The Washington Post reports, citing its sources, that the administration of US President Joe Biden has been sending warnings to the Russian authorities for several months about the dire consequences of using nuclear weapons during the conflict with Ukraine.
The authors of the material recall the unequivocal nuclear threats from Russian leaders, including Vladimir Putin and Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. The newspaper also has quotes from a recent interview with Biden, in which he said that in the event of the use of nuclear weapons, Russia “will change the face of war, and this will not be compared with anything after the Second World War.”
The Washington Post calls this Washington policy an attempt to maintain “strategic uncertainty” – the concept that the enemy must never be completely sure how the other side will react to a possible nuclear escalation.
However, the experts with whom the authors of the publication spoke are ready to discuss this topic. Georgetown University professor Matthew Croning believes that the best US response to Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons would be to dramatically increase support for Ukraine and launch US conventional strikes against Russian troops or bases that have launched the missiles.
“If a nuclear attack was carried out by Russian troops in Ukraine, the United States could strike directly at these forces,” the analyst said.
“Such a step will be needed to make it clear that there will be no big war, this is a limited blow. How would you react if you were Putin? I don’t think the immediate response in that case would be to fire nuclear missiles at the US.”
However, the publication said that many in Washington would consider even such a limited strike with conventional weapons irresponsible. For proponents of this approach, the risk of a full-scale nuclear war with Russia cannot be justified.
According to James Acton, head of the Carnegie Endowment program, it makes no sense to talk about the American response to a Russian nuclear strike now, since the range of possible options for Russian actions is too wide. In his opinion, Russia can limit itself to a demonstrative step from which no one will suffer (such as an underground test of nuclear weapons) – or to launch a full blow, from which tens of thousands of civilians will die. But Acton is convinced that there are no signs yet that Putin is leaning towards such a scenario.
“If he was really seriously considering the use of nuclear weapons in the near future, he would almost certainly want us to know about it,” a Washington Post pundit said. “He would rather threaten — and thus force us to make concessions, rather than actually go down the path of a nuclear strike.”
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