Sunday, March 13, 2022

May You Live In Interesting Times

That led a stunned Witt to ask, "What's your assessment today of NATO's ability to fend off Russia militarily?" 
"It is enormous," he replied. "The Russians would be squashed if they tried to attack Poland, Romania, never mind a massive movement to take Western Europe. It's not even in the cards. However, what is in the cards is that NATO has now pulled itself together in dramatic fashion. I think the Biden's team been brilliant in the way they handled this, moved forward as an alliance, not as a U.S. unilateral move." 
"I think we're going to see that across the board, Putin put himself in a strategic disaster. the problem is, how are we going to act to end this intense suffering in Ukraine? A huge nation, 40 million people, when the fighting in Kyiv gets intense and in the coming weeks it's going to be painful to watch," he continued. 
"Where's your level of fear that Vladimir Putin might try to use tactical nuclear weapons?" the MSNBC host asked. 
"I think it approaches zero," the retired general replied. "I cannot imagine a lieutenant colonel in the Russian Air Force telling Mr. Putin, this is a good idea. We have tactical nuclear weapons sitting on boomer submarines of the U.S. Navy that within 15 minutes could respond to a tactical attack. No one in their right mind thinks you can win a nuclear conflict." 
"The Russians have written their doctrine that says escalate to de-escalate. mumbo jumbo," he added. "They nuke, what? Ukrainian forces, Polish forces, U.S. forces and then say now we want to talk? I don't think he's even remotely going to do that. If there was a giant nuclear exchange, it would be armageddon for the civilized world."
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned China on Sunday that they probably shouldn't try and "bailout" Russia or skirt the sanctions. 
"We will ensure that neither China, nor anyone else, can compensate Russia for these losses," Sullivan told NBC. "In terms of the specific means of doing that, again, I’m not going to lay all of that out in public, but we will communicate that privately to China, as we have already done and will continue to do."
And since it’s Sunday:

1 comment:

  1. So if NATO gets pulled into Tinpot's War there needs to be a perceived benefit. What about Kaliningrad? Shouldn't that be part of Lithuania as an open city with equal access to both Germany and Russia? Is Russia really worthy of being the successor state to the Soviet Union? Doesn't Ukraine deserve to have Russia's permanent seat on the UN Security Council as the true successor to the Soviet Union? If having nuclear weapons is the only qualification for a permanent seat on the security council, shouldn't it be expanded to include North Korea and a few other pariah states?

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