That would be seen as an act of war and would escalate things quicker than Russia thinks it can handle.

You think that blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines would not be seen as an act of war?

No, because it happened in international waters ON THEIR assets.

It didn't happen in international waters. It happened in Danish, Swedish and Finnish waters. Denmark is in NATO.

And everyone in NATO is doing their best to ignore it, because they know where war leads.

People ignore acts of war all the time to keep the peace where nuclear arms are involved.

NS1 and NS2 aren't shipping any gas, and notionally are "Russian": dramatic but no change in the status quo.

Blowing a pipeline between two NATO members which is shipping gas and imperils their population is very different: NATO can't ignore that.

It happened in their "exclusive economic zones", not territorial waters. Very bad, but still leaves some place for manoeuvre.

Because it would be a direct attack on NATO.

The Nord Stream sabotage is not? You know some of the explosions happened on NATO territory, right?

Nord Stream is 51% Russian (Gazprom). Not sure if it is NATO territory or international waters. It still becomes a little bit more "muddy" on who could have made it and who benefits from it.

Attacking Norway-Poland line at this point would be a very obvious and very direct attack on NATO.

This is all motivated thinking with "It's Russia!" as the end goal.

Some of the NS attacks were on NATO territory. Denmark could invoke Article 5 were it found to be Russia. If "NATO" were in the equation, the saboteurs would have stayed in Swedish and Finnish waters, and even then it's iffy.

Russia has already used radioactive poisons and nerve agents on NATO territory, so that little explosion is nothing.