The Guardian view on Putin's nuclear threats: Russia is losing in Ukraine Editorial

[Uncle Joe]

As the war in Ukraine and its consequences weaken Russia’s conventional military, Vladimir Putin’s government has resorted to nuclear threats designed to project strength. Mr Putin wants to intimidate his opponents. But his strategy is failing. Instead of Ukraine’s allies backing down, they are stepping up their support. The US Congress this week approved $11bn of arms to Ukraine, three times the total military aid Washington has so far given.

The US president, Joe Biden, was right to call out Mr Putin for making “idle comments” about nuclear weapons. It is unthinkable that blunders and miscalculations would take the world to the edge of the nuclear abyss. Yet that is where the world is heading. Whereas the Cuban missile crisis lasted 13 days, Russia’s war is already into its third month. With no clear end in sight, more deadly battles look inevitable – increasing the chances of mistakes.

(snip)

The concentration of such power in one man’s hands ought to make the world sit up. Russia has few mechanisms to prevent Mr Putin resorting to nuclear weapons if he decided he had nothing to lose. In the Guardian last month, Christopher S Chivvis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote that in war game scenarios he had taken part in, which considered what would happen if Russia hit Ukraine with nuclear weapons, the only way of de-escalation was when “clear political off-ramps and lines of communication between Moscow and Washington have remained open. In all the other games, the world is basically destroyed.”

That is why the US president has been careful not to provide Russia with a reason to go nuclear. Mr Biden made it clear that the US would not place boots on the ground, establish a no-fly zone or conduct intercontinental ballistic missile tests. What Mr Biden has shown is that conventional anti-tank and anti-aircraft technologies have reached a new level of capability, one which has rendered conventional invading ground forces – unless overwhelmingly massed – almost obsolete. Mr Biden has been shrewder than more gung-ho Democrats or their ideological soulmates found in Boris Johnson’s government.

(snip)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/29/the-guardian-view-on-putins-nuclear-threats-russia-is-losing-in-ukraine

[marie999]

1. The US has the same problem. Not now with President Biden,

but who know what the next president is going to do.