That makes right now a great time to do this. Germany is currently very much resolved to keep NS2 closed and no one expects Russia to budge on NS1, so it's not like a viable option is taken off the table, deserting Ukraine over gas is (still?) beyond the pale as far as the mainstream is considered. But the German electorate may change their minds in the coming weeks and months, and Russia might start dangling NS1 carrots too, so blowing them up now is a great way to kill the domestic German political issue while it's still small and not devolved into paralysing trench warfare. I wouldn't be too surprised if the German government had secretly given their go-ahead to whoever is behind this.
> But the German electorate may change their minds in the coming weeks and months
The important thing is that many leaders in NATO and Ukraine fear that the electorate may change their minds. I think they're pretty likely wrong and that Germans aren't that fickle, for good or ill, but I'm probably an insane populist by western leadership's standard.
> I think they're pretty likely wrong and that Germans aren't that fickle
I hear Germans say that as well, but usually those who are pretty comfortable economically. A large part of the population is anything but, is struggling to keep up, failing to keep up or already living hand to mouth. Previous governments have cultivated a huge low-wage sector and made it really hard for large swathes of the population to keep up let alone advance economically, so a lot of people don't have substantial savings or anything else to fall back on.
Hence the social contract for those parts of the population kind of goes like this: Your net worth is pretty low and your economic mobility is non-existing, but it's fine since you get stability and security and the government-provided safety net will bail you out if you get sick or whatever. But that safety net, thinned and stretched as it is, isn't helping most people cope with the current surge in energy prices, and there's as yet no clear indication how the government will try to compensate for that, let alone keep afloat an economy built to a large part on the availability of lots of cheap natural gas.
If they don't do all of this really well, I guess a large portion of the electorate may prove to be very fickle indeed, and I couldn't really blame them for it. I'm sure most would very much prefer a free Ukraine, and there is a deep desire to be on the "right" side of history, but none of this is enough to lose one's livelihood over. Break the social contract and all bets are off. Screw Ukraine, bring in the cheap autocracy gas, I want my stability back.
There is good hope that it won't come to this, but it's a possibility, and the far right is set to profit from any unleashed German angst, as they have during the refugee crisis and (to a lesser degree, due to their own incompetence) the pandemic. If I were Chancellor Scholz or President Biden, I'd be quite worried about that, and yesterday's strike on the pipelines makes perfect sense in that light. Now there is no "easy" cop-out anymore for Germany.
