At the height of the Cold War in the sixties when Russia exploded the world’s largest 50-megaton thermonuclear Tsar Bomba in October 1961 and 400,000 US forces were deployed in Europe that were still outnumbered by Soviet troops, the Soviet leadership made repeated requests for signing “no first use” nuclear treaty precluding the likelihood of pre-emptive nuclear strike, but the United States balked at the proposal due to conventional warfare superiority of the USSR in Europe.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev even unilaterally pledged
against the first use of nuclear weapons in 1982, though Russia has since dropped
the pledge [1] in 1993 following the break-up of the Soviet Union and
consequent tilting of balance of power in favor of the United States. After
European powers developed their own military capacity following the devastation
of the Second World War, NATO now holds conventional warfare superiority over
Russia with a significantly larger number of ground troops and combat aircraft.
Quoting acclaimed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy before the
Biden-Putin summit at Geneva last June, the Russian leader uttered an ominous
warning: “There is no true happiness in life, only flashes, a mirage of it is
on the horizon — cherish those.” But the mainstream media mocked the stark
warning as nothing more than rants and raves of a deranged mind.
Despite staging a massive military buildup along Russia’s
border with Ukraine for nearly a year, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not
make a final decision to invade until just before he launched the attack in
February, according to senior current and former US intelligence officials, as reported
by The Intercept [2] on March 11. It wasn’t until February that the agency
and the rest of the US intelligence community became convinced that Putin would
invade, the senior official added.
“Last April, US intelligence first detected that the Russian
military was beginning to move large numbers of troops and equipment to the
Ukrainian border. Most of the Russian soldiers deployed to the border at that
time were later moved back to their bases, but US intelligence determined that
some of the troops and materiel remained near the border.
“In June 2021, against the backdrop of rising tensions over
Ukraine, Biden and Putin met at a summit in Geneva. The summer troop withdrawal
brought a brief period of calm, but the crisis began to build again in October
and November, when US intelligence watched as Russia once again moved large
numbers of troops back to its border with Ukraine.”
Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly
drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last June.
Instead of returning the favor, however, the conceited leadership of supposedly
world’s sole surviving super power turned down the hand of friendship and
haughtily refused to concede security guarantees demanded by Russia at the
summit that would certainly have averted the likelihood of the war.
A visibly anxious and panicked Biden tweeted
[3] Friday, March 11: “I want to be clear: We will defend every inch of NATO territory
with the full might of a united and galvanized NATO. But we will not fight a
war against Russia in Ukraine. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia
is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent.”
The string of rambling tweets betrayed the apprehensive
mental state of a raving executive who was under tremendous pressure from
certain quarters to significantly escalate the conflict with the arch-foe and wanted
to console himself and the listeners that by not committing American ground and
air forces to Ukraine, specifically for enforcing the no-fly zone, he was
making the right decision.
Despite Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal, several Pentagon
officials, full of hubris and evidently suffering from misplaced superiority
complex, have recently made their misconceived institutional logic public that
they no longer regard Russia as an equal military power, instead they
contemptuously dubbed it “a second-rate regional power,” and if given an
opportunity, they wouldn’t hesitate to take Russia head-on, even if the risk is
as perilous as the conflict spiraling into a catastrophic nuclear war.
The
Politico reported [4] March 8 “Putin was angry” and the US intelligence
heads warned before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during
the panel’s annual hearing on worldwide threats that Russia could “double down”
in Ukraine.
The remarks by Director National Intelligence Avril Haines
and four fellow intelligence agency leaders — Defense Intelligence Agency
Director Scott Berrier, CIA Director William Burns, National Security Agency
Director Paul Nakasone and FBI Director Christopher Wray — represented some of
the most candid assessments of Moscow’s thinking by US officials since the
start of the security crisis late last month.
“The nuclear saber-rattling by Putin was extremely unusual,
Haines said, and US officials assess that his current posturing in this arena
is probably intended to deter the West from providing additional support to
Ukraine as he weighs an escalation of the conflict. On a personal level, Haines
said US officials assess that Putin ‘feels aggrieved the West does not give him
proper deference and perceives this is a war he cannot afford to lose.’
“Burns, the CIA director, portrayed for lawmakers an
isolated and indignant Russian president who is determined to dominate and
control Ukraine to shape its orientation. Putin has been ‘stewing in a
combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years. That personal
conviction matters more than ever,’ Burns said.
“Burns also described how Putin had created a system within
the Kremlin in which his own circle of advisers is narrower and narrower — and
sparser still because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In that hierarchy, Burns said, ‘it’s
proven not career-enhancing for people to question or challenge his judgment.’”
Clearly, the US intelligence assessment before the House
Permanent Select Committee painted the picture of “an angry and frustrated
statesman” who, if cornered in the battlefield with the back against the wall
due to conventional warfare superiority of the NATO powers wouldn’t hesitate
for a moment before pressing “the big red button” as a method of last resort in
order to deter adversaries from smugly gloating on impending downfall of the
nemesis, even if that entails creating a doomsday scenario not only for
belligerents but for the world at large.
