Nord Stream Sabotage, Russia, & Connectivity Conflict
What an undersea pipeline says about 21st-Century conflict
Damage to the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea last month seized global attention. From the WSJ:
European authorities are investigating mysterious leaks on two currently closed Russian natural-gas pipelines to Germany, sparking concerns about the safety of critical energy infrastructure.
The leaks were detected after pressure in the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which connect Russia’s prolific gas fields to Germany’s industrial heartland, dropped suddenly Monday.
The incidents have no impact on Europe’s gas supply because both links aren’t currently in use. Germany halted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in February over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, while Moscow this month indefinitely stopped flows via Nord Stream. Experts, however, said the gas leaks could damage the climate.
The Nord Stream pipelines have been at the heart of an escalating economic war between Moscow and the West that has pushed gas prices to records and threatens to hobble European industry.
A total of four leaks—all located in international waters close to Bornholm Island—have been detected so far.
Source: Washington Post
In the immediate aftermath, NATO released a statement suggesting foul play and voicing support for the ongoing investigation into the origin of the leaks:
The damage to the Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 pipelines in international waters in the Baltic Sea is of deep concern. All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage. These leaks are causing risks to shipping and substantial environmental damage. We support the investigations underway to determine the origin of the damage.
I think there are four big takeaways from this still-unresolved mystery.
One: this was almost assuredly the result of deliberate human action undertaken for political reasons related to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. Naturally-occurring damage to undersea pipelines is a low-probability event. Given the level of risk, coordination, technical complexity, and sophisticated equipment required, it’s a safe bet this act of sabotage was carried out at the behest of a state actor.
As Jen Kirby writes for Vox:
One leak in a major pipeline is a singular event; another from a twin pipeline in an entirely different location is even more unprecedented. Add to that the fact that both of these pipelines are the source of geopolitical tension spilling over from the war in Ukraine, and it makes it very difficult to interpret this as an accident or coincidence. Oh, and in case you weren’t convinced, the Nord Stream leaks happened as officials inaugurated the Baltic Pipe, a new gas route from Norway to Poland.
Backing up that initial assessment, Sweden’s domestic security agency has subsequently stated that their preliminary investigation indicates the leaks resulted from “serious sabotage.”
Two: the pipeline attacks fit into a broader pattern of sabotage and disruption that’s played out across the West over the past month. To wit:
On October 8, damage to two fiber optics communication cables located roughly 550km apart promoted Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s state-owned railway operator, to halt service in Northern Germany for roughly three hours; throwing the country’s transportation infrastructure into a state of temporary chaos on account of what Transportation Minister Volker Wissing has labeled as a “malicious and targeted act.”
On October 10, per the Washington Post, “websites for a handful of U.S. airports, including those in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, were taken offline” due to a cyberattack likely carried out by “a group of pro-Russian hackers known as Killnet.”
On October 19, per the FT:
Norway’s prime minister has warned his country will take action against foreign intelligence agencies that fly drones over its critical infrastructure, including oil rigs and airports, after the arrest of seven Russians in possession of the aerial vehicles…
…Norway’s intelligence service said on Wednesday that it would take over the investigation of the increasing number of recent incidents involving drones. The announcement came on the same day the airport in Bergen, the country’s second-largest city, was shut down following reports of drones in the area.
It was also disclosed that Norwegian police on Monday arrested a 47-year-old Russian-British dual citizen in the city of Hammerfest accused of flying a drone over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The arrest came only days after six Russians were taken into custody in three separate incidents in Norway involving drones and unauthorised photographs of sensitive locations.
Three: attribution on the Nord Stream attacks remains unclear and it may take a while before we reach any clarity on that front. As Wired points out, the ongoing investigation “is likely to involve multiple steps, such as examining what data is held about the area, including seismic data and other sensors, checking whether any communications around the incident have been intercepted, and examining the pipelines to see if there are any signs of intentional destruction.”
That hasn’t stopped a flood of accusations, theories, and conspiracies from flying around. Unsurprisingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed—without evidence—that the US and its allies are to blame; a claim that’s been enthusiastically amplified by Russian and Chinese officials and media outlets. Across European capitals, the conclusion so far is, more or less, the polar opposite: a combination of motive, technical capabilities, track record of industrial sabotage, history of weaponizing European energy flows to serve geopolitical ends, and reliance on psychological warfare, makes Russia a more likely culprit.
