Fear of Putin: There is no escalation to nuclear war

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov is not exactly considered a reliable source of truth.

After declaring for the second time that Russia will only use nuclear weapons in a conventional war if the country's very existence is threatened (but not in Ukraine), more and more people seem to believe that for once he was telling the truth .

That's true, because it confirms what Russian military doctrine provides.

It remains a mystery why the Western nations - especially Germany - have been worried about a nuclear attack by Russia for weeks.

The trigger was a statement by Putin, according to which the alert level of the strategic nuclear attack forces should be increased by one level.

What that meant became clear last week when the airmobile operations centers for a strategic war were checked to see if they could fly and refuel easily.

These are routine drills that the US hosts every few months.

As for the medium-range weapons aimed at Europe, the intelligence services have not been able to detect any alarms.

German Fear strikes hesitant US President

Where does this panic fear of the use of nuclear weapons, which is currently affecting people in Germany, come from?

We Germans like to bathe in apocalyptic scenarios, that was already the case during the anti-nuclear movement, the peace movement and recently also with climate protests.

Factual and balanced assessments of risks are difficult to convey in Germany.

But in this case the keywords come from somewhere else.

The starting point is the White House, where an extremely risk-averse American president rules, surrounded by advisors who think in terms of the old Cold War and prevent him from doing more to defend Ukrainians against Russian invasion.

Deliveries of combat aircraft and the presence of Western troops in Ukraine are rejected with the indication that this could result in a world war, at the end of which there is a risk of nuclear weapons being used.

If it were 1982 and the then Soviet Union had invaded Finland, that policy would have been wise.

At that time there were 20 Red Army divisions in Central Europe and, together with the Warsaw Pact, could have triggered an extensive invasion of Western Europe, which would have ended in the use of nuclear weapons.

But the 20 Red Army divisions are gone, as is the Warsaw Pact.

Russia currently has no escalation options other than isolated cruise missile attacks against targets in NATO territory.

But this option would be toxic for Russia, as it could result in NATO's massive intervention in Ukraine.

Then there would still be the nuclear option, but Putin shies away from that because then he would have to deal with nuclear counter-threats.

The United States guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Given the weaknesses of Russian troops in Ukraine, this obligation should give an American president reason to instruct his generals to work out options for American forces to intervene in Ukraine.

These options could be aimed at making it more difficult for Russian troops to continue their campaign without direct clashes between Americans and Russians.

Russia has no interest in an escalation

Unfortunately, the opposite is true: in a hearing in the US Congress last week, generals were asked what was so critical about the delivery of MiG-29 interceptors to Ukraine.

The answers were pathetic.

The MiG-29 aircraft, according to one of the generals, would be able to reach Moscow within minutes.

The signal effect is therefore dangerous.

Considering that Ukraine already uses MiG-29 fighters and none of them could be observed on the way to Moscow, this argument is false.

The second argument was even weaker: airfields in Poland or Germany, from which MiG-29s departed for Ukraine, should expect to be fought from afar.

The same applies here: Russia is currently not interested in an escalation, because this would only lead to the situation of the Russian troops in Ukraine becoming untenable.

The people of Ukraine pay the bill for this fear with their lives.

Future historians will regard President Biden's reluctance to be as big a mistake as the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the implications for the West's image as a community of democratic states that protects the international, rules-based order and human rights are also incalculable.