Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ talk edges beyond bounds of US intel

Oh yeah, he said that yesterday in an off-the-record, on-the-record talk at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser.

Biden veered into talk about Ukraine at the end of his standard fundraising remarks, saying that Putin was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”

This is WaPo:

Generally, the right venue to warn that we face the biggest threat of Armageddon in 60 years wouldn’t seem to be a political fundraiser. But for whatever reason, that’s where President Biden on Thursday night decided to offer some of the scariest comments uttered by a U.S. president in decades.

...“first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use of the nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

To my knowledge, that is a statement of fact.
...
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,”...

“We’ve got a guy I know fairly well. He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapon"...

No, Putin is not joking. Is he BLUFFING, though?

Chief's problem with it is the venue:

But why roll out this kind of talk at a political fundraiser?

“There is no example since 1962 that comes even close to the concrete threats that Putin has been making,” said Paul D’Anieri, an expert at the University of California at Riverside on the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. ...
...
...the threats to use nuclear weapons are very much out in the open [now]. D’Anieri noted that in none of the post-1962 examples “was there serious talk by serious people that nuclear weapons might be used. In that sense, today’s situation really is unprecedented.”
...
Biden’s national security team for months has warned that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced a series of strategic setbacks on the battlefield. But the president’s remarks were the starkest warnings yet by the U.S. government about the nuclear stakes.

One U.S. official said Biden was also trying to warn against underestimating the danger any level of tactical nuclear weapons. 

Back to AP:

There’s some concern in the administration that Russia has determined it can use its nuclear arsenal in a manner short of a “full-blown” nuclear attack on Ukraine and face only limited reaction from U.S. and Western allies... 

There is fucking more than "some concern" about Russia's use of tactical nukes. It's in their fucking military doctrine and American officials have been gaming scenarios on a response. I fucking hope that their games are for "only a limited reaction." If Russia nukes Kyiv, we're going to nuke Moscow? Come on now.

 On the point of tactical nukes Al Jazeera:

[Biden] challenged Russian nuclear doctrine, warning that the use of a lower-yield tactical weapon could quickly spiral out of control.

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” Biden added.

On that the president is wrong.  Of course there is. If I try to kill you with a knife does that mean I'm going to try to kill you and everyone on your block with a machine gun?

...

WaPo, cont.

 “I believe that Biden is historically inaccurate in comparing the present global danger with the global danger during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then, there was a real danger of escalation to a global thermonuclear war that could bring humanity within minutes to Armageddon dimension. ... That danger was by far greater than the dangers of the present moment."--Avner Cohen, a historian who wrote about the dangers of the use of nuclear weapons by Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

Yes, BUT. The U.S. and Soviets primarily only had ICBM's; tactical, or theater, nukes, much less exotic variants, had not been developed yet. HELD: Biden did not err in starkly stating the contingency of Putin's use of nuclear weapons. ALSO HELD: He did worryingly conflate the danger of tactical with strategic nukes.