From burning ships to burning pipelines

Although the seriousness of the issue has been taken lightly in Turkiye so far, the international community is talking about the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea on Monday morning. The mere possibility of such an attack has the potential to deepen the energy crisis the world is going through. The statements made so far emphasize that this attack was not a terrorist act but "an act of the state".

Whoever this state is, it may also use this offensive capability against undersea energy lines in different parts of the world in the near future. The environmental aspects of the attack in the Baltic Sea and its implications for global climate change are one aspect of the issue. But it seems that someone has accumulated the experience and technology to render the pipeline on the seabed unusable. The US and Russia are now on the list as the usual suspects. Their technological capabilities and the strategic importance they attach to energy lines put them in the top two of the list of suspects.

The commissioning of Nord Stream 2 has been a bone of contention between the US and Germany for years. The war, triggered by Russia's invasion attempt on February 24th, gave the US its wish. Nord Stream 2 was shut down on the eve of its commissioning, and the companies that built it have declared bankruptcy. Not only that, Russia gave the US more than it asked for and with the closure of Nord Stream 1, the US became Europe's largest gas supplier. Europe, which needs 400 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year, currently imports 45 percent of its liquefied natural gas from the US.

The fate of Nord Stream was decided on February 7, 2022

Now let's go back to February 7, 2022. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz makes his first visit to the US capital Washington D.C. and he is received at the White House by US President Biden. At the press conference held after the meeting, Biden says in response to a question that "they will definitely prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from coming online." The war is still 17 days away. When the reporter who asked the first question asks,

and wants to know the path the US will follow, Biden says with a wry smile,

So can we say that the explosions of September 26th were predicted on February 7th?

So why blow up pipelines that are not operational in the first place?

When Tariq Bin Ziyad, the famous commander of the Al-Andalus, landed on the shores of Spain with his army in 711, his first act was to have the ships carrying his soldiers burned. Then he addressed his soldiers and said, "Behind you is the sea like an enemy, before you is the enemy like the sea. Whither would you flee? By Allah, you are now left only with your patience and perseverance. Your enemy has plenty of weapons, equipment and provisions. You have only your swords as weapons and what you can get from the hands of the enemy as provisions." He led his army against the Visigoths and started the Islamic rule that would last for 7 centuries in the lands of Spain. Now you may ask how we got here. To look closely at the timing of this sabotage and understand its purpose.  

It is known that the Ukraine-Russia war fundamentally changed the European Union's energy policy. In order to reduce dependence on Russian coal, oil and natural gas, the leaders of the European Union and the European countries have started knocking on the doors of countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus. Action has been taken to restart the nuclear reactors to be decommissioned, and planning has begun for the construction of new reactors. But all these efforts were not enough to ensure Europe's energy security at least before 2025. On September 24, just two days before the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz travelled to Saudi Arabia to negotiate energy supplies.

In September, it was reported that Scholz and French President Macron would take initiative to ensure peace while continuing to search for resources to ensure the energy security of their countries. The leaders of France and Germany were allegedly planning to visit the People's Republic of China ahead of the G-20 Summit in Indonesia on November 15-16. As Turkiye has been pointing out almost since the beginning of the war, there were countries that wanted the Ukraine-Russia War to continue, Russia to collapse not only militarily but also socio-economically, and the government in Moscow to change. Were Scholz and Macron trying to form a "Peace Coalition" in Beijing, taking Xi with them?

Let us now return to the lesson Tariq Bin Ziyad taught us. With the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, there is no longer any physical possibility for Europe to establish peace with Russia and obtain gas from that country as soon as possible. There is now only one way out for countries that want to ensure energy security through peace. To give Ukraine more support so that this war can be completed in a "desirable" way. In other words, if Europe wants to buy coal, oil and gas from Russia again in a cost-effective way, it must not only win the war, but also work for the establishment of a "friendly government" in Moscow. And what could happen if Germany and France did not support the war willingly enough? Probably due to various disruptions (!) in refineries, filling facilities and ships, there will also be problems with the liquefied natural gas coming from the US. What choice does Germany, now that its ships, its pipelines, are burnt, have but to help those who want to seize what Russia has?

So let's look for the answer to the most crucial question: On the list of usual suspects, who is the most likely one?

The USA is the most likely suspect: It has experience and success

The average depth of the Baltic Sea, where the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged, is 54 meters. The deepest points go down to 459 meters. In this sense, compared to the Mediterranean Sea (average depth of 1,500 meters), the Baltic Sea can be considered a shallow sea. The average sea depth around Bornholm Island, where the pipelines were blown up, is 92 meters. Today, military submarines can dive up to 450 meters. But there is more to it than just diving. There is also a need for technology and human resources to carry out a sabotage operation at that depth.

While we accept that Russia theoretically possesses these technologies, past experience makes us sceptical that a navy incapable of rescuing even the crew of its sinking submarines has the capability to accomplish these tasks. For the US, however, the situation is different.