Four: to reiterate, the effect on European gas supply is minimal. Nonetheless, I still view the developments in the Baltic Sea as ominous and consequential. For one, emissions experts have expressed concern that methane leakage could result in an environmental calamity although the extent of the damage remains to be seen. Setting ecological considerations aside, I see the confluence events over the last several weeks as yet more prominent examples of the shape of things to come: an emerging world (dis)order where the physical and digital infrastructure underpinning our age of hyper-connectivity increasingly falls victim to raging geopolitical conflict.
Russia & Modern Connectivity Conflict
Much as the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a major accelerant for the widespread adoption of remote work, hybrid work, and digital transformation processes across the private sector, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has served as a similarly massive accelerant for the major themes of Weaponized: deglobalization and connectivity conflict. To the extent this newsletter has an overarching “thesis,” it can be drawn from a report published back in 2016 by the European Council on Foreign Relations entitled Connectivity Wars.
As lead author Mark Leonard wrote at the time:
During the Cold War, the global economy mirrored the global order – only limited links existed across the Iron Curtain, and the embryonic internet was used only by the US government and universities. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a divided world living in the shadow of nuclear war gave way to a world of interconnection and interdependence. Some hailed the end of history. The world was largely united in pursuing the benefits of globalisation. There was talk of win-win development as Western multinationals made record profits and emerging 14 economies boomed. Trading, investment, communications, and other links between states mushroomed. And these interstate links have been amplified further by the ties between people powered by technology: by 2020, 80 percent of the planet’s population will have smartphones with the processing power of yesterday’s supercomputers. Almost all of humanity will be connected into a single network.
But, contrary to what many hoped and some believed, this burgeoning of connections between countries has not buried the tensions between them. The power struggles of the geopolitical era persist, but in a new form. In fact, the very things that connected the world are now being used as weapons – what brought us together is now driving us apart. Stopping short of nuclear war, and not prepared to lose access to the spoils of globalisation, states are instead trying to weaponise the global system itself by utilising the disruption of various links and connections as a weapon. Mutually Assured Disruption is the new MAD.
This strikes me as a perfect description of where we are today. While kinetic warfare unfolds on battlefields across Ukraine (with significant military assistance from NATO member countries), Moscow is simultaneously locked in a full-spectrum connectivity battle with the United States and its European allies. Rather than plunging into lethal open conflict between nuclear-armed rivals, Russia’s linkages to the global economy—built up over multiple decades in the aftermath of the Cold War—are now a central avenue through which the two sides seek to exploit, punish, and maneuver for advantage against one another against the backdrop of conventional fighting between Russian and Ukrainian combatants.
This method of “warfare” takes many forms: technology controls designed to hamstring Russia’s military prowess and technological development by blocking the sale of semiconductors, lasers, information-security equipment, and other strategic technologies; similar export controls targetting the sale of energy extraction equipment crucial to the modernization of the hydrocarbon sector; broadcasting suspensions for Russia state-owned media outlets across the European Union; a ban on Russian financial institutions accessing the global SWIFT network; financial and travel sanctions targeting prominent members of the Russian political and business elite; and, perhaps most controversially, full and partial bans on the sale of Russian hydrocarbons across the EU and the United States to deprive the Kremlin of a critical revenue source.
Nor is the current conflict playing out solely through state actors. Western multinationals—including iconic brands like Volkswagen, McDonald’s, Apple, BASF, and H&M—have either dramatically scaled back operations or exited the Russian market altogether. Research from Yale’s School of Management estimates over 1,000 global companies have voluntarily curtailed their operations since the outbreak of hostilities last winter, concluding: “as a result of the business retreat, Russia has lost companies representing ~40% of its GDP, reversing nearly all of three decades’ worth of foreign investment and buttressing unprecedented simultaneous capital and population flight in a mass exodus of Russia’s economic base.”
