Blasts prove 'economic war' on allies in Europe

STOCKHOLM — The United States Navy's alleged involvement in the Nord Stream pipelines explosions last year, as discovered by journalist Seymour Hersh, may signal an "economic war" between the US and its submissive allies in Europe, a Swedish expert has said.

"Nord Stream (was) of course blown up by the United States and its NATO allies," Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, said in a recent interview.

Hersh said US Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized midsummer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives last June in cooperation with Norway, destroying three of the four Nord Stream pipelines three months later.

Nord Stream comprises a pair of offshore natural gas pipelines, each made up of two pipes running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. The four approximately 1,200-kilometer-long pipes collectively funnel about 110 billion cubic meters per year of natural gas.

"Seymour Hersh's fine analysis shows how the destruction was planned and done, but the conclusion is unsurprising: The US, with very important Norwegian assistance, committed the crime against a friendly, allied country, Germany, and other European countries," Oberg said.

"Together with ill-considered, never-ending economic curbs against Russia, the blowing-up of Nord Stream by the US has already caused enormous, accumulating harm to European citizens' economy."

Following Hersh's coverage, Russia, which had repeated its calls for an international probe into the incident but was excluded by the West from such efforts, accused European countries of trying to hide the investigation results and covering up who was to blame.

Oberg said: "Militarism has become the religion that keeps the declining West together, with NATO (as) its church. That's also why the Western mainstream media won't give Hersh's sensational analysis the attention it deserves. One must wonder when the Europeans will wake up and finally understand that they no longer share interests with the US."

Xinhua