Since the Cold War, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the United States Navy have had a strong interest in operating on the seabed, and successful operations have been triggered by this interest. If we take two examples from these operations, it will become clear that such an operation in an area like the Baltic Sea is not a complicated matter for the United States.

Operation Ivy Bells

The year is 1971. The US government received information that there are Soviet naval communications cables under the Sea of Okhotsk between the Soviet mainland and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the easternmost part of the Soviet Union. These cables provided communication between the Soviet naval base Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula and the naval headquarters in Vladivostok on the mainland. The Sea of Okhotsk was the territorial waters of the USSR, but the US was in dire need of information on Soviet submarine technology. The US Navy sent the USS Halibut submarine to the region. A "deep sea rescue vehicle" was also added to the USS Halibut's hull.

The divers carried by this mini-submarine find the point where the communication cable passes at a depth of 120 meters and attach a 6-meter-long listening system to it. The Americans also supported their activities in the region with a deception. They spread the word that they are there to search for the wreckage of an SS-N-12 supersonic anti-ship missile launched by the Soviet navy. They even managed to capture the wreckage of this missile. On the other hand, the work of listening to the communication cable proceeded successfully. American divers visited the site every month to renew their recording equipment. Meanwhile, they also realised this: The Soviets were so confident in the security of the cables that they didn’t feel the need to encrypt their communications at all. 

The unexpected success of the operation prompted American intelligence to equip Soviet underwater communication cables detected in other parts of the world with listening devices. By 1981, US intelligence had full knowledge on Soviet nuclear submarines. Until Ronald Pelton, a former employee of the US National Security Agency, provided information to the Soviets. In 1981, American satellites detected a group of Soviet naval vessels in the Sea of Okhotsk, and when American divers subsequently went down to the area to locate the listening device, it was no longer there. The operation had been compromised. Pelton sold information about Operation Ivy Bells for only 5 thousand dollars. It was not until 1985 that the Americans learned that Pelton had sold this information to the USSR. The defection of Pelton's contact at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko, was the final twist in this story.

The operation that fooled the USSR: Project Azorian

We're back in the Pacific Ocean. The K-129 submarine of the Soviet Pacific Navy, powered by diesel-electric engines and carrying ballistic missiles, was lost during a voyage in March 1968. The submarine with 83 crew members was unaccounted for, and even worse, the Soviet navy was unable to locate where their submarine had disappeared. The US Navy, noticing the intense Soviet naval activity in the region, began to investigate the situation. Records from the US Navy's sonar and seismic scanning systems shows two explosions northwest of Pearl Harbour on March 8 and 11, 1968. The Americans realised that there were hundreds of nautical miles between the site of the explosions, where they guessed the K-129 submarine had sunk, and the area where the Soviet navy was searching, and they stayed away from the wreckage area they guessed so as not to alert the Soviets. At this point, the USS Halibut submarine, the hero of our previous story, came on the scene and on August 20, 1968, it discovered the wreckage of the Soviet submarine at a depth of 4,900 meters in the ocean. Two Soviet ballistic missile warheads, apparently launched from the submarine, were seen at a depth of 6,000 meters. 

The US administration had the opportunity to acquire an SS-N-5 Serb nuclear missile without the Soviets noticing at all. And how would they get the missile and the wreckage of the submarine out without arousing suspicion? Then US President Nixon approved "Project Azorian", which resembled a Jules Verne novel, and work began. The CIA, was engaged in construction of ships for this operation. Launched in 1972, the USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer, the largest subsea drilling and research vessel of the period, was built for 350 million dollars. It should be mentioned that if we want to build this ship under today's conditions, the cost would be close to 2 billion dollars. The US administration had waited patiently for four years for the ship to be built. The ship was commissioned in 1973 and arrived at the site of the wreck of the K-129 submarine in the summer of 1974. The Americans disguised the operation as a seabed mining operation to avoid attracting Soviet attention and ended up with a significant portion of the submarine wreckage and nuclear missiles. The American side had neither admitted nor denied that they also obtained access to Soviet naval codebooks, code machines and other sensitive information. The operation was first announced to the world through the Los Angeles Times in February 1975. During the investigations, the Americans also found the bodies of 6 Soviet sailors who died as a result of radioactive contamination. The bodies of the sailors were returned to the sea in September 1974 during a special ceremony in southwest Hawaii. Footage of this ceremony was handed over to the counterparts of then CIA director Robert Gates during his visit to Moscow in 1992.

It is possible that Russia may have accumulated the technology and experience required for subsea operations of this scale (although it is hard to imagine given the military situation in the Ukrainian theatre. But the currently available information still compels us to consider the US as the most likely suspect.

The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines also points to the importance of the “Blue Homeland” concept that Turkiye has been insistently emphasizing since 2019. We must consider that not only the surface but also the depths of the seas are now areas that need to be approached more carefully in terms of energy and communication security.