September 30: “It was Vladimir, with the torpedo, in the Baltic Sea… maybe?”

In which, mysterious explosions shut down critical pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Italy completes its shift to the right, and boy did I call it on political violence in the US.

Introducing, Giorgia Meloni

As anticipated, Italians went to the polls last Sunday and swept Giorgia Meloni and her conservative party into power. 

Meloni becomes Italy’s first female head of government at a moment of unprecedented political flux and instability in Europe (see below). Were it business as usual in the EU, the election of the eurosceptic populist would raise eyebrows in Brussels, but would probably still be celebrated as a win for advancing women in politics in Italy and Europe. 

But it’s not a business as usual year in Europe, and it hasn’t really been a business as usual decade. From the sovereign debt crisis of 2009 to Brexit to Orbanism in Hungary to Covid to Russian military adventurism and related energy crises it is far, far from business as usual (though at this point, maybe we should consider “crisis management” to be “business as usual”). So, EU leaders are spooked at the prospects of yet another conservative, euro skeptical leader, this time in Europe’s third largest economy. 

The possible unpredictability of a Meloni government has not made Meloni friends in either Europe or America’s mainstream press where references to Meloni as “fascist” and “extreme far right” abound. 

Interesting side note, I asked my students this week if anyone had read anything about Meloni’s political philosophy or her party's platform. No had and neither had I, but we all knew what label we were supposed to apply to her and her party’s ideology: fascism, extreme, radical, far right. That’s the new power of the press, folks.

It was Vladimir, with the torpedo, in the Baltic Sea… maybe?

In a significant and dangerous development in the Ukraine War/European Energy War, a series of mysterious explosions in the Baltic Sea damaged the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.

Neither pipeline was currently in operation, but there was gas stored in them, so the explosions led to a rapid loss of pressure and massive gas bubbles rising to the ocean’s surface.

European authorities quickly concluded that the “accidents” were an act of sabotage (you would need some very highly specialized equipment and personnel to achieve this kind of thing), but here the mystery deepened. No one wants to point fingers too directly. While European and American officials made no secret of their suspicion of Russian saboteurs, the Russians suggested the exact same thing about the Americans and Europeans! 

So, who was it? Russia? This is hard to believe since Russia controls the on/off switch for these pipelines, and had already turned off Nord Stream 1 a few weeks ago for “maintenance,” but hadn’t started the line back up. These pipelines are significant export corridors and a key element of Russia’s leverage over Europe when it comes to energy diplomacy. If it is Russia, it would be a very short term, desperate gamble to force a breakup of the US-EU alliance on Ukraine. But that objective appears to have already been in sight, which still doesn’t explain when Russia would purposely damage a multi-billion dollar asset.

Is it the US and its allies? Certainly the Trump and Biden administrations made no secret of their opposition to Nord Stream 2 over the last few years, which certainly indicates motive of a sort. And we have the technical and military capabilities to achieve such a strike given us the means. But did we have opportunity? This is a hard one to pin down since the site of the explosions are in the Danish and Swedish Exclusive Economic Zones and the approach would be through some tightly monitored waters. The opportunity would only exist with at least the tacit consent of America’s European allies, which seems unlikely given the dire straits European energy infrastructure is in.

My oddball thought bubble? A joint Norwegian-Polish pipeline just opened and runs through the same neighborhood. This pipeline was specifically developed to reduce Polish dependence on Russian natural gas. What if it was Russia, but they were targeting the Norway-Poland Baltic line and hit their own instead? The poetic justice would be rich, but would still have the tragic effect of escalating the Western-Russian conflict developing around the Ukraine War.

Bottom line, I don’t think it matters much who did this. Each side is accusing the other, which means each side will see this as an escalation.