Testimony of Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs
University Professor at Columbia University
UN Security Council Session on the Nord Stream Pipeline Destruction

February 21, 2023
As Delivered

My name is Jeffrey D. Sachs. I am University Professor at Columbia University. I am a specialist in the global economy, including global trade, finance, infrastructure, and economic statecraft. I appear before the UN Security Council on my own behalf. I represent no government or organisation in the testimony that I will deliver.

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to the peace. It is the responsibility of the UN Security Council to take up the question of who might have carried out the act, in order to bring the perpetrator to international justice, to pursue compensation for the damaged parties, and to prevent future such actions.

The consequences of the destruction of Nord Stream 2 are enormous. They include not only the vast economic losses related to the pipelines themselves and their future potential use, but also the heightened threat to transboundary infrastructure of all kinds: submarine internet cables, international pipelines for gas and hydrogen, transboundary power transmission, offshore wind farms, and more. The global transformation to green energy will require considerable transboundary infrastructure, including in international waters. Countries need to have full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties. Some European countries have recently expressed concern over the safety of their offshore infrastructure.

For all of these reasons, the investigation by the UN Security Council of the Nord Stream explosions is a high global priority.

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines required a very high degree of planning, expertise, and technological capacity. The Nord Stream 2 pipelines are a marvel of engineering (see, for example, here and here). Each section of pipe is rolled steel of 4.5 cm thickness, and with a pipeline internal diameter of 1.15 meters. The pipe is encased in concrete of 10.9 cm thickness. The weight of each section of concrete-encased pipe is 24 metric tons. The Nord Stream 2 pipelines, some 1,200 kilometers in length, contain around 200,000 pipes. The pipelines sit on the sea floor.

Destroying a pipeline of heavy rolled steel, encased in concrete, at the depth of 70-90 meters, requires highly advanced technologies for transportation of the explosives, diving to install the explosives, and detonation. To do so undetected, in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden, adds greatly to the complexity of the operation. As a number of senior officials have confirmed, an action of this sort must have been carried out by a state-level actor.

Only a handful of state-level actors have both the technical capacity and access to the Baltic Sea to have carried out this action. These include Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, either individually or in some combination. Ukraine lacks the necessary technologies, as well as access to the Baltic Sea.

A recent report by the Washington Post revealed that the intelligence agencies of the NATO countries have privately concluded that there is no evidence whatsoever that Russia carried out this action. This also comports with the fact that Russia had no obvious motive to carry out this act of terrorism on its own critical infrastructure. Indeed, Russia is likely to bear considerable expenses to repair the pipelines.

Three countries have reportedly carried out investigations of the Nord Stream terrorism: Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. These countries presumably know much about the circumstances of the terrorist attack. Sweden, in particular, has perhaps the most to tell the world about the crime scene, which its divers investigated. Yet instead of sharing this information globally, Sweden has kept the results of its investigation secret from the rest of the world. Sweden has refused to share its findings with Russia, and turned down a joint investigation with Denmark and Germany. In the interest of global peace, the UN Security Council should require these countries to immediately turn over the results of their investigations to the UN Security Council.

There is only one detailed account to date of the Nord Stream destruction, the one recently put forward by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, ostensibly based on information leaked to Hersh by an unnamed source. Hersh attributes the Nord Stream destruction to a decision ordered by US President Joe Biden and carried out by US agents in a covert operation that Hersh describes in detail. The White House has describedHersh’s account as “completely and utterly false,” but did not offer any information contradicting Hersh’s account and did not offer any alternative explanation.

Senior US officials made statements before and after the Nord Stream destruction that showed the US animus towards the pipelines. On January 27, 2022, Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tweeted, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” On February 7, 2022, President Biden said,, “If Russia invades… again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When asked by the reporter how he would do that, he responded, “I promise you we will be able to do it.”

On September 30, 2022 immediately following the terrorist attack on the pipeline, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the destruction of the pipeline is “also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponisation of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.” On January 28, 2023, Under-Secretary Nuland declared to Senator Ted Cruz, “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

Such language is not at all appropriate in the face of international terrorism. I hope that the US together with all other Security Council members will condemn this heinous act of international terrorism and join together in an urgent UNSC-led investigation of this international crime in order to determine the truth. The truth is not yet known by the world, but it is knowable.

More than ever, the world depends on the UN Security Council to do its work to stop the escalation to a new world war. The world will be safe only when the permanent members work together diplomatically to solve global crises, including the war in Ukraine and the rising tensions in East Asia. The UN Security Council provides the unique global venue for that peace-affirming work. More than ever, we need a healthy, functioning UN Security Council carrying out the mission assigned to it by the UN Charter.

A UN Security Council objective investigation of the Nord Stream terrorism, in which all countries contribute what they know, is important for the global confidence in this body and most importantly, for global peace and sustainable development.

