Briefly Noted: Munich Security Conference, Sabotage Update

This morning I listened to the the two Alexes at The Duran talking about the Munich Security Conference. The MSC is an annual event at which the people who run the world get together and tell the people who don’t run the world how the world is going to be run, from a “security” standpoint. That’s why people like George Soros are featured speakers.

Alex Mercouris was contrasting the mood at last year’s event, MSC 2022, to the mood this year. Last year, just before the start of the collective West’s war on Russia—as I’ve heard Mercouris describe the event several times previously—the mood was euphoric. Finally the stick in the mud “realists” were out of power in DC and the Neocons would bring us the War we’ve been planning for! Sanctions “shock and awe” would bring Russia to its knees in a matter of weeks and Putin would be deposed—maybe put on trial, as an example to the rest of the world of what would happen to anyone who dared cross the Neocon West.

Then the real fun would start. Russia would be dismembered and and the collective West would loot the former Russia for its resources. Then it would be on to China, bringing China to heel.

By contrast, says Mercouris, MSC 2023 is a somber affair. There’s an undercurrent of disunity and even of desperation in many quarters. Just weeks ago there was a brief outburst of the old euphoric mood—the West would send main battle tanks, fighter jets, all kinds of stuff to Ukraine. All that has faded away. The grand promises have dwindled to a pathetic handful of largely obsolete equipment—at best and most.

One newsmaker at Munich this year, so far, has been “Turtle” McConnell, who told participants from US vassal states to pay no attention to public opinion. Instead, he said, pay attention to the oligarchs, the rulers:

“My party’s leaders overwhelmingly support a strong, involved America and a robust trans-Atlantic alliance. Don’t look at Twitter, look at people in power. Look at me and Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Look at the top Republicans on the Senate and House committees that handle Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Appropriations, and Intelligence. Look at the former Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, and Director of National Intelligence from the previous Republican Administration.

“Republican leaders are committed to a strong trans-Atlantic alliance. We are committed to helping Ukraine. Not because of vague moral arguments or abstractions like the so-called ‘rules-based international order.’ But rather, because America’s own core national interests are at stake. Because our security is interlinked and our economies are intertwined.

“Popular support for a strong and involved NATO alliance will only be sustained if leaders across the alliance explain clearly and concretely to their own citizens how their nation’s peace and prosperity hangs in the balance.

Turtle left a lot unexplained.

How are “the top Republicans on the Senate” in power? How are “former” cabinet members “people in power”? What does Ukraine have to do with NATO? And beyond corrupt payoffs to US politicians—and the Ukrainian titanium we need for our military—how is the US economy intertwined with Ukraine’s? Yes, I realize Turtle was talking about the US economy being intertwined with its vassals’ economies—but he doesn’t explain how Ukraine enters into that. He claims that Republican war mongers are making the case for war to the public every day, but maybe that’s the problem. Support keeps slipping—could it be that the American people are unimpressed with case?

So that’s Munich. On to sabotage.

There has been a flurry of attempts to discredit Sy Hersh’s expose of the US terror attack on the Nordstream pipeline. Some of the attacks come from predictable Neocon war mongering sources, others—like Tom Luongo’s attempt at debunking—come from a different direction.

Luongo and Alex Krainer have advanced what could be characterized as a more or less orthodox Larouche approach: The Brits did it, just like they’ve done everything else. No, I’m not making fun of that theory. I certainly witnessed in the past the willingness of Americans in the Intel Community to play junior partners to their UK counterparts. I would never undersell British influence in US Deep State policy. I assume the Brits were either actually involved in the Nordstream sabotage or, as Alex Mercouris maintains, were wannabes yapping at the fringes—citing Liz Truss’ text to Blinken: “It is done.” Luongo, on the other hand, says it’s time to stop blaming the USA as if it were the Great Satan. He maintains that the Brits and the Poles did it—with a little logistical help from their friends in DC.

Here’s the problem with that. By admitting that the US would have provided logistical support to the operation, Luongo and Krainer are actually saying that, yes, the US did it. It’s a bit like felony murder: except the murder is the destruction of the civilian infrastructure:

… when someone is killed … in the commission of a dangerous … crime … the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.

