Biden Blames Putin For a Nuclear Threat. The Real Nuclear Threat Is Biden.

In this report, President Biden accuses  Russian President Putin of preparing to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Such warnings are not new. Biden has been accusing Russia of threatening to use nuclear weapons since the start of the War in Ukraine in February 2022.

Some perspective is needed to assess this claim. For the record, the United States is the first and only country to conduct a nuclear war, which it did between August 6 and August 9, 1945, killing about a quarter-million civilians.

Putin has made it clear that Russia will not use nuclear weapons unless the U.S. or NATO allies do so first. The U.S. has not made a similar pledge.

Biden based his threat assessment on the fact that Putin recently moved tactical nuclear weapons to its ally, Belarus, which is closer to the Kyiv. That’s true, but it conveniently ignores the fact that the U.S. has placed nuclear weapons in Germany, that the UK and France are nuclear powers in their own right, and that U.S. Navy submarines and destroyers with nuclear missiles are deployed around Russia.

Belarus also had nuclear weapons when it was part of the Soviet Union prior to 1991. In short, there was nothing particularly provocative about Putin’s move relative to prior positioning and the U.S. deployment of nukes.

What is provocative is a recent article by Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, DC based think tank. Rubin recommended that the U.S. should provide tactical nuclear weapons to the Ukrainians themselves.

The rationale is a version of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, MAD, that maintained stability between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union (really Russia) during the Cold War. The idea is if each side has enough nuclear weapons to survive a first strike by the other and launch a second strike of its own, then neither side will start a nuclear war because it would be destroyed in turn.

There’s merit to the MAD doctrine subject to a long list of conditions including large arsenals, secure command-and-control procedures, good communication between the protagonists (such as the “hot line”) and rational leadership on both sides.

None of those conditions apply to Ukraine. It would have a modest arsenal (not enough to survive a first strike), has weak command-and-control, has almost no communication with Russia, and its leadership is desperate and insecure.

It’s almost as if Rubin’s proposal is designed to force Putin to attack any Ukrainian nuclear capacity as a way to justify escalation by the U.S. and get U.S. and NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That’s a short path to World War III.

Rubin’s idea could be behind Putin’s plan to move nuclear weapons to Belarus as a way to dissuade the U.S. from going further. Of course, Putin’s actions in Belarus are an example of escalation, which may be exactly what Rubin and the other warmongers in the U.S. wanted.

Rubin’s idea is reckless and moves the world closer to nuclear war. When you hear Biden talk about Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons, it’s critical to bear in mind that the U.S. is the real threat and is acting with a view to escalating the war and dragging NATO into a direct war with Russia.

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