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→NATO–Ukraine War
Scholz chief-of-staff defended Scholz foreign policy leadership saying that Germany was still a "teenager" in that role.<ref>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/13/putins-war-on-ukraine-part-of-crusade-against-liberal-democracy-says-scholz</ref>
Scholz chief-of-staff defended Scholz foreign policy leadership saying that Germany was still a "teenager" in that role.<ref>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/13/putins-war-on-ukraine-part-of-crusade-against-liberal-democracy-says-scholz</ref>
==NATO–Ukraine War==
==NATO war in Ukrainer==
{{main|NATO war in Ukraine}}
{{main|NATO war in Ukraine}}
Scholz’s ''Zeitenwende'' (“watershed”) policy, announced with great fanfare on February 27, 2023 just three days after Russia's de-nazification campaign began, increased funding for Rheinmetall AG, the producer of the [[Leopard 2]] tank. The headquarters of Rheinmetall AG is in Dusseldorf, the epicenter of the Ruhr Area targeted by the post-[[World War II]] [[Morgenthau Plan]].<ref>[https://consortiumnews.com/2023/01/31/scott-ritter-germany-in-danger-of-forgetting-its-history/ SCOTT RITTER: Germany Risks Forgetting Its History], January 31, 2023. ''Consortiumnews''.</ref>
Scholz’s ''Zeitenwende'' (“watershed”) policy, announced with great fanfare on February 27, 2023 just three days after Russia's de-nazification campaign began, increased funding for Rheinmetall AG, the producer of the [[Leopard 2]] tank. The headquarters of Rheinmetall AG is in Dusseldorf, the epicenter of the Ruhr Area targeted by the post-[[World War II]] [[Morgenthau Plan]].<ref>[https://consortiumnews.com/2023/01/31/scott-ritter-germany-in-danger-of-forgetting-its-history/ SCOTT RITTER: Germany Risks Forgetting Its History], January 31, 2023. ''Consortiumnews''.</ref>
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman [[Maria Zakharova]] delivered a moving and powerful message to Sholz following his disastrous decision to open old wounds by delivering German tanks once again,<ref>[https://youtu.be/C5yXoMRUhXg Symbols of death the German tanks, Russian Foreign Ministry says], Jan. 28, 2023. YouTube.</ref> imploring German leaders “not to make the same mistakes of the German ancestors, that the German people paid a huge price for.” Staring directly into the camera at a press conference, Zakharova addressed the German people: “The day that it was allowed that Leopard tanks should be sent to Ukraine is historical because it has cemented the thing that we talked about, that Germany has completely lost [[sovereignty]]. And Scholz has just signed the loss of independent German [[foreign policy]] forever.”<ref>[https://youtu.be/hv7yEI5YRZc Zakharova's POWERFUL Message To Olaf Scholz (EN Translated)], Jan 27, 2023. YouTube.</ref>
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman [[Maria Zakharova]] delivered a moving and powerful message to Sholz following his disastrous decision to open old wounds by delivering German tanks once again,<ref>[https://youtu.be/C5yXoMRUhXg Symbols of death the German tanks, Russian Foreign Ministry says], Jan. 28, 2023. YouTube.</ref> imploring German leaders “not to make the same mistakes of the German ancestors, that the German people paid a huge price for.” Staring directly into the camera at a press conference, Zakharova addressed the German people: “The day that it was allowed that Leopard tanks should be sent to Ukraine is historical because it has cemented the thing that we talked about, that Germany has completely lost [[sovereignty]]. And Scholz has just signed the loss of independent German [[foreign policy]] forever.”<ref>[https://youtu.be/hv7yEI5YRZc Zakharova's POWERFUL Message To Olaf Scholz (EN Translated)], Jan 27, 2023. YouTube.</ref>
=====Terrorist attack on Nordstream pipeline=====
[[File:Nord Stream II Lubmin.jpg|right|300px|thumb|German protest against Russian sanctions and in favor of opening the Nord Stream pipeline on the morning before the U.S. environmental terrorist attack on the pipeline.<ref>https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-blew-russian-gas-pipelines-nord-stream-1-2-says-former-polish-defense-minister</ref>]]{{See also|Nord Stream pipeline#Morganthau Plan 2.0}}
U.S. dictator [[Joe Biden]] and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser [[Jake Sullivan]], Secretary of State [[Tony Blinken]], and Undersecretary [[Victoria Nuland]] had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the [[Baltic Sea]] from two different ports in northeastern Russia near the [[Estonia]]n border, passing close to the [[Danish]] island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.