CNN reported
March 6 [5] Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley visited a week
before an undisclosed airfield near the Ukraine border that has become a hub
for shipping weapons. The airport's location remains a secret to protect the
shipments of weapons, including anti-armor missiles, into Ukraine. Although the
report didn’t name the location, the airfield was likely in Poland along
Ukraine’s border.
“US European Command (EUCOM) is at the heart of the massive
shipment operation, using its liaison network with allies and partners to
coordinate ‘in real time’ to send materials into Ukraine, a Defense official
said. EUCOM is also coordinating with other countries, including the United
Kingdom, in terms of the delivery process ‘to ensure that we are using our
resources to maximum efficiency to support the Ukrainians in an organized way,’
the official added.”
In an interview with
CBC News [6] on March 8, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that
a Russian attack on the supply lines of allied nations supporting Ukraine with
arms and munitions would be a dangerous escalation of the war raging in Eastern
Europe. “Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is defending itself. If there is
any attack against any NATO country, NATO territory, that will trigger Article
5.”
Article 5 is the self-defense clause in NATO's founding
treaty which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all 30 member
nations. “I'm absolutely convinced President Putin knows this and we are
removing any room for miscalculation, misunderstanding about our commitment to
defend every inch of NATO territory,” Stoltenberg said.
NATO chief said there's a clear distinction between
supply lines within Ukraine and those operating outside its borders. “There is
a war going on in Ukraine and, of course, supply lines inside Ukraine can be
attacked,” he said. “An attack on NATO territory, on NATO forces, NATO
capabilities, that would be an attack on NATO.”
Besides deploying 15,000 additional troops in Eastern Europe
last month, total number of US troops in Europe is now expected to reach 100,000.
“We have 130 jets at high alert. Over 200 ships from the high north to the
Mediterranean, and thousands of additional troops in the region,” NATO
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
told CNN [7].
The Russian military had not targeted weapons shipments once
they entered Ukraine, a US official told CNN, but there was some concern Russia
could begin targeting the deliveries as its assault advances.
On Sunday, March 13, Russian forces launched
a missile attack [8] at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part
of the country. The 360 square-km facility less than 25 km from the Polish
border is one of Ukraine's biggest and the largest in the western part of the
country.
Since 2015, US Green Berets and National Guard troops had
been training Ukrainian forces at the Yavoriv center before they were evacuated
alongside diplomatic staff in mid-February. The training center was hit by a
barrage of roughly 30 cruise missiles launched from Russia strategic bombers,
killing at least 35 people.
Total number of nuclear warheads across the world currently
stands at roughly 13,000: Russia has 5977; NATO has 5943, including 5428 in the
US, 290 in France and 225 in the United Kingdom; China has 350, Pakistan 165, India
160, Israel 90 and North Korea has 20 nuclear weapons, according to the
Federation of American Scientists.
At the height of the Cold War in the sixties, Russia
exploded the world’s largest 50-megaton thermonuclear Tsar Bomba in October 1961.
A Tupolev Tu-95V aircraft took off with the bomb weighing 27 tons. The bomb was
attached to a large parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time
to fly about 45 km away from ground zero, giving them a 50 percent chance of
survival.
The bomb was released from a height of 10,500 meters on a test
target at Sukhoy Nos cape in the Barents Sea. The bomb detonated at the height
of 4,200 meters above ground. Still, the shock wave caught up with the
Tu-95V at a distance of 115 km and the Tu-16 at 205 km. The Tu-95V dropped 1
kilometer in the air because of the shock wave but was able to recover and land
safely.
The 8-km-wide fireball reached nearly as high as the
altitude of the release plane and was visible at almost 1,000 km away. The
mushroom cloud was about 67 km high. A seismic wave in the earth’s crust,
generated by the shock wave of the explosion, circled the globe three times. Glass
shattered in windows 780 km from the explosion in a village on Dikson Island.
All buildings in the village of Severny, both wooden and
brick, located 55 km from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were
destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, wooden houses
were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, and doors. Atmospheric
focusing caused blast damage at even greater distances, breaking windows in
Norway and Finland.
In conclusion, the Ukraine conflict is clearly spiraling out
of control and has the potential not only of dragging NATO powers into the war
but might also spell end to the human civilization by raising the apocalyptic
specter of a catastrophic nuclear war between two formidable nuclear powers
that hold between themselves over 90% of the world’s devastating nuclear
arsenal.
Citations:
[1] Russia
drops the pledge against first use of nuclear weapons:
[2] US
intel says Putin made a last-minute decision to invade Ukraine:
[3] Biden:
Confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III:
[4] Putin
is angry: US intel heads warn Russia could double down in Ukraine:
[5] Mark
Milley visited an undisclosed airfield near the Ukraine border:
[6] NATO
chief warns Russia away from attacking supply lines:
[7] Pentagon
shores up its NATO defenses in Europe:
[8] Pentagon push to send more trainers to Ukraine was scrapped:
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