Yes, Putin Would Start a Nuclear War Over Ukraine: Last week, in a moment that was likely just the latest example of President Joe Biden going off script, the president told Democratic donors that the world’s risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest risk since 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many experts were quick to suggest that Biden’s statement was reckless, while The Washington Post went another direction, arguing that Biden’s warning simply reflected Biden’s view of Putin’s character.
Harry J. Kazianis, 19FortyFive senior editor and Rogue State Project president, told Fox Business on Monday that the world could very much be facing a nuclear war.
“It could end in nuclear war and that’s not an exaggeration; that is the truth,” said Kazianis. “Vladimir Putin is very dangerous when he has 6,400 nuclear warheads, the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. And he is backed into a corner.”
The situation could be especially dire as Putin, along with many in the Kremlin declaring the truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge, linking Russia with the Crimean peninsula, as an act of terror. The timing of the bombing comes as Ukrainian forces are on the offensive, liberating thousands of miles of captured territory. Though it would seem that Ukraine is on its way to victory, that’s not really the case.
“The challenge is no side can claim its victory unless we’re willing to give Ukraine $100 billion-plus in U.S. military aid there’s no way they are going to be able to kick every Russian soldier out of Ukraine,” added Kazianis.
“That’s just not reality,” he continued. “At the same time, the Russians don’t have the capability to take off big enough chunks of Ukraine to claim any sort of victory so we are essentially at a stalemate here and what I think is that these escalations will continue and will get desperate and use nuclear weapons.”
Putin Could Use Nuclear Weapons: Not Just a Threat
There is currently a dismissal that Putin would ever use nuclear weapons, as that would certainly escalate the conflict, but it fails to look at what has happened to date.
“I’ll be honest, a lot of people didn’t think he’d invade Ukraine either, and here we are almost eight months later,” Kazianis explained. “I think Putin is deadly serious, I think if he starts to feel a coup be hatched around him. There are always those rumors, those rumors that he is sick with cancer or Parkinson’s, those have been out for a long time.”
There is also the case to be made that it would be unwise to underestimate somebody who has nothing to lose. Putin can’t press a reset button – and for the 70-year-old Russian leader, this is about legacy. That means it could be victory or annihilation.
That is true especially if Putin thinks his life is at risk and he feels the west or NATO to back off a little bit, said Kazianis. That could include “either to demonstrate a tactical nuclear weapon in the field or maybe use one against a low priority target to say ‘I’m willing to use a lot of more of these, back away.’ I don’t think we can take that off the table.”
What Is the Ukraine Strategy?
President Joe Biden has also been very vocal that the United States will support Ukraine for as long as it takes, but an unanswered question is exactly how long exactly is as long as it takes. Though there are certainly some that want to see this as Putin’s Afghanistan, the war that helped bring down the Soviet Union, the fact is that the United States could also face the costs of a never-ending war, even if it isn’t Americans who are doing the fighting and dying.
“Well, I’ll be honest with you, Joe Biden is lying,” Kazianis responded bluntly when pressed on what Biden has said.
“We’re literally taking out of our own stockpiles from the Pentagon and giving these weapons to Ukraine
It’s not like we have Lockheed Martin building new (FGM-148) Javelins instantaneously,” Kazianis added.
“We’re literally taking them out of our own warfighter’s hands and giving them to Ukraine.”
Even as Lockheed Martin has ramped up production, efforts have warned the aid to Ukraine has impacted American stockpiles. Even worse, for now, it isn’t the worst strategy, but right now it appears there is no off-ramp on this conflict.
“Look, for the short term that isn’t the wrong thing to do,” said Kazianis. “That is what we should be doing, but in the long term, what the Biden administration needs to do is tell the American people what is their strategy towards Ukraine.”
Russian President Putin. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Finally, Kazianis told Fox Business that the American people deserve a better explanation. “We have just very basic, ‘well, Ukraine is going to win the war, and that is the strategy but what does victory for Ukraine look like? The American people know where Joe Biden is heading with this, and I don’t anyone can answer this question. That’s the truth.”
Of course, Biden’s version of the truth is often a little better than Putin’s.
A Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,000 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
