Joe Biden has arrived in Europe for an emergency NATO summit, the G7 summit and a meeting of the European Council in Brussels on Thursday. It’s safe to say that with things the way they are in Europe at this moment that these are all groups that are thrilled to see the return of sane US leadership and engagement in Europe after the train wreck and colossal embarrassment that was the former administration.
Biden is set to meet with Jens Stoltenberg and others to discuss whether the “allies will agree to provide additional support, including cybersecurity assistance and equipment to help Ukraine protect against chemical, biological, radiologic and nuclear threats.”
These talks arise “because of growing evidence that Russia was in fact preparing to use chemical weapons in Ukraine,” according to the New York Times. That puts us walking down terrain that we have not walked in a very long time.
These are questions that Europe has not confronted since the depths of the Cold War, when NATO had far fewer members, and Western Europe worried about a Soviet attack headed into Germany. But few of the leaders set to meet in Brussels on Thursday ever had to deal with those scenarios — and many have never had to think about nuclear deterrence or the effects of the detonation of battlefield nuclear weapons, designed to be less powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima. The fear is that Russia is more likely to use those weapons, precisely because they erode the distinction between conventional and nuclear arms.
Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, said on Wednesday that if Mr. Putin used a weapon of mass destruction — chemical, biological or nuclear — “there would be consequences” even if the weapon’s use was confined to Ukraine. Mr. Reed said radiation from a nuclear weapon, for instance, could waft into a neighboring NATO country and be considered an attack on a NATO member.
“It’s going to be a very difficult call, but it’s a call that not just the president but the entire NATO Council will have to make,” Mr. Reed told reporters, referring to the governing body of the Western alliance.
“The bottom line is this is a NATO decision,” Mr. Reed said. “It won’t be the president’s decision alone. I don’t think he’d want to take action unilaterally.”
One major issue the Tiger Team is looking at is the threshold that could prompt the alliance to use military force in Ukraine. Mr. Biden has made clear that he is enormously reluctant to to do so, fearing that direct confrontation with Russia could escalate the conflict beyond control. “That’s World War III,” he noted recently.
So Putin is sitting there terrorizing the entire world for his sport. Nobody knows how much of it is a bluff.
A senior administration official said any use of a “small” tactical nuclear bomb by Russia — even inside Ukraine and not directed at a NATO member — would mean that “all bets are off” on the United States and NATO staying out of the war. But when pushed, the official declined to lay out the responses under discussion.
Scenarios are being gamed as we speak. Putin knows all about Article 5, an attack on one NATO member nation is an attack on them all. And it goes without saying that a chemical or nuclear attack on Ukraine, which would cause biologic material or radiation to travel to NATO nations, could be construed as an attack. The big question now is not whether Putin is stupid enough to trigger WWIII but whether he is crazy enough.
Good luck sleeping tonight. I remember all this vividly from 1961 when the Bay of Pigs was happening. I had just turned eight.
As they say, the more things change, the more they are the same.
A story told by the recently deceased Andrew Vachss: he was in Biafra as a volunteer right before that country got blown out of existence. One night, he’s outside during the middle of a bombing run. He finds this kid outside, casually smoking a cigarette. Kid asks him why he’s anxious…it’s not like the bombs can see him. Kid shares the cigarette with him and they watch the rest of the bombs fall around them.
Strikes me as the right attitude, really…we need to prep for the worst even it doesn’t happen. And frankly, I seriously wonder if any chemical or nuclear weapons Putin has are in any better shape than his army.
Nukes are a separate question, and I’ll not delve into it here. NBC (Nuclear, Biological & Chemical) warfare has been an issue for decades. It’s got a different & slightly longer acronym now, no doubt some well placed staff officer in the Pentagon and a civilian counterpart dreamed up the new thing but for most of us and I think current troops it’s NBC.
Here’s a key factor with NBC – protective gear. I recall thirty plus years ago having to drill and drill donning that stuff and it’s no small feat. Screaming Instructors and higher ranking people is nothing compared to the stress of having to don that stuff in a live environment. And using it, trying to fight in it and do something as simple as take a drink of water (and unless it’s freezing you need a LOT of extra water!) is a challenge. It’s bulky as hell, and I’m sure the newer versions are better but not much.
As it happens, back in the 1980s when I was on active duty I got checked out on a bunch of Soviet weapons and gear. As I recall their gas masks weren’t as good as ours but they were okay, athough filters and changeouts were an issue. The suits themselves not so much. One had to wonder how easily their troops could don and fight in them. It was easy with our own gear and ours was clearly better. However, that’s not the main issue I want to raise.
Putin thought there was a good chance Ukraine would capitulate with all those Russians massed on the border but part of him knew he might have to commit his forces to a fight. Given the gentle terrain and good road network it looked to be an ideal setting for what’s called maneuver warfare – where tanks, self propelled artillerty & rocket launchers and towed artillery could within days take over wide expanses of territory against an outgunned foe. On paper Russia seemed to have the edge, at least at first glance. I for one wondered about the apparent strategy of attacking on so many axes, and given a battle toughened Ukrainian military (and reserves) would be defending their home territory if Putin hadn’t spread his forces too thin. Kyiv was always the key, and for me at least twin drives with one coming down from Belarus and the other going straight west between those two disputed regions would have had a much better chance of success.
