A new report accuses the White House of using Navy frogmen to knock out Russian gas pipelines to Europe, clinching German tanks for Ukraine

(Originally published Feb. 9 in “What in the World“) Is the fact that German tanks will soon roll across Ukraine for the first time since Operation Barbarossa in 1941 all thanks to a daring covert plot hatched by a U.S. President born in Scranton, Pennsylvania during the Battle of Stalingrad?

That Berlin is this month approving the shipment of hundreds of Rheinmetall’s Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine next month to help drive out Russian invaders is in part thanks to the sabotage last September of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany.

Destroying the pipelines eliminated what remaining economic leverage Moscow had to prevent Berlin from throwing its full weight behind NATO’s support of Ukraine. Before that, Germany had been accused of dragging its feet on promised aid to Kyiv, and it was clear that Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to heat its houses and fuel its industry was a factor. Though Nord Stream 2 was still under construction, Russia had already cut off gas through Nord Stream 1 when the pipelines were sabotaged with four explosions.

It seemed plausible that Poland might have had both motive and opportunity to undertake the sabotage. Poland has been staunch in its support of Ukraine and its calls for NATO to take a stronger stance against Russian aggression. But investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, accuses the Administration of U.S. President Joe Biden in a new newsletter of orchestrating the Nord Stream sabotage.

Citing a single unnamed source for a plot worthy of a spy thriller, Hersh describes in detail how Biden allegedly directed the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Navy, with cooperation from Norway, to covertly plant remotely detonated explosive charges around the pipelines off the Danish island of Bornholm months before they were used to knock out the pipelines.

The mere accusation that Washington may have secretly engineered the destruction of such valuable economic assets is likely to embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin and strengthen China’s support for his anti-American cause. Iran and North Korea need no further emboldening. North Korea just held a parade at which it displayed a record number of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

It’s also, unfortunately, likely to embolden Republicans in Congress seeking to curtail U.S. spending by threatening to force the U.S. government into default—even though it was members of their own party that have led American opposition to Nord Stream 2 all along.

Even if Republicans don’t remember the past, the historical irony won’t be lost on Putin. Putin has long feared that NATO is slowly re-enacting Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 across the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine. That invasion was ultimately turned back at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943.

Biden was born as that battle raged. He graduated from high school in 1961, the year U.S. President John F. Kennedy approved the ultimately disastrous CIA plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and overthrow Fidel Castro. The Bay of Pigs fiasco set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It’s unclear, however, how Hersh’s story might influence Biden’s rapid escalation of military aid to Ukraine. Having gradually relented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests for howitzers, then precision missile launchers, then anti-missile systems, and now battle tanks, it seems just a matter of time before he caves on sending Ukraine F-16 fighter jets.

To help persuade Biden, Zelensky embarked on a surprise trip this week to European capitals. In London, he asked Britain for fighter jets and received an assurance from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that “nothing is off the table.” Zelensky then flew to Paris, where he conveyed his request for fighters to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. He’s next off to Brussels to make the same request to the European Union.

If the U.K. and Europe promise Typhoon fighters to Zelensky, F-16s will likely be flying closely behind. Biden has shown a reluctance to be one-upped in support of Ukraine. When France pledged armored personnel carriers to Kyiv, Biden matched with Bradley Fighting Vehicles. And it was after the UK promised to send Challenger 2 battle tanks to Ukraine that Biden lifted his long refusal to send M1 Abrams tanks—a condition Germany had also imposed for approving shipments of its Leopards.

The tanks and jets won’t arrive soon enough to fend off what Ukraine has warned is a new Russian offensive. But they could be vital in maintaining the upper hand and keeping Russian forces from capitalizing on the lessons they’ve learned from their catastrophic failures on the battlefield so far.

To what extent these tit-for-tat giftings of weaponry are coordinated as part of a wider diplomatic and domestic political theater, however, isn’t clear. But there does seem to be a fair amount of rubber-arm twisting going on in the White House when it comes to giving in to Zelensky’s mounting requests. Biden’s critics might argue that, if the White House isn’t above a bit of undersea skullduggery to win Kyiv some German weaponry, it isn’t above a bit of play-acting with allies to lead the West ever closer to direct confrontation with Russia.

Coincidentally, while Zelensky is headed to Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is at the Pentagon talking with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ahead of \next week’s NATO Defense Ministerial Meeting in Brussels.