Former CIA Director Says the United States Would Destroy Russia’s Conventional Forced if Russia Uses Nuclear Weapons
Jose Nino
|
David Petraeus, a former CIA director and retired United States Army General, revealed last week that the US would destroy Russian military units and equipment in Ukraine and completely take out its Black Sea Fleet if it launches a nuclear attack in Ukraine.
For its part, Russia has warned the US about its nuclear “red line.”
Per a report by The Guardian, Petraeus revealed that he did not speak with national security adviser Jake Sullivan about the potential for the US to respond against a Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine.
“Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” Petraeus said to ABC News.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that Russia could go nuclear in this conflict. Putin recently announced the partial mobilization of up to 300,000 reservists to help Russia expand its operations in Ukraine. He stressed that Russia will turn to nuclear weapons if US and NATO forces come to the point of threatening Russia’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Essentially, Russia will go nuclear if this crisis turns existential.
“This is not a bluff,” Putin stated. “And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.”
Petraeus did concede that Russia using nuclear weapons would not activate NATO’s Article V, which takes an all for one, one for all approach to defense. If a member nation is attacked, other members are supposed to come to its defense.
Ukraine is currently not a member of NATO. However, the Collective West is doing everything possible to add Ukraine into its ranks.
The former CIA Director did note though that the high likelihood of radioactive exposure spreading to NATO countries — a development that would be viewed as an attack on NATO — could activate Article V protections.
“Perhaps you can make that case,” Petraeus stated. “The other case is that this is so horrific that there has to be a response – it cannot go unanswered.”
Petraeus continued, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way.”
Petraeus asserted that Ukrainian forces are making gains in Eastern Ukraine and Putin is becoming “desperate.”
“The battlefield reality he faces is, I think, irreversible,” he stated. “No amount of shambolic mobilization, which is the only way to describe it; no amount of annexation; no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can actually get him out of this particular situation.”
In light of the scaremongering coming from the Collective West, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded bluntly to reporters, “Read the doctrine. Everything is written there,” per a RIA Novosti report.
According to Russian nuclear doctrine, the country only uses nukes in two cases. In the first case, only when “Russia or its ally [is attacked] with the use of mass destruction weapons.” In the second case, “when the very existence of the state is under threat.”
Sadly, Peskov’s comments will largely be ignored by pundits in the West. They prefer to fearmonger and continue escalating tensions with Russia.
The irony here is that the US is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in a geopolitical conflict (against Japan in World War II). So it has no business lecturing Russia about potentially using nuclear weapons when it’s clear that Russia isn’t facing an existential threat… at least for now.
Should NATO decide to use troops in Ukraine or directly attack Russia, then all bets are off.
Share: