SHEA BRADLEY-FARRELL: Escalation in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear conflict
Since Russia’s unlawful invasion into Ukraine, the Biden-Harris administration has shirked diplomacy in favor of policies that increasingly guarantee escalation of the war. Now Ukrainian soldiers claim about 480 square miles in Russia’s Kursk region with U.S. and NATO armored vehicles and weapons– killing and injuring Russian civilians.
This should concern Americans. But the Biden-Harris administration has no objections, only justification. Moscow believes the U.S. not only created the conditions for the incursion, but also helped plan it.
“The West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians,” Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk. Imagine the jarring psychological impact on Russian citizens watching German-built tanks roll in – reminiscent of World War II.
Despite what D.C. hawks claim, Putin has repeatedly communicated, before and during the war, that NATO enlargement to Ukraine initiated his invasion, not Russian expansionism into Central Europe. However, the tragic irony is that although Russian expansion is not likely, a broader and nuclear war could be.
The U.S. has become a de facto combatant in the Russia-Ukraine war; we are no longer neutral bystanders. But hardly anyone seems to notice our insidious walk-up to triggering a broader war or nuclear strike.
President Joe Biden continually insisted (“Okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys”) that the U.S. must limit the type of weapons we send to Ukraine, and the ways the weapons could be used against Russia, to avoid a direct NATO conflict with Russia and prevent, in his words, “World War III.”
But the Biden-Harris administration has continuously changed policy to supply Ukraine with increasingly more weapons, with more sophisticated and advanced capability and more lethality. U.S. policy previously held that U.S. weapons could only be used to attack Russians within Ukraine, but our weapons are now increasingly being used within Russian territory.
Russia has warned that the U.S. would “cross a red line” as a “direct party to the conflict” if it supplied longer-range missiles to Kyiv.
But in April 2024, in a major policy shift, the Biden administration secretly shipped a longer-range version of ATACMS to Ukraine with a range of about 190 miles and capability to strike deep into Russian territory. Ukraine used these to target a Russian military airfield in Crimea and troops in the southeast of Ukraine. However, the condition that U.S. missiles could not be used to attack inside Russia still holds.
But for how long? Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to push the U.S. to lift restrictions, demanding to strike Russian targets as far as 300 miles into Russian territory.
And, in May 2024, the Biden-Harris administration did another major “about face,” allowing Ukraine to use U.S. artillery and “fire short-range rockets from HIMARS launchers” to conduct “limited” strikes against military targets inside Russian territory. NATO powers –Germany and others, including France– are following suit.
This is the first time a U.S. president has allowed strikes within borders of a nuclear-armed adversary, despite Putin’s warning that this could provoke retaliation and war. Biden’s White House gaslights the American people, characterizing the strikes as “acts of self-defense.”
In June 2024, Russia expanded tactical nuclear weapons drills to a military district bordering Baltic NATO member states plus Norway, Poland, and Finland. Coincidence? Of course not.
This summer the first fighter jets – the U.S.-made F-16 – also arrived in Ukraine and started operations against Russia, despite Biden’s previous assurances (“don’t kid yourself”) that sending offensive weapons like F-16s or tanks would, again, start “World War III.” The U.S. has also sent M1Abrams tanks.
How far will we go? Humiliating and provoking a Great Power with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, run by an authoritarian government, is not smart. We cannot predict what Russia may do if we continue in this way. Knowing and understanding the “red line” of an adversary isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom.
Escalation to nuclear combat could come at the U.S. in unanticipated ways. Putin, angered and embarrassed by the strikes and incursion into Russia, could decide to use a radiological or tactical nuclear weapon, on his own evacuated terrain in Kursk. Employment of such an “area denial weapon” would severely restrict any efforts to traverse or occupy the terrain and create a buffer, plus send an extremely powerful and unmistakable message to Zelenskyy, Biden and NATO.
Recent headlines that Ukraine is “turning the tables” on Russia are deceptive. As Ukraine moves further into Russian territory, Russia makes equal gains in the east of Ukraine, capturing the city of Serhivvka and advancing ever closer to a vital logistics hub. Since February 2022, Russian troops have claimed more than 18% of Ukraine, resulting in “horrific casualties” for Ukrainians. War is expected to grind on, without a decisive victory.
How far then, will we go? The further we escalate, the more desperate all leaders will act. Once broader or nuclear war starts, it will be too late to “un-ring the bell.”
Yet, no Western leader save Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has given serious discussion, thought, or action to the negotiation of peace. In fact, Orbán visited Zelenskyy to discuss peace, but was visciously ridiculed for also visiting Putin to do the same. Why?
Why is Western diplomacy dormant in detering the ongoing devastation of Ukraine, and a potential walk up to world-wide war?
It is incumbent upon the United States to stop the escalation of weapons and warfare, and bring about immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations, based on Ukrainian neutrality and Russian reparations. Only wise U.S. leadership can bring peace and stop a potentially bigger and more devastating war.
Shea Bradley-Farrell, Ph.D. is a strategist in national security and foreign policy in Washington, D.C. and president of Counterpoint Institute for Policy, Research and Education. Her latest book is Last Warning to the West. Follow her at counterpointinstititute.org or on “X” @DrShea_DC and @CounterpointDC.
This Story originally came from humanevents.com
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