The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) released a new memorandum on Antiwar.com May 1 addressed to President Joe Biden and entitled “Intel Vets: Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-Invented.”
“The growing possibility that nuclear weapons might be used, as hostilities in Ukraine continue to escalate, merits your full attention,” the memo warns. “For almost 77 years, a common awareness of the awesome destructiveness of atomic/nuclear weapons created an (ironically stabilizing) balance of terror called deterrence. Nuclear-armed countries have generally avoided threatening to use nukes against other nuclear-armed countries. Putin’s recent reminders of Russia’s nuclear weapons capability can easily fit into the category of deterrence. It can also be read as a warning that he is prepared to use them in extremis....
