Seymour Hersh’s latest revelation: Why is German Chancellor Scholz covering up the destruction of Nord Stream by the US?
The World Socialist Web Site At the beginning of March, he described the meeting between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden as a war summit. “There is no escaping the conclusion that the purpose of the summit was to review and obtain with Scholz his expressly signed consent to a massive escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia,” we wrote in a comment . This assessment was undoubtedly correct. Since the meeting, the NATO powers have been pushing the war offensive ever more aggressively.
But the meeting had another, uncanny component. US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Wednesday that Scholz and Biden also covered up the background to the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022.
Hersh revealed in an explosive report in February that the US government was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which it had systematically planned and implemented. A few days after the Biden-Scholz summit, leading German and American media reported, citing secret services, that a “pro-Ukrainian group” had destroyed the pipelines. The attack was carried out by six people from a yacht chartered by a company owned by Ukrainian businessmen.
The narrative that the operation was conducted independently of the US and other powers was implausible from the start. “It is ridiculous to think that Ukrainians operating out of Germany could, without the knowledge of the Ukrainian government, Germany or the United States, carry out a massive, highly complex and international underwater terrorist attack, simultaneously destroying four different pipelines,” the WSWS wrote .
Hersh explained in a post titled “The Cover-up” that American and German intelligence agencies released the story to refute his own detailed account blaming Biden and the American government for the Nord Stream attacks. This is exactly what happened at the closed meeting between Biden and Scholz. Hersch writes:
“Since then, no statements or written agreements have been released by either government, but I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion about the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to be in Working with German intelligence agencies to create a cover story that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version of the Nord Stream 2 destruction. According to the secret services, the agency should “pulse the system”. an attempt to refute claims that Biden ordered the pipelines to be destroyed.”
Hersh does not disclose his source, and it is not possible to independently verify his account. However, Hersh is a renowned investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, and his previous revelations and reports – including exposing the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War – have always been corroborated in hindsight.
If Hersh’s report is true, the federal government not only knows that the US carried out the attack, but is also actively involved in its cover-up. And this despite the fact that the destruction of the pipelines was actually an act of terrorism against the German-European infrastructure and is associated with massive economic damage. Nord Stream could have supplied Germany and Western Europe with relatively cheap Russian gas in the long term. The construction costs of the pipelines alone amounted to around 20 billion euros.
It is obvious that the US attack aimed to make Europe more dependent on US natural gas imports and more under US control. In his recent article, Hersh points out that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines has led to a massive spike in natural gas prices. While they have fallen somewhat due to the mild winter, they are still “two to three times pre-crisis levels” and “more than three times current US prices”.
How can it be explained that Scholz, the German secret services and a large part of the media are still working feverishly to cover up the background to the attack? Why do they ignore Hersh’s latest report and launch a smear campaign against the famous journalist by writing about him? Behind it are deeply reactionary political goals and interests.
For one thing, Germany is now playing a leading role in the NATO war. After initial hesitation, the German government is one of the largest arms suppliers in Ukraine and is preparing to deliver hundreds of Marder and Leopard 1 and 2 tanks. “We deliver more than any other country in continental Europe,” Scholz boasted recently in his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
Berlin supports Washington’s war goal of defeating Russia militarily and installing a pro-Western puppet regime in Moscow. After the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant against the Russian President last week, the German government immediately declared its willingness to implement it. “We are obliged to arrest President Putin when he enters German territory and hand him over to the ICC,” said Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann.
It is clear that a disagreement with Washington would seriously weaken NATO’s war offensive. Behind the scenes, however, knives have long since been sharpened and tensions between the imperialist powers are exploding. German war aims go far beyond Ukraine and Russia. After two lost world wars, the ruling class is using the war in Ukraine to rearm itself as the leading European military power and to aggressively enter the fight for the redivision of the world. This will ultimately lead to open conflict with the US – for which German imperialism is not yet prepared.
Another no less explosive reason for the cover-up is the growing resistance of the population to the imperialist war policy. The US attack on the pipelines debunks the official propaganda that NATO is an alliance of democratic states fighting for freedom and human rights in Ukraine and around the world. In reality, these are predatory imperialist interests pursued using methods of terror and destruction.
In the past three decades, the US-led imperialist powers in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria), Central Asia (Afghanistan), North Africa (Libya) and also in Europe (Serbia) have destroyed entire countries and killed millions of people. Now they are waging war against the nuclear power Russia, preparing for a war against China and increasingly fighting each other – if necessary with the same military means.
“The demolition of the Nord Stream pipelines confirms that the US will stop at nothing in pursuing its imperialist goals,” the WSWS warned. “But their partners and competitors in Germany are in no way inferior to them. With the revival of German militarism, they are increasingly following in the footsteps of the Wehrmacht and the Nazis, who committed the worst crimes in human history.
Hersh’s revelations are also a warning in this regard. As in the past, imperialist warmongering is leading to disaster on both sides of the Atlantic. It can only be stopped by building a powerful anti-war movement of the international working class, combining the struggle against war with the struggle against its root, capitalism. This is what the Socialist Equality Party and its sister parties of the Fourth International are fighting for in the United States and around the world.