The world seems to be shaking edge of the abyss to Vladimir Putin’s decision to continually up the ante whenever his strategic goals have failed him.
With the announcement of the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, he made it clear that any attack will be considered as direct aggression against Russia. Putin reinforced his warning by threatening to use nuclear weapons again, Apparently tactics.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one year after his centenary, and gen. David Petraeusformer head of the CIA, they replied.
Petraeus said that if Russia drops a tactical atomic bomb, “we will respond by guiding a joint effort of conventional forces NATO, the Western military alliance on the Ukrainian battlefield, including in Crimean peninsula and on Russian ships in the Mediterranean“.
He clarified that “there must be an answer” but “necessarily it will not be nuclear versus nuclear“To avoid an” atomic escalation “.
90 million people
It is estimated that if World War III broke out, only in the early hours of the nuclear encounter more than 90 million people would die. No one can win such a confrontation, humanity would be the main victim.
Petraeus said that “Putin is wrong if he thinks he will make Europe suffer, that it will have a hard winter but will not give up”.
For his part, Kissinger, spoke at the seminar of the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States elaborated the doctrine of the new situation.
“We cannot allow Russia to achieve its goals after using nuclear bombs. It is best to achieve results through conventional weapons and dialogue, so that the other side clearly knows what they will encounter. But other means cannot be excluded ”.
“We cannot allow atomic weapons to become like conventional weapons, which it would change in an unacceptable way the very nature of international relations.
Kissinger said that “this would open the door to the indiscriminate use of technology without limits, which anyone could try to employ. And this is very dangerous“.
“That’s why – he complicated – if you cross that forbidden line, you can’t go back, it will be necessary to defeat Russia at all costsnot only in the Ukrainian theater, to prevent the entire world order from being compromised ”.
Kissinger said he hopes the first reaction is conventional because the United States is superior in that area. But “Other means” cannot be excluded. if “the game becomes too important to accept the hypothesis of losing it”.
The former secretary of state argues that dialogue with Russia is necessary because its role as a country is at stake. “Know if in the future it will be the easternmost part of the West or the vanguard of the East in Europe”.
The role of China
Former interlocutor of Mao Tse Tung e friend of the ChineseKissinger said that in this difficult situation “China’s contribution is essentialthat if he wants to present himself as a responsible member of the international community, he should use his weight to prevent escalation and preserve world order.
Everyone expects China to intervene to prevent its ally Putin from dropping a tactical atomic bomb to get out of their predicament in the Ukrainian theater.
It was raised in the forum that the problem is that there seems to be no room for dialogue. Let Putin propose the capitulation of Ukraine, not diplomatic negotiations.
Kissinger’s response was that if Russia decides to use nuclear weapons to win the ongoing war, “Washington must be ready to do anything to defeat it.”
Western estimates indicate this Russia has about two thousand tactical atomic bombs, of limited power but with impacts classified as “devastating in a diameter of 1-2 km.
They can be launched with the Iskander missiles they have a radius of 500 kilometers or transported on Russian military aircraft.
US President Joseph Biden rejected Russian annexations of Ukrainian territory and announced new shipments of modern weapons together with Europeans in aid of the Kiev government.
It also approved with the European Union new sanctions who seek first of all to deny the already troubled Russian military the technology it desperately needs to continue operations.
Washington National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan said he relayed the warning to “the highest levels of the Russian government” about “The catastrophic consequences” that the use of tactical atomic bombs would produce.
The newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” highlighted that “the strategy of energy blackmail also fails”. The Europeans will have a difficult winter, but they resist. Europe prepared itself with substantial reserves of gas and other energy products, using diversified suppliers after cutting the Russian pipelines on which it depended.
The war drags on. Putin has significantly increased the preventive balance until 2025. An unknown is to what extent it will be able to expand the general mobilization, which in its first phase it showed thousands of Russians trying to escape to the forced militia.
It should be remembered that Putin imposed the term “special operations” to deny the existence of war. Whoever writes the word “war” in Russia faces ten years in prison.
Rome, correspondent
ap
Source: Clarin