As we know, Russia’s capabilities were overestimated and Ukraine’s was underestimated and here we are. Why this matters has to do with logistics and supplies. So called “beans and bullets” (the latter including mortar and artillery shells and rockets) as well as fuel are essential and it takes a LOT to support almost 200k troops operating in hostile territory. Putin (I believe) assumed a quick takeover of Kyiv and some other major cities and would have both secure supply lines and the ability to have his troops take whatever the fuck they wanted from Ukrainians.
Here’s what I’m willing to bet was NOT in those supply convoys however. NBC gear. Putin has been making noises for weeks now trying to set up a false flag attack and the timing is what suggests it to me. Ukraine not only wasn’t backing down but inflicting significant losses of Russian troops and equipment! After only a week even Putin could see this was going to be more of a grind than he’d thought it would be, hence his making noises about Ukraine using chemical or biological weapons. I’m also sure he ordered some of his own stuff in those categories to the battle zone and that they are sitting just far enough inside Russia that Ukraine won’t go shelling supply depots.
But, and this is the BIG but Russian soldiers also need NBC gear. I’m not sure they have it, or at least much that’s actually serviceable! Each soldier in an NBC area requires multiple suits as they only last for a few days at best. Remember what I said about Soviet gear during the 1980s? How much do you think they’ve upgraded or even replaced since then. The USSR fell apart, and as we see with their tanks and so much of their other heavy equipment they are using mostly upgraded stuff from that era.
How much do you want to bet that all their NBC gear from the Cold War got stashed away in warehouses after the fall of the USSR? (they never throw anything away) Then ask yourself whether that storage was CLIMATE Controlled. I doubt it. It would take many years of freezing winters and baking summers in those storage facilities for all those boxes full of their NBC gear started to break down to the point where simply taking stuff out of the packaging would cause cracks or even pieces breaking off!
I believe the only reason Putin hasn’t already deployed chem/bio weapons is that someone had the guts to give him some news he didn’t want to hear – that Russia’s own troops would be more vulnerable than Ukrainians because their protective gear is shit.
I agree wholeheartedly with your premise that NATO should plan for the worst. And that I’m sure has quietly included adding NBC gear (it’s more than suits by the way) to what we are sending across the border. I also suspect that given the years of fighting in those dispute eastern regions Ukrainian troops have some NBC gear already and more importantly, unlike their Russian counterparts they actually practice with it. Most of those Russians likely haven’t seen their own gear since boot camp.
It’s a concern to be sure. But perhaps not as great a one as you might think. Heads have been rolling in Russia over their army’s inability to take over Ukraine. Putin either ignored some advice from his military commanders or they lied to him or some combination of the two. I can easily imagine him saying “Go ahead and send chemical and biological weapons to Ukraine and give local commanders authority to use them. And some poor asshole clearing their throat and saying “Sir, there’s a problem with that…” Again, look at the timing of the first purging of his military leadership team. Well, that’s enough on this for now.
The above is why I think this will be over quicker than people realize. More and more, I keep thinking that this is going to end like the Twilight Zone episode “The Mirror” with all the above in mind. Anyone trapped in this heavy a paranoia spiral mixed with genuine defeats is not long for this world.
Thank you Denis, for bringing up some vital practical matters regarding these bogey-man weapons Putin’s threatening to loose upon Europe. I doubt that many people have even considered protective gear and the logistical nightmares of employing it. And yessir, NATO would most definitely have to take a wind-borne cloud of radio-activity arriving across its borders as an act of war; the citizens in its path would insist.
There’s a small part of me that kind of wishes Putin would go ahead and do it. And let the fallout drift over Belarus (Putin’s ally) and/or Turkey (which has been trying to broker a peace agreement and is a NATO member) just to see if either or both of those countries suddenly change their attitudes toward Putin.
At the same time, I’m seriously hoping Putin is not that insane. We know from past experience that Putin doesn’t really care about his own people (ask the hostages who managed to survive the Moscow theater situation or the survivors of the Beslan school siege); if he has to lose a few hundred/thousand/hundred thousand people to get his dirty work done, he’ll gladly sacrifice them.
NATO and the EU might be relieved to have steady/stable leadership in the U.S. again but I would bet the top question in their collective minds is: “for how long”? I’m positive we do not have the trust we once had with these folks. Not after the previous admin. and they probably were not too thrilled with the W. admin. either. Actually, this might have been a question for quite a while now. We are no longer dependable that much is certain.
Which, I suspect, is why Uncle Joe is keeping the US as out of this as he has and letting the Ukrainians take the lead. Deny the enemy a narrative that divides and complicates things and your job becomes much easier.
If I may be indulged for a moment, this is also why I grow weary, sick and outright irritable to everyone screaming about how we need to pull some direct moves that will absolutely worsen all this. Too many of them are using their outrage to do the thinking, a mistake the Trump era did nothing to discourage them from. You give into that in a situation like this, you get even more people killed. I personally blame the fact that it has been a LONG time since most Americans saw a conventional war and so are unused to people dying in these kind of numbers as part of the grind. You do what you can to keep the casualties small but you’re never going to stop the dying completely while the shooting’s going on.
I was a child when the Cuban misdike crisis occurred, in college during the Vietnam War. This is worse. The closer he comes to.losing,the more dangerous Putin becomes unless he is taken down. My.money is on the oligarchs and poison. This war is hurting their bottom.line and costing them.millions. They can’t access funds outside Russia. Their yachts and properties are being confiscated. Ukraine is bad for business. I trust human greed.