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/jeffrey-sachs-testimony-at-un-security-council-on-the-nord-stream-pipeline-destruction/

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This a brief combat report from the battlefield here and abroad in the aftermath of the release last Wednesday of my story about Joe Biden’s decision to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines.

First, many thanks for your interest in what the pipeline story was all about: a very dangerous Presidential decision. You are careful readers.

I’m an old hand at dropping bombshell stories that are based on the disclosures of sources I do not, and cannot, name. There is a pattern to the response by the mainstream media. It dates back to my breakthrough story: the My Lai massacre revelation. That story was published in five installments, over five weeks in 1969, by the underground media group Dispatch News. I had tried to get the two most important magazines in America, Life and Look, to publish the story, with no success. Editors at both publications had earlier invited me to do some freelance writing for them, but they wanted nothing to do with a story about a massacre committed by American soldiers.

It was a frightening time for me, in terms of my faith in the profession I had chosen. I was allowed to read and copy by hand much of the Army’s original charge sheet accusing a sad sack 2nd Lieutenant named William L. Calley Jr. of the premeditated murder of 109 “Oriental” human beings. I also had tracked Calley, the Army’s only suspect, and interviewed him at a base in Georgia—he was tucked away—and gotten his assertion that he was merely doing what he was ordered to do. Given all this, I was more than a little rattled—make that terrified—by the failure of senior editors at prominent magazines to jump at a story that would get international attention, especially when those editors professed to deplore the war and want it to end.

READ MORE:

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-crap-on-the-wall

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Leaders from Poland, Norway and Denmark have attended a ceremony to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe, a key stage in the drive to wean Poland and Europe off Russian gas.

The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Norwegian shelf via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to Poland. It is the centrepiece of a Polish strategy to diversify away from Russia that began years before Moscow’s February invasion of Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis.

The flows from Norway along with supplies via liquefied gas terminals are central to Poland's plan. The country was cut off from Russian gas supplies in April, allegedly for refusing to pay in roubles.

"The era of Russian domination in the field of gas is coming to an end, the era that was marked by blackmail, threats and extortion," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at the inauguration at Budno in western Poland.

Norwegian Energy Minister Terje Aasland said it was "an important step on the important road to Europe's independence from Russian energy".

"We must do everything we can to eliminate energy as an instrument of Russian power," added Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. "Together we will defeat Putin." 

The inauguration came after Danish and Swedish authorities identified several gas leaks on the Russian-operated Nord Stream pipelines, prompting fears of sabotage.

The Danish system operator Energinet said at the weekend that the Baltic Pipe link could be commissioned at full capacity a month early thanks to good progress on work in Denmark. It brings the planned date forward to the end of November instead of 1 January.

Construction in Denmark had been suspended for nine months for environmental reasons but resumed last March.

"Due to an extraordinary effort on the part of everyone involved, we were able to lay the remaining pipelines faster than expected. Full commissioning can therefore take place ahead of time," said Torben Brabo, Energinet’s Director of International Relations.

https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-poland-gas-pipeline-opens-in-key-move-to-cut-dependency-on-russia

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BY Wyatt Reed

When NATO’s Twitter account uploaded a bizarre mishmash of movie references in an unsuccessful effort to reach Western audiences, the most popular reply read: “Russia should win for this tweet alone.”

NATO’s Twitter account was flooded with thousands of derisive replies on Thursday after the military alliance compared the situation in Ukraine to half a dozen fictional films.

“We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo,” the widely-mocked message insisted.

“We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.”

As of publication, the original Twitter post had already been viewed over 16 million times in less than 24 hours. But judging by the replies, social media users weren’t exactly impressed by the jumble of seemingly-random pop culture references.

“Russia should win for this tweet alone,” read one popular post that had quickly racked up nearly 16,000 likes – almost four times as many as the original message. “This is a real tweet from the official NATO account,” another incredulous user pointed out.

“We're being forced into a third World War by people who write tweets like this,” Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar mused.

pic.twitter.com/VgQX5bQYtp

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) February 23, 2023

Hundreds of other sarcastic replies mocked the aggressive transatlantic military alliance for being “cringe” or displaying “Reddit” behavior.

But a handful of users responded more seriously to the sheer absurdity of the situation, pointing out the propagandistic logic of the films being referenced by NATO.

“Those stories are all carefully written fiction designed to entertain audiences and generate billions of dollars in profit,” cartoonist George Alexopoulos noted, before asking NATO: “...What are you trying to say?”

It’s far from the military alliance’s first digital fiasco over the past year. Last March, NATO’s official Twitter page uploaded a photo of a female Ukrainian militant adorned with the Nazi ‘Sonnenrad’ to celebrate International Women's Day.

The photo was hastily deleted after outrage from users, with a spokesman for the organization reportedly saying that NATO didn’t notice the symbol before uploading the photo.

READ MORE:

https://sputniknews.com/20230224/nato-ruthlessly-mocked-for-comparing-russia-ukraine-conflict-to-fantasy-movies-1107756760.html

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