Breaking NATO Solidarity, Iranian Drones & the Continuing Nuclear Threat

Breaking NATO Solidarity, Iranian Drones & the Continuing Nuclear Threat

As Ukrainian Resistance Stiffens

“The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a

lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...It sounds horrible to me.” 

 Donald Trump during a July 25, 2019 phone call with Ukraine’s President, in which timely delivery of Javelin missiles was being put on hold pending Ukraine’s willingness to investigate the Biden family.

Ukraine is a fairly large nation, about the size of France, with a population of about 40 million and a GDP (in normal times) of slightly more than half a trillion dollars. The people are well-educated, and the country used to have a reasonably modern infrastructure. As one of the leading grain producers in the world, Ukraine’s food exports were once the mainstay of many nations facing increasing food insecurity.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a now liberated and independent Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for a treaty wherein Moscow guaranteed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In 2014, Vladimir Putin severely violated that treaty by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, resulting in a litany of Western sanctions against Russia. Still, Russia made tons of money from the West, with much of Europe still relying on Russian oil and, particularly, natural gas… leverage which Russia still holds against nations like Germany where a cold winter threatens with the most expensive gas heating in the Western world. As fossil fuel prices soar, this inflationary problem is now a global political issue.

Ukraine built up its military forces to deter further Russian territorial claims, particularly in eastern Ukraine (bordering Russia), and the United States was most willing to supply upgraded weapon systems to Ukraine (some as aid, mostly as a sale to Kyiv). Unfortunately, in an infamous telephone call (see excerpt above) between then-President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky – which resulted in Trump’s impeachment – Ukraine’s military preparedness was accordingly delayed. That pro-Russian vector seems to have resurrected in the MAGA GOP recently, as both GOP Senate and House leaders are warning us that they are not willing to continue an open supply of military hardware to Ukraine if they gain control of Congress in the mid-term elections.

As isolationist movements in the European Union are increasingly winning more parliamentary representation, that anti-Ukraine voice is gaining, but nowhere is that more obvious that in Hungary, where “Russia's war in Ukraine is presented by [strongman PM, Viktor Orbán’s] Fidesz-controlled media as the fault of the US. While the prime minister has occasionally referred to ‘Russian aggression,’ the conflict is presented as a superpower battle, provoked by Nato attempts to encircle Russia - an argument used by Vladimir Putin to justify going to war.

“At the same time, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto holds regular meetings with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and with the directors of Russia's state-run companies Rosatom and Gazprom, to secure continued nuclear and gas supplies.

“To encourage people to take part in the national consultation, and give the ‘correct’ answers, the government put up giant billboards all over Hungary this week… ‘The Brussels [NATO] sanctions are destroying us,’ is the message, with a bomb labelled ‘sanctions’ sailing through the air. The Momentum opposition party has made a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority that the ad breaches ethical guidelines… Government media either fail to report or under-report the damage that sanctions have caused the Russian economy.

“The same authors assumed a rapid Russian victory, and now seem non-plussed by Ukrainian advances on the battlefront. Hungary's remaining independent or opposition media cover the situation on the ground in detail.” BBC.com, October 20th. The United States has officially denounced this campaign, reminding Hungary that is a NATO member bound by treaty to support properly approved NATO objectives. But the war is anything but a smooth predictable event.

Even as Iranian drone strikes have been particularly cost-effective, bringing down large portions of Ukraine’s power generating capacity, even as a harsh winter approaches, Ukrainians have never been more solidly willing to resist hated Russia. I certainly hope that the US can help stop Putin in this theater of conflict, preventing an escalation in his open ambition of reuniting what was once the Soviet Union… which could only be accomplished by force and intimidation.

But Putin’s territorial ambitions, which could envelop even the former Soviet Baltic states that are now members of NATO, are not the worst horrible the world faces. Yale University Professor Emeritus, Paul Bracken, in Yale Insights (October 11th): “The declared U.S. approach is to act as if nuclear use [even more limited tactical nukes as shown above] is ‘unthinkable,’ and not get drawn into intricate discussions that would only spook the European allies. But let me assure you, behind the scenes the Joint Chiefs of Staff are thinking and planning about responses to Putin if he should use nuclear weapons. In other words, there’s a big difference between declaratory and real U.S. strategy…

“What are the consequences for the world if tactical nuclear weapons are used on the battlefield?... Russia would be condemned by nearly everyone, and extreme U.S. economic and military actions would be taken. For example, the world would refuse to honor any Russian passport, and Russian overseas bank accounts would be frozen. There would be attacks on the Russian Navy, and major cyber strikes on their power grid and pipelines. The CIA would try to foment revolt in ethnic sub-regions of Russia, and to unwind Moscow’s alliance with Central Asia countries.

“It would get really dangerous, far more than anything we’ve seen before. Putin, if he wasn’t assassinated, could raise the stakes with a limited nuclear missile strike on Europe. Here, we’re really on the doorstep of the unthinkable.” Any escalation involving nuclear weapons is an existential threat, one that only a cornered madman could envision. Like a very unstable Vladimir Putin, for example.

I’m Peter Dekom, and despite the hardliners in the Kremlin, one would hope that real soldiers on the ground, generals who know what the risks really are, would not obey an order to implement such a nuclear strike… but this is little more than a hope.