The direct route, which bypassed any need to transit [[Ukraine]], had been a boon for the German [[economy]], which enjoyed an abundance of cheap Russian [[natural gas]]—enough to run its factories and heat its homes while enabling German distributors to sell excess gas, at a [[profit]], throughout [[Western Europe]]. Action that could be traced to the Biden regime would violate US promises to minimize direct conflict with Russia. Secrecy was essential.
From its earliest days, [[Nordstream|Nord Stream 1]] was seen by [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] and its [[anti-Russian]] [[NATO]] partners as a threat to [[Western alliance|western dominance]]. Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor [[Willy Brandt]]’s famed ''[[Ostpolitik]]'', which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in [[World War II]] by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.
In the view of NATO and Washington [[Nord Stream 2]], whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and [[Western Europe]]. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption.
In mid-November 2021, when Germany’s energy regulators suspended approval of the second Nord Stream pipeline, natural gas prices surged 8% within days amid growing fears in Germany and Europe that the pipeline suspension and the growing possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine would lead to an unwanted cold winter. It was not clear to Washington just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s newly appointed chancellor, stood. Months earlier, after the [[Fall of Kabul|fall of Afghanistan]], Scholtz had publicly endorsed French President [[Emmanuel Macron]]’s call for a more autonomous European [[foreign policy]] in a speech in [[Prague]]—clearly suggesting less reliance on Washington and its mercurial actions.
As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.
Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan. In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force, men and women from the [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]], the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments.
Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The [[U.S. Navy|Navy]] proposed using a newly commissioned [[submarine]] to assault the pipeline directly. The [[Air Force]] discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The [[CIA]] argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” according to a source directly familiar with the matter. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of [[war]].”
<!--At the time, the CIA was directed by [[William Burns]], a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the [[Obama Administration]]. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City. Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline.
Something like this had been done before. In 1971, the American intelligence community learned from still undisclosed sources that two important units of the Russian Navy were communicating via an undersea cable buried in the Sea of Okhotsk, on Russia’s Far East Coast. The cable linked a regional Navy command to the mainland headquarters at [[Vladivostok]].
A hand-picked team of Central Intelligence Agency and [[National Security Agency]] operatives was assembled somewhere in the Washington area, under deep cover, and worked out a plan, using Navy divers, modified submarines and a deep-submarine rescue vehicle, that succeeded, after much trial and error, in locating the Russian cable. The divers planted a sophisticated listening device on the cable that successfully intercepted the Russian traffic and recorded it on a taping system.
The NSA learned that senior Russian navy officers, convinced of the security of their communication link, chatted away with their peers without encryption. The recording device and its tape had to be replaced monthly and the project rolled on merrily for a decade until it was compromised by a forty-four-year-old civilian NSA technician named Ronald Pelton who was fluent in Russian. Pelton was betrayed by a Russian defector in 1985 and sentenced to prison. He was paid just $5,000 by the Russians for his revelations about the operation, along with $35,000 for other Russian operational data he provided that was never made public.
That underwater success, codenamed Ivy Bells, was innovative and risky, and produced invaluable intelligence about the Russian Navy’s intentions and planning.
Still, the interagency group was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation. Would the divers have to go to Estonia, right across the border from Russia’s natural gas loading docks, to train for the mission? “It would be a goat fuck,” the Agency was told.-->
Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the [[State Department]] were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’” Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”
[[File:P8+HAAWC+2.jpg|left|400px|thumb|''Illustration of a HAAWC anti-sub missile delivered by a Navy P8 subhunter.]]
