The Western world is now taking a back seat because of the lack of credibility. On 8 February 2023, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh proved just that.
In early February 2023, international media were rocked by a bombshell article penned by journalist Seymour Hersh. The piece titled ‘How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline’ dropped on his website. The author cited anonymous high-profile sources to back up his story and maintain that the Russian pipelines had been blown up by the US and Norwegian navy officers guided by the top-flight officials from the US government.
The explosions took place on 26 September 2022. Shortly thereafter, Western media along with some politicians repeatedly claimed that it had been an act of ‘self-sabotage’ on the part of Russia trying to ‘blackmail Europe over gas supplies’. But in the wake of Seymour Hersh’s piece, the US media pivoted their narrative several times to the following: it was, most likely, perpetrated by a pro-Ukrainian group with no ties to the Kiev government. The odds are, the official investigation was stalling and looking increasingly questionable to a wider public.
Notably, the official investigation into the terrorist attack has yet to yield any clues. It takes place behind the closed doors, with Russia being barred from it. No findings have been made public. In a ’rule-based world’ where Russia is always to blame, it suggests that the findings do not sit quite right with the Western governments. In all likelihood, the dreaded findings would reveal the involvement of these governments that, by default, can never be implicated. Of course, they are not.
Now, who is Seymour Hersh? Why did his publication cause the kind of stir it did? After all, there seems to be no shortage of conspiracy theorists and tabloid-style reporters citing anonymous sources to substantiate claims that Area 51 houses alien spacecraft carefully disguised by the US government and that the CIA was behind the 9/11 attacks.
However, Seymour Hersh is not one of them. True, his method of gathering and processing evidence may differ from that journalists are normally used to. He chooses not to attend official briefings, forums and news conferences. Instead, he prefers to stay on the sidelines, keep an eye out and talk in private. Simpler put, his journalism draws on the ‘anonymous sources’ that unofficially share information with them, the information he goes on to publish.
Mr Hersh’s resume features quite a handful of bombshell investigations that kickstarted important global processes. The first that springs to mind is his public disclosure of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War that earned him the 1970 Pulitzer Prize. He also reported on the Watergate scandal and the covert US bombing campaign in eastern Cambodia. In the 2000s, Hersh was one of the first journalists to claim the real goal of the Iraq War was to eliminate the ‘overly independent’ Saddam Hussein, and challenged the official narrative about the weapons of mass destruction.
Hersh pioneered the reporting of systemic torture used by the US in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons.
These are just his stories that were then officially confirmed by the US government. Apart from these, Hersh ran articles where he maintains that Syria never used chemical weapons against civilians, Osama bin Laden was not neutralised and the US planned a bombing campaign against Iran.
Long story short, Mr Hersh brings up the hottest-button issues and, going by the number of confirmed stories, and goes to great lengths to make sure the evidence provided by his ‘anonymous sources’ checks out.
Seeing as the official probe into the Nord Stream attacks has drawn a blank, there is a sneaking suspicion that Hersh’s theory of the US Navy’s involvement may well turn out to be true.
It begs a different kind of question, though. What would have made Hersh’s article and the ensuing media frenzy a landmark event? The US never offered an official apology. It did not change its policies both towards Russia and Europe. Europe never demanded an open investigation into the explosions, let alone set a deadline for it. Joe Biden was never impeached over ‘terrorism’.
None of this has happened. Otherwise, that would have been out of step with the ‘rule-based’ Western world. The US media have eventually shrugged it off as something written by an older guy who actually does not care much and came up with bizarre alternative theories involving ‘ideologically motivated Ukrainian divers’ – and that’s all she wrote. If we are to ever see the truth slip out of the White House corridors, the wait may take decades to pay off.
That being said, Hersh’s story has indeed moved the needle in the realm of global politics and economy. Hot on the heels of the underwater blasts, the natural causes could almost immediately be ruled out. It had all the makings of a deliberate act of sabotage. The stakeholders could also be easily deduced. The only question that remained was the perpetrators. If Ukraine had been behind the attacks, further communication with both Europe and the US would have taken a starkly different course. But there would have been communication, nonetheless. Now there is none.
Hersh’s theory implicating the White House and the following steps taken by Europe that pretended to be completely in the dark as to how it had transpired and began to purchase gas from the US proved to Russia that negotiating a deal with the collective West made zero sense. Any deals, it seemed, could be easily breached in the most savage and even terrorist fashion. It goes further than just oil and gas supplies.
That realisation seems to have made Russia pivot its economic and fossil fuel policies to the East. These governments can be negotiated with on mutually beneficial terms. Following the Nord Stream explosions, the West has become a bit too wild to Russia’s liking.
As a result, we are now living in a world where China, India and other Asian nations have become Russia’s main economic partners, Europe cannot make up for the energy shortages even with the Russian LNG and an increasing number of countries are voicing concerns over close partnerships with the US.
However sluggish, these processes are capable of slowly shaping up a new global reality, a multipolar one, with the Western world taking a back seat just because of the lack of credibility.
In this sense, what Seymour Hersh really did on 8 February 2023 was lend more clarity to the state of affairs, ever so aptly and emphatically.