Pirani tries to brush aside the fact that the US had tried to prevent Nordstream 2 from its inception, despite opposition to that from the EU, as set out in the quote from Wikipedia above, and most clearly expressed in Biden's comment that “If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will put an end to it.” Pirani claims that this was a harmless statement by Biden that the US would simply try to persuade and cajole Germany and the EU to scrap the project. And, that Pirani says, is what happened. Well, not quite, of course, because, the explosions took out not just Nordstream 2 but also Nordstream 1. Moreover, Nordstream 2 had been completed, and all that Germany did was to cancel it being brought into operation. So long as it was functioning, it along with Nordstream 1 could be brought on stream, and supply cheap and plentiful Russian gas to the EU, and that is precisely what the US wanted to stop!
Pirani says,
“Any serious account of what led up to the explosions would have to explain this vital reversal of German policy. Hersh does not mention it.”
But, the reason Germany prevented Nordstream 2 coming on stream has been described. Massive US pressure, and sanctions, and a belief that any war would be short lived, probably ending before the Winter started, with Russia capitulating, and placing the EU in a much stronger bargaining position. Yet, despite the vast amounts of weapons poured into Ukraine, it failed to push back Russia from the East, despite repeated claims by imperialism and its apologists like Paul Mason that Russia was about to be rolled up, and instead, Russia consolidated its hold over the majority Russian areas, as it had done in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, and in Crimea in 2014.
By August, all of the hubris and hot air pumped out by NATO propaganda was being deflated, and it was apparent that this was going to be a forever war, much as with NATO's involvement in Afghanistan. Why would the US think a reversal of Germany's policy might occur? Well the prospect of surviving the Winter, the fact that tens of thousands, across Europe, were protesting about the effects of EU sanctions on Russian energy supplies to the EU, and fact that millions of workers were striking for higher wages and against a soaring cost of living are fairly obvious candidates!
Pirani brushes aside Biden's comments about ensuring that Nordstream 2 could not go ahead, but also fails to deal with the comments of Nuland, who was herself significantly involved in the 2014 US backed coup in Kyiv. As Wikipeida, again, notes,
“In a U.S. Congressional hearing on 26 January 2023, Nuland expressed her approval of the 2022 Nord Stream pipleine sabotage: "Senator Cruz, like you, I am-and I think the administration is very pleased that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you say, a pile of metal at the bottom of the ocean."”
You don't have to take the word of a single anonymous source, in relation to US motivations and actions, when these statements are themselves a matter of public record, and stand out pretty much like someone accused of murder having been caught on camera, threatening to do in the victim, especially when the suspect has a history of violence, and widespread interference into the affairs of others. Nor does Pirani deal with the statements from Radoslaw Sikorski, quoted by Lazare, in which he tweeted “Thank, you USA”, in response to the explosions. If you are assessing the likelihood of culpability, in response to Hersch's argument, then surely you need to take into consideration these statements by other US actors, otherwise all you have done is engage in sophistry against the argument presented by Hersch. What would be the point of that other than essentially to act as an apologist for US imperialism. The point is not whether his argument lives up to all the requirements of semantics and philosophical logic, which might be relevant to some academic analysis, but whether it tells us anything useful about the event itself.
The fact that Sikorski assumed it was the US that was responsible doesn't mean he was right, but his connection to Applebaum, means he probably had inside information that it was. The fact that Cruz and Nuland could express that happiness that Nordstream was a pile of metal, does not itself mean they did it, though, in that case, you would have to ask why, initially, they tried to blame Russia for it? But, its not just these sources that make these assumptions, based upon the facts, the logic, and inside information. Whatever they might now try to throw at Hersch, it is even more difficult for them to do so against Jeffrey Sachs, a long-time stalwart of US imperialism, who was sent by US imperialism to Russia, following the fall of the USSR, and acted as one of its representatives in the dismantling of state property, and introduction of Friedmanite, free market policies.
But, in his Bloomberg interview some weeks ago, that I have previously cited, Sachs himself notes that nearly all US journalists privately acknowledged that it was the US that carried out the attack, but that they could not openly say so. Moreover, he notes, its only in the West that the idea that it was the US is questioned, and in all his dealings across the globe, he says that people, more or less took it for granted that it was the US that was responsible.
And, for good reason. Russia had no reason to blow up its own pipelines, from which it sought to obtain large amounts of revenue from selling gas to the EU. Contrary to Pirani's argument that it had already voluntarily reduced its supplies to Europe, the truth is that it was NATO/EU sanctions and boycotts that had reduced that supply, and led to Russia demanding payment in Roubles, a demand that the EU decided not to accede, and so cut off its supplies. Russia had every reason to believe that the EU would be likely to reverse its position, as it would have difficulty finding adequate and cheap supplies of gas elsewhere, and indeed, nearly all analysts, think that, the EU has dodged bullet, having massively overpaid for gas to build up stockpiles last year, as a mild Autumn, carried over into a mild Winter, so far.
