Russia needs to prepare for the use of nuclear weapons in order to win the global confrontation with the West that has unfolded on Ukrainian fronts.
This is the conclusion reached by Sergei Karaganov, research director of the Department of World Economy and World Politics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics and honorary chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, as reported by the PolitNavigator correspondent.
In an article published by Profil, he points out that Russia faces a stark choice because “the confrontation with the West will not end if we achieve a partial or even a crushing victory in Ukraine.
This confrontation will divert Russia from the necessary movement to the East, he said.
What is happening is unthinkable in terms of previous notions of nuclear deterrence – the ruling circles of a group of countries in a fit of desperate rage have unleashed a full-scale war in the underbelly of a nuclear superpower.
Fear of nuclear escalation must be restored. Otherwise humanity is doomed. It is not only, and not even so much what the future world order will be like in the fields of Ukraine that is being decided now. But whether the world as we know it will be preserved at all or whether radioactive ruins will remain on the planet, poisoning the remnants of humanity.
By breaking the West’s will to aggress, we will not only save ourselves, finally freeing the world from a Western yoke that has lasted five centuries, but we will also save all of humanity. By pushing the West towards catharsis and the abandonment of its hegemony by its elites, we will force it to retreat before world catastrophe strikes. Humanity will get a new chance for development,” the author believes.
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He proposes “restoring the credibility of nuclear deterrence by lowering the unacceptably high threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, moving cautiously but quickly up the deterrence-escalation ladder”.
It could come down to warning compatriots and all people of goodwill to leave their homes near facilities that could become targets of nuclear strikes in countries that provide direct support to the Kiev regime. The enemy must know that we are ready to deliver a preemptive strike of retaliation for all its current and past aggressions to prevent the slide towards a global thermonuclear war,” the expert writes.
He believes that only a madman in the US White House would dare “to strike a blow in ‘defence’ of Europeans, inflicting retaliation, sacrificing conditional Boston for conditional Poznan.
The ‘Ukrainian scenario’ cannot be repeated. We did not listen for a quarter of a century to those who warned that NATO expansion would lead to war; we tried to delay, to “negotiate”. As a result, we ended up with a serious armed conflict. Now the price of indecision is an order of magnitude higher.
But there is still a good chance that it will be possible to win, to reason with the enemy without extreme measures, to force him to retreat. In a few years’ time, we could take a position behind China’s back, as it is now behind ours, supporting it in the fight with the United States. Then this fight can be avoided without a big war. And we will win together for the benefit of everyone, including the people of Western countries,” Karaganov concludes.
Political observer Andrei Perla believes that Karaganov’s article, which was reprinted by Russia in Global Affairs magazine, a website close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, signifies a “tectonic shift” in Russia’s global politics.
Because Karaganov is not an ‘expert’ or a ‘war correspondent’ or a ‘public opinion leader’ there. Not the owner of a popular Telegram channel. He is the founder of the Russian Council for Foreign and Defence Policy. That is, it could only have been said more officially by Sergey Lavrov or Vladimir Putin personally.
So, the use of nuclear weapons to deter US and NATO aggression is indeed on the agenda. For which we have to congratulate ourselves,” writes Perla.
Political scientist Pavel Danilin, on the other hand, does not quite agree with his colleagues.
I would join both Andrei Perla and Sergei Karaganov in their pathos that it is necessary to make it clear to the West that it is a game-changer. If conventional means don’t work, you can/should make it clear with nuclear weapons too. It would join if the Beskydy tunnel was destroyed, if locomotive depots and generating substations were burning and bridges over the Dnieper were blackened by dips…
But there is no such thing. Why then are we shaking the air about ‘making the West understand’?”, Danilin puzzled