Russia would pay 'severe price' for chemical weapons attack - US
The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Russia will pay a “severe price” if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.
He told US TV network CBS’s Face the Nation that any
attack on NATO would trigger a full response by the alliance – and that
they were looking at the potential threat of a chemical weapons attack.
Sullivan added that they were in direct contact with Moscow to warn against any move.
He said: “The use of weapons of mass destruction would be a shocking additional line that [Russian president Vladimir] Putin is crossing in terms of his assault on international law and international norms.”
What could "severe price" mean? The language is identical to that used by the Bidens previously if Russia invaded Ukraine. What more could be done except a military response?
"Putin counted on a divided NATO" the president tweeted yesterday. His national security advisor is precisely aligned with the president.
I am glad that Washington and Moscow still have the ability to communicate directly.
“The use of weapons of mass destruction would be a shocking additional line..." I filter that statement through my own lens. Of course I have no idea if Sullivan or official Washington see it similarly: I don't see how we can go back from this, especially if, as Sullivan states, there is the additional Russian "different-ness" of the use of WMD. In my view it is not remotely plausible, even "eventually", to go back to some kind of normal interrelationship with Russia. I agree with my betters George Kennan, William J. Perry, John Mearsheimer, and Thomas L. Friedman (although they are the minority), that the United States and NATO fertilized the fields in which Putin's paranoia grew so luxuriantly and, reasonably concatenated, the result was the invasion of Ukraine. I agree with Fiona Hill on these
points: that Russia had "legitimate security concerns" over NATO's post-Soviet expansion eastward, that right up until the invasion, European security arrangements could still have been reconfigured through negotiation to address Russia's concerns. In the event NATO rejected even the concept, the Bidens concluded that the Russian negotiation stance of coupling a settlement of Ukraine with a new European security architecture was entirely a sham, that what Putin wanted and has always wanted, is an entire rollback of NATO, an eviction of the United States from Europe. Whether it was sincere or a sham I disagree with Kennan that it is wrong for the West to say at this juncture, "Toldja! Russia always had designs on Europe." I don't think that that kind of unspooling to reach an alternative reality is going on, at least not in the minds of those in Europe and America who are deciding what to do now. Rather it is clear that the invasion has worked a gestalt shift in Western minds. The decades of economic, trade and diplomatic integration of Russia into the European and world economies are seen to have been futile and were reversed in a weekend. I agree with Friedman that however the history is viewed, "this is still Putin's war." In my view it is not remotely plausible to, even "eventually", go back to some kind of normal interrelationship with Russia. It seems to me that the West is done with all that for all time and intends to create a permanent Planet Russia, separate and apart from the West. This is what I think should be done. We have work to do. The United States is at a strategic nuclear disadvantage vis-a-vis Russia. The bulk of our nuclear warheads are under water in submarines where they are far less accurate in hitting intended targets. Russia has incorporated the use of tactical nuclear weapons into her military doctrine; we have not changed our nuclear doctrine from MAD. We have no defense to their hypersonic delivery vehicles and have none of our own. We are extremely more vulnerable to a cyberattack than is Russia, precisely because we are so "wired." That has been the case since the Obama administration and we have not been made more secure since. Similarly to electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. The Bidens have concluded as above with regard to Russian intentions toward Europe, which include us, as we are the principal guarantor of European security and would, and perhaps will shortly if we don't reign in the Poles, become involved in World War III with Russia, in which event all of the aforementioned Russian exoticies would be used against us. Work to do, indeed.