But the EU, has not been able to provide adequate infrastructure to replace cheap Russian piped gas with more expensive LNG transported by ship half way across the globe, and has, thereby, only deferred a potential crisis, next Winter, even if it escapes it in the remainder of this Winter, which still has around six weeks to run. As the IEA note, it could face a shortfall for gas equal to around 14.5% of its total consumption, and even that assumes a reduction in consumption of around 13-20%. With China reopening, and the global economy set to expand again, with demand for energy rising sharply, global gas prices are likely to rise significantly, and even supplies of LNG will be highly fought over. So, Russia would have had every reason to think that the EU would come back in 2023, seeking a return of its cheap and plentiful supplies, a possibility that Russia would have denied itself had it blown up its own pipeline, rather than just do the obvious thing of turning off the taps!
Pirani's argument that Gazprom was effectively forced into doing economic damage to itself by the political demands of Putin, simply echoes the NATO propaganda that, much like the propaganda against Hitler during WWII, relies on suggestions of mental instability, and irrationality. If we ask the obvious question who benefits, then the answer is clearly the US, not Russia, and certainly not the EU. The US blowing up the pipeline would be an equivalent of Operation Catapult, conducted by Britain against neutral French ships in WWII. Britain sank a French battleship and five other ships, and killed 1,297 French servicemen in an attack, designed to stop them falling into enemy hands, after France signed the armistice with Germany and Italy, in 1940.
Pirani concludes,
““Left” organisations and personalities retail Hersh’s Nord Stream story uncritically, because it is what they want to hear. Dogma beats inquiry. Innuendo and false claims beat solidarity with the victims of Russia’s scorched-earth war on populations, in Syria in 2014 and 2017, and Ukraine in 2022-23.”
Putin's Russia is certainly no friend of the working-class, and he's right that certain sections of the Left operate on the basis of a cretinous my enemy's enemy is my friend, an “idiot-anti-imperialism” that overrides any concern to fight for socialism rather than to fight against imperialism. But Pirani, and the section of the petty-bourgeois, moral socialism he represents are no better, and indeed, in many ways worse. They claim to be supporting those “victims”, but the reality is that the war in Libya in 2011, and in Syria in 2014, was a consequence of the US and its feudal Gulf allies arming and training jihadists to launch revolts against the existing regimes that the US sought to remove. Those jihadists were certainly no friend of workers.
Similarly, in 2014, the US financed and organised the coup in Kyiv to remove the pro-Russian Yanuvovich, which then set in motion the train of events leading to the present war. But, neither US imperialism, nor those right-wing, fascistic elements it supported in Kyiv were or are friends of the working-class either. The nature of the Kyiv regime as corrupt and undemocratic was described in Part I, using available global metrics, and has been emphasised since in the attacks that Zelensky's regime has launched on Ukrainian workers and trades unions, Ukrainian socialist organisations, and even the liberal media.
The role of the Nazis of the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, promoted by Zelensky, within the state is well known, and these forces are also no friend of the working-class, or even basic liberal values, however much Biden and the social imperialists might want to hide their faces from that reality. The lauding of Ukrainian Nazis like Bandera and so on, the engaging in what amounts to Holocaust denial, in relation to the role of Ukraine in WWII, the statues, the naming of roads and public spaces in honour of those Nazis is emblematic of the reactionary, anti working-class nature of this regime, which is far from any concept of a radical, let alone revolutionary liberating force to which socialists might give any support. It is the equivalent of the Iraqi clerical fascists in 2003, or the Libyan jihadists in 2011, or ISIS in Syria.
In Libya, where Russia was not involved, it has led to a failed state, and warlordism for the last 12 years, and pretty much the same would have happened in Syria, had not Russia and Iran, with support from Kurdish militias been involved to defeat the jihadists. But Pirani says nothing about that, because he is as much an uncritical supporter of US imperialism, as those he criticises are uncritical defenders of various “anti-imperialists”.
The war in Ukraine is not about defending the rights Ukrainian victims of Russia, but a war between a vile and corrupt Russian capitalist state, under Putin, and a vile and corrupt Ukrainian capitalist state, under Zelensky, backed by, and whose strings are pulled by, a powerful and corrupt US/NATO imperialism, seeking to maintain its global domination in the face of a rising challenge to its hegemony, economically by the EU and China, and militarily and strategically by China, in an increasing symbiotic relationship to Russia, and other parts of Central Asia. Pirani's argument is just another element of the uncritical support that the social imperialists are providing to US/NATO imperialism in that war, the other side of the coin to the pro-Putin “anti-imperialists”.
The job of socialists is to oppose our own imperialism, not to act as its attorneys, as Pirani and others of that moral socialist milieu have done. For us the main enemy is at home, and we reject the notion that any capitalist state has a right of self-defence, which means only supporting the bourgeois-defencist principle of “defence of the fatherland” that was the basis of the split in the socialist movement in 1914. We argue only for the right of workers to defend themselves against capitalism and the capitalist state. We argue the position of revolutionary defeatism, not for national self-determination, but for the self-determination of the proletariat, as Lenin put it.
Its not the workers of Ukraine in a war against Putin, but the Ukrainian capitalist state backed by the massive power of NATO imperialism. Indeed, the Ukrainian workers are being attacked by the Ukrainian state in the interests of Ukrainian and imperialist capital, as we speak. It is against that state that they should direct their attention, just as the Russian workers should direct their attention against the Russian state. They have more in common with each other than they do with their respective ruling classes. Workers of the World Unite, the only war should be the class war.
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