President Biden has knowingly or unwittingly brought the risk of a world-ending nuclear conflict much, much closer after listening to “neoconservative advisors who really don’t have a lot of perspective on the nuclear dangers that they’re walking into” instead of military specialists and okaying Ukraine’s use of NATO weapons to strike the Russian hinterland, Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
“The big problem is that Kiev’s drones have [already] attacked Russian early warning systems that are designed as part of their nuclear defense…I don’t think they damaged them, but this has been done. If American weapons, heavier weapons are used against those targets, this cannot help but be seen by Russia as a precursor to a first strike – a nuclear first strike. When you hit someone’s nuclear defense radars, their ‘eyes’, their defensive systems, in normal war strategy, you’re preparing a battlefield. So I don’t know if the Biden advisors in Washington really have a sense of this, because there are no military people up there that are talking to Biden about this, but it’s a very dangerous situation,” Kwiatkowski emphasized.
The Wall Street Journal has reported citing officials that Washington has greenlit Ukraine’s use of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) rockets, as well as long-range artillery, for strikes on Russia territory.
Earlier, other NATO members, including Britain and France – which have sent long-range Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles to Ukraine, similarly gave a nod to Kiev to use these weapons to fire on positions deep inside Russia amid Ukrainian forces’ slow retreat in Kharkov region.
Biden likely feels trapped, looking to get out of the Ukraine quagmire and push the conflict “out of the public view,” Kwiatkowski believes, but will only make the situation “much worse” by expanding the conflict’s geography. “He is responding and going by a neoconservative playbook, which is a playbook that wants war,” she warned.
Kwiatkowski reiterated that if Russia perceives the long-range attacks inside its territory as a precursor to a nuclear first strike, “all bets are off the table” as far as trying to ‘retaining control’ over the situation in Ukraine is concerned. “That’s nuclear war,” she emphasized.
Russia and the US have their own respective doctrines regarding the use of nuclear weapons, the observer pointed out, adding that the people advising President Biden should certainly be aware of their contents.
Russia’s nuclear doctrine prohibits nuclear first strikes, but allows for the use of the nuclear weapons in retaliation to an attack using weapons of mass destruction, or a conventional attack so severe it puts the existence of the state in jeopardy.
“If [Biden’s advisors] are trying to game the system and say ‘oh, no we can do this and it won’t initiate the use of the strategic nuclear defense doctrine by Russia’, I don’t know how to explain that. It’s shocking and its frightening,” Kwiatkowski stressed. “I think it’s already clear that the United States is fighting Russia via and in Ukraine. If it goes nuclear then the whole world becomes a legitimate target.”
The threat is further exacerbated by Europe’s utter lack of conventional capabilities to fight Russia if the conflict in Ukraine escalates into a full-on Russia-NATO war, which again becomes “a step into a very direct conflict that will go nuclear almost instantaneously,” the observer warned.
NATO has no path to a feasible victory in Ukraine, Kwiatkowski says.
“There's no path to that possibility that is affordable, and, even if you had the money, it would be impossible to put that together. So if you go nuclear, then this whole question becomes moot. There won't be a Ukraine. So it's very inconsistent that we would push into a nuclear conflict, which is clearly what this is doing, and then at the same time, say, ‘and we want a plan for Ukraine's victory’, which is to say, a cohesive Ukrainian government, with cohesive Ukrainian territory.”
“Those two things are incompatible with each other, which tells me that the United States and Biden - I don't think they understand the ramifications of what he has done with allowing these types of weapons to be used by the Ukrainians and probably guided by the Americans directly onto Russia,” Kwiatkowski summed up.