Biden’s Own Military Thinks He’s Wrong About Russia
(ConservativeInsider.org) – The world is closer to nuclear war than it’s been in 35 years. Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening to use weapons of mass destruction if Ukraine doesn’t let him absorb huge chunks of its territory. President Joe Biden is desperately trying to deter the Kremlin’s aggression without invoking America’s own nuclear arsenal. His own military commanders think he’s getting it wrong.
Putin’s Road to Armageddon
Since Putin launched his army into Ukraine in February, he’s regularly rattled his nuclear saber in an attempt to deter western intervention. In the last two weeks, those threats have become a lot more worrying, with the Kremlin’s announcement that four regions of Ukraine will be annexed to Russia. Putin is insisting any attack on Russian soil could be answered with nuclear weapons, implying he could use nukes on Ukraine if it tries to liberate those annexed regions.
Western governments have condemned the announced annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, but that opposition could waver in the face of the nuclear threat. President Biden wants to use US weight to deter Putin from pressing the button, but Pentagon sources who spoke to Newsweek say Biden won’t consider using nuclear weapons unless Russia launches a nuclear attack on the US itself. Even if Putin orders a strike on Ukraine, the president is determined to stick with a non-nuclear response.
Dissent in the Pentagon
The situation isn’t going down well with senior military and intelligence officials. While they don’t want to use nuclear weapons, they don’t want to take them off the table, either. An unnamed senior intelligence officer acknowledged Biden has threatened to “respond forcefully” with “catastrophic consequences for Russia,” but he doubts it’s going to be enough without the threat of nuclear weapons.
A former bomber pilot now serving in the Pentagon agrees. He said, “We have to ponder whether [non-nuclear] threats are powerful enough to deter Putin,” and he’s not convinced any Russian strike would be inside Ukraine, either. Instead, he thinks the threat is aimed at the US and NATO as a warning not to directly threaten Putin.
On September 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned, “I don’t think [Putin is] bluffing.” If he isn’t, that makes it more important than ever to stop his aggression, and it’s no time for Biden to be ignoring the most powerful weapons in our own arsenal. Of course, nobody wants the US to launch a nuclear strike on Russia, but nuclear weapons aren’t supposed to be used. Their real tactic is deterrence, but they won’t deter anything if Biden rules out using them.
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