Price Pain, Psychological Pressure, & Putin’s Plan
Of course, the US and its allies are hardly alone in disrupting transnational flows to seek geopolitical advantage and mete out pain against rival actors. Russia, quite obviously lacking anything close to America’s level of comprehensive national power and centrality to the global trading system, has long understood the value of weaponized connectivity, mass-scale disruption, coordinated disinformation and propaganda campaigns, and holistic non-kinetic “warfare” strategies in service of shaping public opinion and advancing its geopolitical ambitions. As we’ve come to see again and again over the past decade, the Kremlin embraces a full toolkit of grey zone tactics to assert its will in the international arena.
Towards that end, Russia has, at various intervals during the conflict, withheld or cut off entirely the flow of oil and gas to portions of Europe, blocked off and mined virtually all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports while simultaneously bombing and burning portions of the country’s grain storage capacity, and restricted the export of key agro-fertilizers. Because we live in a deeply integrated global economy, the negative ripple effects (very specifically, the damage to Ukraine’s agricultural supply chain) have been profound: severe inflationary pressure around food and energy, chaos in international commodities markets, and a significant exacerbation of the global calorie security crisis—all of which has catalyzed a wave of political instability across many emerging markets.
All of this is a means to an end: breaking the will of the Ukrainian people, shifting the blame for spiking food and energy prices away from Kremlin actions, and turning global public opinion against the Ukrainian cause. Doing so necessitates not only the shaping of markets but also the shaping of minds. Layered on top of Russia’s direct actions vis-a-vis Ukraine has been a full-scale propaganda campaign specifically honed in on the developing world.
Per the State Department:
Russia’s government officials, Russian state-funded media, and Kremlin-aligned proxy disinformation actors are attempting to deflect attention from Russia’s responsibility for worsening global food insecurity by blaming sanctions, “the West,” and Ukraine. In fact, the Kremlin and its proxies’ massive disinformation campaign is heavily targeting the crisis’s most heavily impacted regions – the Middle East and Africa. These false narratives are amplified by Kremlin-controlled state outlets such as RT Arabic and RT en Francais , as well as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) state media .
It’s not at all clear how effective this is. Russia’s war effort is currently sputtering. The Kremlin is losing face, both at home and abroad (expert Mark Galeotti has an excellent thread summarizing the various “traps” the Russian president finds himself currently ensnared in here). Putin has responded—predictably—by doubling down on a high-risk strategy of escalation and nuclear provocation in hopes of instilling fear, hollowing out morale, breaking apart international solidarity, and, ultimately, coercing Kyiv, Washington, and assorted European capitals into accepting his revanchist territorial claims. By every indication, the conflict appears to be moving into a darker, more desperate phase—described by Russia’s defense minister as a period of “uncontrolled escalation” and punctuated by growing fears across Western capitals that the situation could go nuclear—as winter rapidly approaches.
This is where (I think) we are right now:
Per RAND Corporation’s Dara Massicot, writing in the NYT:
Mr. Putin seems to have two immediate goals: to sustain control of as much of the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions as he can (with Russia’s desired boundaries not yet defined); and to freeze the front line, establishing a frontier Ukrainian forces cannot broach, possibly sealed by a cease-fire. That would enable a more sustainable defense, as well as allow the military to rotate troops and regenerate its forces. Ukraine and its supporters, of course, have made it clear that neither of these conditions is acceptable. And as the Ukrainians’ continued headway in the south suggests, it’s far from clear that Russia will be able to attain either aim.
Layered on top of the unnerving level of nuclear brinksmanship has been a major tactical shift from the Kremlin. Of late, we’ve seen a drastic escalation in the volume of attacks on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure—particularly dams, ports, power stations, and central heating networks. It seems there’s a clear goal here: amplifying fear and demolishing Ukrainian morale as civilians risk losing access to heating and electricity just as temperatures begin dropping.
As Adam Tooze over at Chartbook notes, despite an impressive level of battlefield success and societal resiliency in the face of a truly existential threat, Ukraine is suffering mightily from the combination of a near-total collapse in GDP, rampant inflation, a severe devaluation of the national currency, and a massive depletion of the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
While the US and its European allies have maintained a high level of pro-Ukraine solidarity, Putin’s weaponization of oil and gas exports has magnified powerful inflationary pressures that are wreaking havoc across a broad range of European industries and threatening to push the continent into full recession. Surging fuel prices—and the massive public backlash they’ve engendered—present an all-encompassing governance challenge across European capitals; with few tools in the toolkit to quickly placate mounting public frustration. In the face of a winter energy crisis, newly installed governments in Berlin, Rome, and London—none particularly popular in the eyes of the general public—all risk mass-scale protests and hemorrhaged political capital.
