Vladimir Putin has steadily escalated his fighting war on Ukraine and his geopolitical war against the West. His military setbacks have never deterred him from adding to the murderous chaos of his illegal invasion. Currently he is mobilizing another 300,000 men to fight and die in Ukraine; some reports say more. He has disrupted the postwar global order — and he means to destroy it. He is seriously threatening the use of nuclear weapons against Russia's free, democratic neighbor. Tomorrow he'll sign unlawful documents for the formal annexation of four sovereign Ukrainian provinces.
And he has suddenly and deliberately attacked Western-held, NATO-"protected" infrastructure, two Nord Stream pipelines.
Although Russia's Gazprom is Nord Stream's largest shareholder, the energy firm is held by four other companies as well: Wintershall Dea AG (Germany), PEG Infrastruktur AG (a Zurich-based international consortium), Nederlandse Gasunie (the Netherlands) and ENGIE (France). In sabotaging the pipelines, Putin may have injured his own bottom line, but he also materially savaged Western infrastructure. His wanton act of demolition was no different from having guided a cruise missile into Gelsenkirchen, Germany's Scholven Power Station.
NATO has charged that Nord Stream's damage was the result of "deliberate, reckless and irresponsible acts of sabotage." Note the passive voice. NATO's statement excluded naming the known perpetrator behind the Baltic Sea attack on the West.
NATO did, however, boldly declare that "We, as Allies, have committed to prepare for, deter and defend against the coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and nonstate actors. Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response."
And there it stands, nothing more — except that NATO's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, did write on Twitter of his "deep concern" about the December 7th-like sudden and deliberate attack on Western assets by the clandestine forces of the Empire of Russia.
The Wall Street Journal reports that this "marks the first time the alliance has formally warned" — warned — "that it would deter and defend against attacks on its members’ critical infrastructure."
The Washington Post reports that Putin's attack "raised fears that the Russian leader is readying for a long hybrid conflict with NATO."
The West's military alliance has cast itself into infamy. Against the weakest yet most homicidal "strongman" on earth, the U.S. and its NATO allies have launched only warnings and sat fearfully. It seems that if Vladimir Putin did lob a cruise missile onto a German power plant the Allies would but issue more warnings and sit more fearfully against an international outlaw, mass executioner and most heinous military aggressor since Hitler and Hirohito of WW II.
Putin is at his most vulnerable. Huge antiwar protests are breaking out domestically, hundreds of thousands Russians are fleeing to avoid the draft, the dictator's hardliners are angry for his having been too soft on Ukraine, his top military advisers have come around to comprehending that he's a strategic buffoon, sanctions are strangling his once-technologically burgeoning economy and defense establishments, allies such as China are subtly backing away from their support — in short, he and his "empire" are weak, besieged, international and even national outcasts.
And yet the U.S. and NATO fear both him and his preparations for a long-running conflict. Historians of war and geopolitics will study this East-West dogpile and consign themselves to everlasting consternation.