“There can be little doubt that Russia intended to permanently damage Europe’s economy.” – got it almost right. It’s the US that killed two birds with one stone: attack Russia and Europe’s manufacturing and industry.
whats americas incentive for attacking europes manufacturing and industry?
Eliminating a competitor, causing a long-lasting disruption of relations to Russia, China, Iran et al and causing migration of energy-intensive branches of industry to the US. Bleeding vassals via comprador administrations is the prequel to domestic self-cannibalization. Latter being arguably also already in progress.
Perhaps i overestimate USAs friendliness with eurozone. I kind of just worked with the assumption that keeping europe solid was in USA national interest but i dont really know at any moment what special interests have their tentacles in the deep state. I figured blowing up the pipeline was to target russia with the european energy situation damage just being “collateral damage”. I kind of have doubts usa elites were even clever enough to realize it would shift energy intense industry to usa. Hard for me to parse the malice and stupidity