When President Joe Biden issued a clear warning during a fundraiser Thursday that the war in Ukraine could turn into a “Armageddonnuclear power, raised a terrifying prospect that many Americans hadn’t worried much about since the end of the Cold War.
White House officials did not retract Biden’s statement; they knew it reflected a deep concern that prompted the Pentagon and intelligence officials to scrutinize different stagesfrom a test detonation over the Black Sea to the use of a nuclear weapon against, say, a Ukrainian military base.
But the White House stressed Friday that the United States he saw no signs that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons.
But it’s been 30 years since most Americans have talked about nuclear deterrence, the difference between tactical and strategic weapons, and the chaos that a 10 kiloton bomb versus a 100 kiloton bomb can cause.
So what was the president talking about?
This is what we know:
As his army loses ground, Putin has been waving his nuclear saber.
Message
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an angry speech last month filled with anti-American swagger and rhetoric, clearly raised the specter of using nuclear weapons to maintain his territorial gains in Ukraine.
Putin said he will use “all available means” to defend Russian territory, which he says includes four provinces in eastern Ukraine that Russia has tried to illegally annex.
He also claimed that the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in 1945 “They created a precedent. “.
Biden on Thursday said:
“For the first time since then Cuban missile crisiswe have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if indeed things continue as they are. “
So far, US officials say they believe in the possibilities of Russia using nuclear weapons they are low.
Senior US officials say they have seen no evidence that Putin is moving any of his nuclear assets, especially into the Russian arsenal of some 2,000 tactical small arms.
Although Putin asked his nuclear forces to go on high alert in late February, there is no evidence that they did.
But events such as the attack on the Kerch Strait bridge over the weekend worry officials who fear it is more likely to Humiliated Putin lashes out.
However, US officials have been evaluating possible scenarios.
Senior US officials are much more concerned than at the start of the conflict about the possibility of Putin deploying tactical nuclear weapons.
After a series of humiliating withdrawals, incredibly high death rates and a deeply unpopular move to enlist young Russians on duty, Putin clearly sees the threat of his nuclear arsenal as a means of instilling fear and perhaps regain some respect by the power of Russia.
For months, Pentagon computer simulations, US nuclear labs and intelligence agencies have been trying to model what might happen and how the US might respond.
The threshold at which Putin would resort to nuclear weapons, or how he would use them, is far from clear.
The primary use of a tactical nuclear strike, many US officials say, would be as part of Putin’s latest desperate attempt to stop the Ukrainian counter-offensive by threatening to make parts of the country uninhabitable.
Russia will most likely deploy tactical nuclear weapons, which have lower payloadss intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Analysts say that if Putin resorted to nuclear weapons, the most likely scenario would be a relatively small tactical strike, either on the battlefield or as a warning shot in an uninhabited area.
Tactical weapons come in many sizes and varieties, some with a small fraction of the destructive power of the bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and others with much greater potency.
They can be fired from an artillery cannon or launched from a missile.
But they are difficult to use and they are difficult to control.
The amount of destruction and persistent radiation depend on factors including the size of the weapon and winds. Even a small nuclear explosion could kill thousands of people and make a base or city center uninhabitable for years.
The risks to Putin could easily outweigh any gains:
depending on the natural winds, the radiation emitted by Russian weapons could easily return to Russian territory.
the West was vague how he would respond.
Biden recently said the US “would respond strongly” if Putin used a tactical nuclear weapon.
In May he wrote in an essay for New York Times that “any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale” “would have serious consequences”.
His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on September 25 that there would be “catastrophic consequences”.
”And those had been communicated to Moscow.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean a retaliatory nuclear strike, which could trigger a wider war.
For months, administration officials have said they can hardly think of any circumstances in which a Russian nuclear detonation in Ukraine would result in a US nuclear response.
There have been discussions of various other military responses, such as using conventional weapons against a base or unit that originated the attack or providing the Ukrainian forces with weapons to launch that counterattack.
But many of the options under discussion also involve non-military measures, such as further isolating Russia from the world economy and portraying Putin as an international pariah.
It would be an opportunity, some officials say, to bring China and India, along with much of Asia and Africa, in an effort to impose sanctions on Russia, taking away some of the largest remaining markets for its oil and gas.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
