Washington – Joe Biden again feels allies and partners to continue to “coordinate a united response” after the conditions dictated by Vladimir Putin in the first peace talks with Kiev, from the recognition of Russian Crimea to the demand for a neutral and demilitarized Ukraine. AND tries to isolate Russia during a rare emergency meeting of the UN general assembly, where the world “counts”. At the same time, the American president tightens the economic grip by blocking all transactions of the Russian central bank and takes seriously the alert of the Russian nuclear forces, studying the options on the table. For now, the US has not detected specific movements: the bombers have not left their hangars and have not been equipped with atomic bombs, nor have the submarines left their ports with nuclear weapons. While intercontinental ballistic missiles are always ready on both sides by virtue of the strategy of “mutual assured destruction” which has so far avoided nuclear exchanges even in the worst moments of the Cold War.
For this reason the Commander in chief has chosen the ‘de-escalation’ and not to raise the alert level of the armed forces, the so-called Defcon, which in its scale from 1 to 5 could have reached level 3, after having touched the level. 2 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and at the beginning of the First Gulf War. Washington is also trying to restore a direct link at the level of chiefs of staff to avoid miscalculations (or design) fatal. But concern is skyrocketing over this “further and unnecessary escalation move” by Russia, even though it “is not under threat”, as US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield denounced. Especially since in recent years Moscow has adopted a doctrine that lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, without excluding a short-range missile with limited power. The fear is that of a Russian version of ‘Doctor Strangelove’.
Biden’s entourage also questions Putin’s state of mind, a leader hitherto considered pragmatic, calculating and cunning. But former National Intelligence chief James Clapper has already said in public what some American leaders are saying privately about the ‘Tsar’ after his attack on Ukraine: “Personally I think he is unstable, I’m worried about his mental clarity and his balance “. His nuclear threat “heightens the fear that his grip on reality is loosening,” echoed Graham Allison, the Harvard professor who wrote a scholarly text on the Cuban missile crisis. Meanwhile, the UN general assembly, which began with a minute of silence, discusses a motion condemning Russia with the aim of the largest possible majority, after Moscow’s veto in the security council. Beijing remained cautious, urging to avoid “a new cold war based on blocs in which everyone would have to lose.” Ukrainian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya instead read what he explained were the text messages from the smartphone of a Russian soldier who died in the war. “Mom, it’s so difficult,” reads one of the messages from the soldier before he was killed.
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