I am sure that conspiracy theories will proliferate over the weeks and months ahead, but let us not lose sight of the fact that the energy crises is entirely home grown. If you behave stupidly then other players will take advantage of the situation that you have created. Big deal – Who’d have thunk it?

Alarm bells rang for me in February this year when the US almost entirely ignored the call to return to discussion of the Minsk accords by Europen leaders including Macron who declared ‘Les accords de Minsk sont la meilleure chance de protection de l’Ukraine’. No doubt many Amercians have never heard of them since America had no official role. Perhaps US hawks did not perceive respect of the agreement to be in US interest. Neither side resepcted them of course. The world would be in a very different place today if they had respected them

Which country invaded its neighbour an independent sovereign state? Had Russia not invaded Ukraine there would have been no “economic collapse” in Germany. The be all and end all of this is Germany is now experiencing the consequences of its decisions to rely on Russia for its energy. If you jump into bed with an untamed and psychotic bear expect to be mauled sooner rather than later. The USA warned of the dangers of the arrangement so blaming the USA for the consequences of what has happened is far fetched. Germany is reaping what it sowed.

Why the surprise? The Syrian Civil War is being fought in order to either build or stop the building of a gas pipeline through Syria.

I suppose this is all very plausible, at least in theory. But the unspoken and most fundamental assumption of this article seems to be that there is a coherent and well organized, behind the scenes pool of intelligence capable of taking significant covert action with far reaching consequences in some sort of long game, global chess match. If you have spent even 5 minutes considering the bumbling, dithering, inactions of the current US president, vice president, and cabinet, you cannot help but see the ridiculousness of such an assumption. The theory may make sense, but this administration is totally incapable of coming up with it and then pulling it off.

All this speculation is likely to remain just that for the foreseeable future. What we know is that someone set off explosives at the bottom of the ocean. Explosives are accessible to everyone and it happened in a part of the sea that is also accessible to most everyone. The sheer size of the blast and the lack of anyone claiming responsibility suggests this was the covert act of a government rather than terrorism or someone’s idea of a political statement. The two obvious culprits are the ones currently involved in a proxy war in Ukraine, the USA and Russia. They both have the means, the motive, and the opportunity. Almost everyone else lacks one of the first two. Both the US and Russia have plausible reasons for sabotaging the pipeline and can reasonably assign blame to the other side with the knowledge that the true culprit is unlikely to ever be known. . The American opposition to the Nordstream pipelines has been vocal and well documented. The Russian reasons are less obvious. If they are behind it, the likely message they are sending is to their domestic population that there will be, and can be no reconciliation with the west, even if Putin is overthrown, or to put it another way, the Russians are using the scorched earth tactics that they themselves made famous, destroying their own assets just to prevent enemies from having them.

All right, let’s assume the Americans did do it (and that is far from proven). So what? Are we to think, “How terrible! Allies are not supposed to treat each other like that!”?
Want to bet?
Shortly after the fall of France in 1940, the British discovered they had a problem. Hitler could get his hands on the French fleet, and use it to invade Britain. So the British pre-empted that, by attacking the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, in North Africa. Hundreds of French sailors died, but it removed a clear and present danger for the British. It was ruthless, but effective.
International relations is a cold-hearted business, where national interest is all that matters. Under the circumstances, the Germans have got away lightly. So (if the Americans did it – big if), then the moral of the story is, next time, take a gentle hint from Washington seriously.

“Is Germany just a collateral victim of the United States’ proxy war against Russia? Or could Germany have been a target of economic warfare itself?”
Oh good lord. If the war in Ukraine is a “proxy war” then so was the Second World War until December 11th 1941, given USA was sending UK weapons whilst still neutral. And the notion this war started as a cunning USA ploy to screw Russia is ludicrous, given the near universal assumption Kyiv would fall in the first week. USA has been playing catch-up (which it has now pretty much done) rather than manipulating events.
USA has zero interest in dis-aggrandising Germany, given successive German governments have managed the astonishing feat of being Europe’s largest economy whilst at the same time being a geopolitical irrelevance. Certainly Trump’s well founded warnings to Berlin about its insane suicidal energy policies and lack of military spending were not founded on fear of an assertive Germany, but rather exasperation they not taking their own security and geopolitical potential seriously. This war was close to inevitable & entirely foreseeable, given Putin’s oft stated views. The Russkiy Mir ideology is now widely entrenched as Russia’s mainstream worldview. None of that was a secret to anyone who follows Russian think tanks or even just reads Russian focused RIA Novosti rather than foreign useful-idiot focused RT (Russia Today). It was never about NATO expansion (RT narrative), it was always about Russian expansion (Russkiy Mir narrative).
A great many in the halls of power in USA would be *delighted* if Europe was not dependent on US military backup at a time when the real geopolitical threat to USA is China. If Germany, along with France & Italy, can’t see how it is in their interests for EUROPE to not allow Russia to once again share a border with Slovakia & Romania (Moldova would hardly be a speed bump), it is hardly surprising Polish & Baltic (let along Ukrainian) politicians keep turning to the “Anglo-Saxons”. That London is more influential than Berlin in Eastern Europe is a pretty damning indictment of where Germany finds itself.
If anyone in Washington DC has it in for Germany, it’s because they refuse to be Europe’s lynchpin rather than its weak spot. Yet after the political fiasco of the last half year, you have Poland planning on going for a mix of US and South Korean rather than German weapons as it rearms, because Berlin is seen as an unreliable partner.