Former CIA analyst Ray Mc Govern, in a column posted on Antiwar.com today, takes note of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement of Dec. 9 that Russia is considering changing its nuclear doctrine to allow for the preventive use of nuclear weapons. “Such a change,” McGovern writes, “would align Russia’s nuclear posture with Washington’s own strategic doctrine and, at one stroke, make the world far more dangerous.”
McGovern warns: “Western pundits have been largely silent on this. Those few who have mentioned it speak of `saber rattling’ by Putin—bluffing. I would not be so cavalier.”
He explains why: “Putin’s highly unusual remarks leave no doubt that Russia views the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine as the kind of existential threat that President John Kennedy perceived, when Moscow installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Those missiles were capable of hitting, within minutes, Washington and the Strategic Air Command in Omaha.” U.S. missiles in Europe represent an even graver threat now to Moscow, McGovern stresses. “For readers who have missed this, U.S. missile capsules already emplaced in Romania and Poland—ostensibly for `ABMs’—can accommodate overnight what Russia calls `offensive strike missiles’—with even shorter launch-to-target time—than those Kennedy strong-armed Khrushchev to remove from Cuba, under threat of nuclear war.”