On January 27, 2022 [[neocon]] provocateur Victoria Nuland stated at a U.S. State Department press briefing "one way or another Nord Stream II will not move forward."
What came next was stunning. On February 7, 2022 less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable [[Special military operation|Russian invasion of Ukraine]], Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a [[Nord Stream 2]]. We will bring an end to it.”<ref>https://youtu.be/vbM7-r2VaMc</ref>
Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.” The Agency working group members had no direct contact with the [[White House]], and were eager to find out if Biden meant what he’d said—that is, if the mission was now a go. The source recalled, “[[Bill Burns]] comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”
<!--[[Norway]] was the perfect place to base the mission. In the past few years of East-West crisis, the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway, whose western border runs 1,400 miles along the north [[Atlantic Ocean]] and merges above the [[Arctic Circle]] with Russia. The [[Pentagon]] has created high paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia and came online just as the American intelligence community lost access to a series of long-range listening sites inside China.
A newly refurbished American submarine base, which had been under construction for years, had become operational and more American submarines were now able to work closely with their Norwegian colleagues to monitor and spy on a major Russian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Peninsula. America also has vastly expanded a Norwegian air base in the north and delivered to the Norwegian air force a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes to bolster its long-range spying on all things Russia.
In return, the Norwegian government angered liberals and some moderates in its parliament last November by passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA). Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.
Norway was one of the original signatories of the NATO Treaty in 1949, in the early days of the [[Cold War]]. Today, the supreme commander of NATO is [[Jens Stoltenberg]], a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s [[prime minister]] for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the [[Vietnam War]]. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.
Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)-->
[[File:Sikorski tweet.PNG|right|300px|thumb|Former Polish Foreign and Defense Minister and Member of the EU Parliament thanked the United States for the [[Biden regime]]'s [[environmentalism|environmental]] [[terrorism]] and Act of War against Russia and the German people.<ref>https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915</ref>]]
On September 7, 2022 Russian President [[Vladimir Putin]] said the Nord Stream II pipeline could be reopened "tomorrow" to alleviate Europe's impending winter heating fuel crisis.<ref>https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/russia-ready-to-switch-on-nord-stream-ii-pipeline-tomorrow-if-europe-gives-green-light/2678820</ref>
[[File:P8+Weapons+Release.png|left|400px|thumb|Air traffic control monitoring of P8 run on the Nordstream pipeline, early morning hours of September 26, 2022.<ref>https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/independent-evidence-video-confirms-key-part-sy-hershs-report-attack-nord-stream-2/</ref>]]
On September 26, 2022, a NATO P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and made a dropped over the pipelines. Three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place. The detachment of US Navy ships led by the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge announced the completion of work in the area of the sabotaged pipelines. US ships in the Baltic Sea and were spotted heading to the Baltic Straits into the North Sea.
Asked at a press conference days later about the consequences of the worsening energy crisis in Western Europe, Blinken called destruction of the pipeline a "tremendous opportunity" for the United States.<ref>https://mate.substack.com/p/in-nord-stream-attack-us-sees-a-tremendous</ref> President Putin said while speaking at Russia Energy Week in Moscow, “Those who benefit the most from the damage caused to the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea are the ones responsible for it...Everybody understands who is behind this and who is the beneficiary...One can now force the liquefied natural gas from the United States on to European countries on a much larger scale."<ref>https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Putin-Suggests-Creation-Of-European-Gas-Hub-In-Turkey.html</ref> ''Politico'' reported that French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told the French National Assembly, "We must not allow the conflict in Ukraine to result in American economic domination and a weakening of Europe...We cannot accept that our American partner sells its LNG at four times the price at which it sells it to its own companies."<ref>https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2022/10/frances-le-maire-warns-against-american-gas-domination-00061111</ref>
Victoria Nuland expressed satisfaction at the demise of the pipelines while testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in January 2023.
==References==
==References==