US President Joe Biden talks again about the possibility of a nuclear armageddon, this time trying to express that he doesn’t think will happen.
After the “Armageddon” speech of last week, US President Joe Biden talked again about the possibility of a nuclear escalation in the Russia - Ukraine war, expanding on his previous statement.
In an interview with CNN, Joe Biden said straight off the bat that he “doesn’t think” Vladimir Putin will actually use the nuclear option. He said however that Putin, by talking about the nuclear option, might escalate the situation to the point of no return.
“What I am talking about, I am talking to Putin. He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as if that’s a rational thing to do,” Biden said, “The mistakes get made, the miscalculation could occur, no one could be sure what would happen and it could end in Armageddon.”
In any case, Biden “reassured”, Russia would not go unpunished if she decides to deploy even a small tactical nuclear weapon. The President said he couldn’t expand on the details of the USA’s response, but guaranteed that “The Pentagon wouldn’t have to be asked”.
The only time a nuclear bomb was deployed in a time of war was by the United States in 1945, in order to make the Japanese Empire surrender and end World War II. Since then, during the Cold War, countries have stockpiled and tested more and more warheads millions of times stronger than those dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At the moment, Russia sits on the biggest deposit of nuclear weapons in the world. Their doctrine has always been that only in case the “territorial integrity” of the country was put at risk they would use a nuclear weapon.
So why would Putin use them now?
Why Putin will (probably) not use the atomic bomb
The simplest reason why Putin will probably not use the atomic bomb is that he actually doesn’t need to, at least according to the Russian doctrine. The existence of the Russian state is not put at risk, and the war is far from the main centers of Russia’s government.
Sure, now Putin considers the occupied territories in Ukraine as part of Russia, following the illegal referendum. But this was likely a move to stop the Ukrainian counter-offensive, making them think that any attack on occupied territory would result in deployment of nuclear arms.
But the counter-offensive continued (even with an attack on the Kerch bridge between Russia and Crimea) and no nuclear blast has been recorded.
Further, why would Putin use a nuclear weapon to conquer territory? The blast would make the area unlivable and unsustainable for any army, so it would be counter-intuitive for Moscow to use them. As we said, when the US first used a nuclear weapon in Japan it was to make them surrender faster, not to invade them more easily.
All of this points at Putin’s bluff, a bluff that Kyiv responded to with a continued counter-offensive that is taking more territory near the occupied city of Kherson.
