Putin and the Nuclear End Game: What America and NATO can do about nuclear blackmail

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Will Saletan
@saletan
"Biden should publicly call upon the Russian military not to obey orders to use nuclear weapons."

"Putin may have nothing to lose, but the Russian people have everything to live for. Private military to military channels should reinforce that message."

thebulwark.com
Putin and the Nuclear End Game
Despite, or rather because of, the heroic efforts of the Ukrainian people, we must face the possibility that Vladimir Putin will increase his threats both to Ukraine and to NATO. His war has gone...
9:12 AM · Mar 5, 2022

https://www.thebulwark.com/putin-and-the-nuclear-end-game/

Despite, or rather because of, the heroic efforts of the Ukrainian people, we must face the possibility that Vladimir Putin will increase his threats both to Ukraine and to NATO. His war has gone badly, and he has less and less to lose by raising the stakes. Indeed, he may decide that escalation is his only way to win.

Sanctions against the oligarchs have already begun to impoverish him. The flow of weapons from NATO countries is continuing. A compromise would humiliate him. Exile is impossible. He is engaging in the deliberate bombing and shelling of civilian populations in Ukraine. Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and an ally of President Putin has acknowledged that Chechen soldiers are in the military columns approaching Kiev. They are there presumably because they are willing to take actions against the people Ukraine that ethnic Russian soldiers are not. Putin has borrowed yet another page from the Hitlerian playbook, from the chapter entitled Schrecklichkeit.

We can and should supply weapons with which the Ukrainians can attack the massed columns of troops approaching Kiev. But the more successful those supply efforts are, the more Putin will be tempted to try to block them.

He has repeatedly threatened nuclear weapons use. It is not clear whether or not these threats are idle.

On CNN, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen warned that Putin might employ tactical nuclear weapons. This warning did not come out of the blue. The review of the extensive Russian doctrinal literature on nuclear weapons use done by Professor Dima Adamsky tells us that Russian nuclear doctrine is to use the presence of nuclear weapons on the battlefield to induce caution in the adversary. No American military officer wants to conduct an inadvertent attack on a unit with nuclear weapons. This caution gives the Russian units greater freedom of action.

*snip*

[cilla4progress]

1. Seeing nothing hopeful here.

...

[David__77]

2. No way.

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[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Putin likens sanctions to a 'declaration of war,' says invasion pushback risks future of Ukrainian s

The sanctions are hurting, and Putin is pissed. Putin is threatening to escalate matters due to the sanctions.

Link to tweet

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that sanctions and pushback from leaders in Ukraine and around the world in response to the invasion are risking “the future of Ukrainian statehood.”

At a meeting in Moscow, Putin claimed that the wide-ranging, extensive sanctions leveled by the United States and the international community in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine amount to “a means of fighting against Russia.”

“These sanctions that are being imposed are like the declaration of war,” he said.....

The worldwide enforcement of extensive sanctions against Russia has intensified in recent days. The Russian economy in particular has taken the brunt of the international community’s actions. The value of the ruble plummeted to less than 1 U.S. cent this week, and the Russian government is still unable to tap into a large portion of its $640 billion in Central Bank reserves, a lifeline that would skirt the impact of global sanctions.