Interview: U.S. blowing up Nord Stream pipelines "economic war" against European allies: Swedish expert

STOCKHOLM, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- The truth that the U.S. Navy was involved in the Nord Stream pipelines explosions last year, as discovered by American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, was an "economic war" against its submissive allies in Europe, a Swedish expert has said.

"Nord Stream (was) of course blown up by the U.S. and NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies," said Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, said the U.S. Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives last June in cooperation with Norway, which destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines three months later.

"Seymour Hersh's fine analysis tells how the destruction was planned and done, but the conclusion is unsurprising: the U.S., with very important Norwegian assistance, committed the crime against a friendly, allied country, Germany, and other European countries," he said.

"Together with ill-considered, never-ending economic sanctions against Russia, the blowing-up of Nord Stream by the U.S. has already caused enormous, accumulating harm to European citizens' economy," he added.

"The present situation is extremely dangerous: We live in times fundamentally characterized by intellectual and ethical disarmament coupled with immense military armament, with militarism as the only one answer to the problems," Oberg said.

"The West chooses to use weapons, threats, secret operations and media manipulation instead of using talks, mediating, engaging the UN or OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), and it abandons diplomacy and plays tough on others," he said.

"Militarism has become the religion that keeps the declining West together, with NATO (as) its church. That's why also the Western mainstream media won't give Hersh's sensational analysis the attention it deserves," said Oberg.

"One must wonder when the Europeans will wake up and finally understand that they no longer share interests with the U.S.," he said.

"On the bottom of the sea outside Bornholm, the U.S. has now destroyed and buried yet another bit of its decency and global leadership," Oberg said.