Former Chief of Staff of Germany’s Bundeswehr (2000-2002) and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (2002-2005, Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.), had stark warnings of the present danger of nuclear war in an interview given to Alexander Wallasch, posted on Wallasch’s site on March 15.
Responding to Wallasch’s question of how close the world is to nuclear conflict, Kujat, who had been the highest military official in NATO, responded: “We just got away with the Cuban Missile Crisis because there were two politicians who acted with common sense and who were able to assess the risks correctly. That was Kennedy and Khrushchev. Both sides were willing to compromise at the time. That is not the case today. There are no politicians who are really able to assess the risks as they are, who have the sense to avert them and who are willing to make compromises.”
Kujat noted that while Russian officials like Dmitry Medvedev have raised the issue of the use of nuclear weapons in the Russian public and in the media, and that Ukraine has called for the preventive use of Western nuclear weapons, that “Putin himself has spoken very cautiously.”
“He [Putin] said we [Russians] are not crazy, we know exactly what a nuclear war means. We will only use our nuclear weapons if we are under nuclear attack. But even with a conventional attack, when the very existence of the country and the Russian people is at stake, the Russian leadership would consider using nuclear weapons first.”
