to APEC (2003–5); and ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (1998–2001). He is chair of VisAsia at the Art Gallery of NSW and chair of Western Sydney University’s Australia–China Institute of Arts and Culture. Raby was awarded the Order of Australia in 2019 for services to Australia–China relations and to international trade