The concept of felony murder originates in the rule of transferred intent, which is older than the limit of legal memory. In its original form, the malicious intent inherent in the commission of any crime, however trivial, was considered to apply to any consequences of that crime regardless of intent.

If the US provided logistical support then the US was a participant in the crime—as surely as if they had provided a gun or a getaway car to a bank robber.

There’s another problem with this scenario. We know from Hersh that CIA lawyers were concerned that the terror attack on the pipeline constituted an offensive act of war—offensive, because the US was not formally at war with Russia and had not been attacked by Russia. Yesterday I listened to Andrei Martyanov talking with Ania K, a Polish Youtuber. Martyanov made the excellent point—in a different context—that any NATO country that commits an offensive act of war against any other country on its own initiative is not covered by Article Five of the NATO treaty. NATO is a defensive pact, not a cover for offensive wars, either as a group or by individual members. Of course it’s perfectly true that since the end of the Cold War NATO (or most of NATO) has, de facto, engaged in quite a few offensive wars. But that doesn’t change the principle. Further, the only reason NATO countries have done this—have engaged in offensive warfare around the world and gotten away with it—is because they were led by the US. And that’s the point.

The only country in the world that is able to get away with committing an act of war—even covertly—against Russia is the US. Poland can’t get away with that, and neither can the UK. Not unless they’re in league with the US. That’s why whatever NATO countries may have participated in the Nordstream sabotage—Norway, the UK, Poland, Denmark, whoever—they would never have done so but for US participation and, I’m morally certain, leadership. Period. All speculation begins and ends with these facts.

Now, in the course of the Luongo - Krainer podcast, Alex Krainer made an interesting point that is relevant to the issue of possible NATO sabotage acts inside Russia. As we discussed the other day, Jack Murphy claims a variety of mysterious infrastructure explosions that have occurred in Russia since the outbreak of war were, in fact, acts of sabotage committed by “sleep cells” run by an unidentified NATO country under the direction of the CIA. Krainer was speaking about the Nordstream terror attack, and in that context he pointed out the UK and Poland entered into a tripartite pact with Ukraine just before Russia launched its Special Military Operation: British–Polish–Ukrainian trilateral pact. Please note: This pact is totally outside NATO. Also, Krainer maintains that this pact was actually an update of an original British - Polish pact that was put into place in 2017, but I can’t confirm that.

The ostensible purpose of this “Little Entente” pact was to

improve cyber security, increase energy security, and counter disinformation.

The actual purpose, according to many analysts, was a bit different:

Expert Oleksandr Kraiev [Ukraine based] emphasised that such an alliance is part of Britain's strategy to restore influence in the world and the region after Brexit. "Of course, these are Britain's political ambitions," he said. In addition, three countries are actively opposing the Russian threat. On the other hand, Krayev said, the three countries "have questions" and some claims to Brussels - that is, to the EU. In NATO, not all countries are ready to resolutely oppose the Russian threat, so Britain continues the tactics of small alliances to work more effectively in Eastern Europe:

"The trilateral partnership can become a new 'Little Entente', a grouping created by a number of Central and Eastern European countries in the early 20th century that shared the goals of the Triple Entente"

— Oleksandr Kraiev

Whether or not Britain and Poland participated in the Nordstream sabotage isn’t the issue here—I assume that they did, but that’s not where I’m going. What I want to suggest is what I suggested in discussing Jack Murphy’s claims, which is: If the CIA did cooperate with one or more other NATO countries to place “sleeper cells” inside Russia to conduct sabotage in the event of the much anticipated war on Russia, Britain and Poland would be the top candidates (for the reasons given). Certainly MI6 (as well as the CIA and other intel services, including Israel and Turkey) has been active in the various ‘stans and other countries on the periphery of the Russian Federation. All of this, plus the British–Polish–Ukrainian trilateral pact, are at least indicators of that Polish - British involvement. If that’s what’s going on.

Finally, another indicator of British involvement in covert ops in Russia is the assassination of Daria Dugina. The Ukrainian assassins fled Russia to Estonia, where they easily crossed the border into a country that is extremely hostile to Russia. The fact is, however, that Estonia’s security and military affairs are run by the UK, through MI6. The Dugina assassination is different from sabotage by long term “sleeper cells,” but it does confirm MI6 involvement in covert ops inside Russia. Just something to keep in mind.