I think that provides some critical context around the recent spate of sabotage. As Benjamin Jensen points out, Russian military doctrine has long seen the value in targetting civilian infrastructure—the physical and digital connections underpinning modern life—as a means of instilling fear and undermining confidence:
Cyber operations targeting infrastructure, cable cutting, GPS jamming and electronic attack are key parts of Russian military theory. In fact, Russian military doctrine specifically calls for strategic operations to destroy critical infrastructure, or SODCIT.
These operations select targets primarily for their psychological effect. The belief is that hitting key infrastructure and creating prolonged blackouts, alongside disruptions to the ability to travel and transport goods, make political leaders and the population less willing to resist an attacking force.
In the context of the recent string of sabotage “incidents” popping up around the West, Brooking’s scholar Constanze Stelzenmüller elaborates in a recent article for the FT:
Sabotage — another Chekist speciality — offers a far better benefit-to-cost ratio than nuclear weapons. Attacks on physical and digital infrastructure are hard to prevent and even harder to attribute. They undermine confidence in government and exploit the fissures and vulnerabilities of western societies. They permit an adversary to elude retribution and play for time. Expect more such incidents, perhaps many more.
Just as with the Kremlin’s alarming nuclear rhetoric (caveat: there are no imminent signs Moscow is on the precipice of using a tactical nuclear weapon and serious questions remain over the efficacy of such a dramatic act of escalation in the grand scheme of Russia’s war aims), I think this is primarily about creating a sense of pervasive sense of fear and insecurity—within Ukraine and further afield—against the backdrop of a global environment already defined by massive levels of uncertainty, distrust, polarization, and paranoia. It’s about exposing the vulnerabilities of the digital and physical infrastructure connecting us together and exacerbating divisions within and between open, democratic societies.
Ultimately, it’s about psychological pressure: creating a powerful sense of uncertainty and dread over energy supply and digital security while making clear your home government cannot effectively protect or provide for you. With Moscow facing setbacks on the battlefield and boiling anger on the homefront, Putin and co. are signaling that the pipelines, fiber optic cables, airports, rail links, power stations, and computer networks knitting us all closer together are fair game for cyberattack and sabotage. As Mark Galeotti writes: “we have become addicted to rapid and generous connectivity, from downloading films to voice-calling family. Any interruptions would bring home to already sometimes-wobbly Western electorates the dangers of long-term hostilities with Russia far better than another Putin diatribe.”
The various high-profile and costly disruptions to the flow of energy, information, food, and transportation stemming from the war over Ukraine are both an unfortunate side effect and the point entirely. When the physical and digital systems underpinning our hyper-connected age break down and destabilize, citizens risk losing faith in both their leaders and “the system” writ large; collapsing trust, stoking public anger, breaking social cohesiveness, weakening resolve, and, at least in certain cases, turning to populist political actors who may more favorably disposed towards Moscow’s point of view.
We already see this on full display here in America, where the country is heading into a democracy-testing midterm election in which consumer inflation is the single most salient issue for a large swath of voters. On that front, it’s been striking to see how different segments of the political spectrum—for which conversations around Russia are often more reflective of internal partisan divisions rather than a serious debate around foreign policy orientation—have viewed the conflict. What is particularly notable is the extent to which a large swath of the Trumpist far-right—having already enthusiastically rallied around Putin’s reactionary strongman aesthetic, disdain for liberal cosmopolitan values, and extreme antipathy toward Democratic political officials—have settled on radically different narratives regarding support for Ukraine, Putin, and the likely culprit behind the Nord Stream sabotage. Regardless of the midterm outcome, there are indications the (mostly) bipartisan congressional consensus around Ukraine is beginning to fray.
No matter how the Ukraine situation ultimately resolves itself, 2022 will go down as the year we definitively crossed the Rubicon vis-a-vis both China and Russia. With great power competition and ideological hostilities dramatically returning to the foreground of the international system, the complex and interlocking array of technologies, networks, laws, and infrastructure undergirding the age of globalization are now the front lines of 21st-century conflict.