The curious silence surrounding the Baltic gas bubbles
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Alastair Crooke
- 9 Oct 2022 13:12
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7 Min Read
Of course, they know. They know who did it, but the Euro-élite won’t say.
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The curious silence surrounding the Baltic gas bubbles
Many are confused. Europe has just lost a key source of cheap energy needed as the resource base to run any modern society and economy. It comes at the very moment too, that Britain and the Euro Zone have entered into an inflationary financial crisis.
What happened? A giant bubble of gas roiled the surface of the Baltic Sea, marking the demise of any putative Nord Stream supply to Germany -- thus ‘facilitating’ what Secretary of State Blinken has called a "tremendous opportunity" for the US. Curiously, the sabotage coincided with reports suggesting that secret talks were afoot between Germany and Russia to resolve all Nord Stream issues and to restart supply.
And what do we hear from Europe? Silence -- apart from perfunctory and formulaic condemnations of Russia.
Of course, they know. They know who did it, but the Euro-élite won’t say.
To understand the paradox of European silence we must look at the interplay of the three principal dynamics operating in Europe. Each thinks of theirs as ‘a winning hand’ -- the ‘be all, and end all’ of the future. But in reality, two are but mere ‘useful tools’ in the eyes of those who ‘pull the levers’ and ‘sound the whistles’ (i.e. control the psyops) from ‘behind the curtain’.
Furthermore, there is a sharp disparity of motives: For the 'Straussians' behind the curtain, they are at war -- an existential war to maintain their primacy. The second two currents are utopian projects which have shown themselves to be easily manipulated.
The 'Straussians' are the followers of Leo Strauss, the leading neo-con theorist. Many are former Trotskyists who morphed over, from Left to Right (call them Neocon ‘hawks’ if you prefer). Their message is a very simple doctrine about the maintenance of power: ‘Never let it slip’; block any rival from emerging; do whatever it takes.
Leading Straussian, Paul Wolfowitz, wrote this simple doctrine -- ‘destroy any emergent rivals, before they destroy you’ -- into the US 1992 official Defence Planning Document, adding to it that Europe and Japan, particularly were to be ‘discouraged’ from questioning US global primacy. This skeleton doctrine, though re-packaged in subsequent Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, has continued with its essence unchanged.
And, since the message ‘block any rival’ is so direct and compelling, the Straussians flit easily from US political party to party. They have too, their ‘useful’ auxiliaries deeply burrowed within the US’ élite class and institutions of state power. The oldest and most trusty of these auxiliary forces however, is the Anglo-American intelligence and security alliance.
The 'Straussians' prefer to scheme from ‘behind the curtain’ and in certain US think tanks. They move with the times, ‘camping on’, but not assimilating into, whatever prevalent cultural trends are ‘out there’. They use these contemporary impulses to craft fresh justifications for American exceptionalism.
The first such important impulse in the current reframing is liberal-woke, activist-driven, social justice-oriented identity politics.
Why wokeism? Why should woke be of interest to CIA and MI6? Because … it is revolutionary. Identity politics evolved during the French Revolution to upend the status quo; to overthrow its pantheon of hero-models; and to displace the existing élite and rotate a ‘new class’ into power. This – definitely – excites the interest of Straussians.
Biden likes to tout the exceptionalism of "our democracy". Of course, Biden refers here, not to generic democracy in the wider meaning, but to America’s liberal-woke re-justification for global hegemony (defined as ‘our democracy’) “We have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, preserve, and protect ‘our democracy’ … It is under threat”, he says.
The second key dynamic – the Green Agenda - is one that co-habits under the Biden Administration umbrella, together with the very radical and distinct philosophy of Silicon Valley -- an eugenist and trans-human view that aligns in some respects with that of the ‘Davos’ crowd, as well as with the straight-forward Green climate activists.
Just to be clear: these two distinct, but companion piece, dynamics to ‘our democracy’ crossed the Atlantic to burrow deeply into the Brussels leadership class also. And to be clear on another point: the Euro-Version of liberal-woke activism keeps intact the Straussian doctrine of US and western exceptionalism - together with its’ insistence that ‘enemies’ be portrayed in the most extreme Manichaean terms.
The aim of Manicheanism (since Carl Schmitt first made the point) is to foreclose on any mediation with rivals, by portraying them as sufficiently 'evil' that discourse with them becomes pointless and morally defective.
The transition of liberal-woke politics across the Atlantic should come as no surprise: The EU’s regulation ‘trussed’ internal market was precisely devised to displace political debate with tech managerialism. But the very sterility of econ-tech discourse birthed the so-called ‘democracy gap’. With the latter becoming evermore the Union’s unmissable lacuna.
The Euro-élites thus were in desperate need of a Values System to fill the gap. So they leaped onto the liberal-woke ‘train’. Drawing on this - and the Club of Rome’s ‘messianism’ for de-industrialisation - gave to the Euro-élites their shiny new sect of absolute purity, a Green future, and stainless "European Values" filling the democracy-gap lacuna.
Effectively, these latter two currents -- identity politics and the Green agenda -- are at play with the Straussians standing behind the curtain.
The new zealots were deeply entrenched into Europe’s élite class by the 1990s, particularly with Tony Blair's importation of the Clinton worldvision, and were thus ready to make the attempt to cast down the Pantheon of the old order so as to establish a new ‘de-industrialised’ Green world that would wash away the western sins of racism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity.
It has culminated in the mounting of ‘a revolutionary vanguard’, whose proselytizing fury is directed both at ‘the Other’ (which serendipitously happens to be America’s rivals), and at those at home (whether in the US or Europe) who are defined as extremists threatening ‘our (liberal) democracy’ and the imperative need for a ‘Green Revolution’.
Here is the point: at the tip of the European ‘spear’ reside the Green zealots, particularly the truly revolutionary German Green Party. They hold the leadership in Germany, and are at the helm at the EU Commission. It is Green zealotry fused to ‘ruining Russia’ -- an intoxicating mix.
The German Greens see themselves as legionaries in this new Trans-Atlantic imperial ‘army’, pulling down literally the pillars of the European industrial society; redeeming its smoking ruins, and its unpayable debts, through a digitised financial system and a ‘renewables’ economic future.
And then, having weakened Russia sufficiently, and with the aspiration to eject Putin, vultures eventually would arrive to prey at the Russian carcass for resources -- precisely as occurred in the 1990s.
But they forgot …
They forgot … that Straussians don’t have permanent ‘friends’; US primacy trumps alliances.
Recall the Straussian doctrine: ‘whatever it takes’. Then recall Putin’s remark, in his 30 September address: the “Anglo-Saxons blew up the pipelines”.
What can the European Green zealots say? They wanted - anyway - to throw down the pillars of industrialised society. Well, they got it. Maybe they are secretly pleased. The Nord Stream ‘escape route’ out from economic catastrophe has gone. There is nothing else, but to mumble unconvincingly: ‘Putin did it’. And to contemplate the ruin of Europa and what that may mean.
