U.S. response to Putin’s ‘bluff’

US saw the value of force to achieve peace. Their logic was ‘deterrence’ to force the other side to fall to its knees.

The issue is no longer Ukraine, which is just a pawn in the eyes of proxies Russia and United States-NATO. The issue is the possibility of nuclear war based on the moves of these proxy giants. Russia reiterated its threat of taking the nuclear option right after it suffered heavy losses in a recent Ukrainian counteroffensive near the capital Kyiv.

When Russia is "cornered," it will surely take the nuclear option because, for them, it is a threat to the security of the entire nation. But the US is dangerously taking this threat as a "bluff," which Secretary of State Antony Blinken branded as "totally hollow" and "loose rhetoric" in an interview with the US TV program 60 Minutes. Blinken issued a veiled threat, "the consequences are very clear," without giving details (CBS News, 25 September 2022). In other words, the US-NATO response is void of any effort toward reconciliation or dialogue.

The EU feels the "bluff" is real. Joseph Borrell, EU foreign policy expert, said, "(The EU must take) Putin's nuclear threats seriously. Certainly, it's a dangerous moment because the Russian army has been pushed into a corner" (BBC, 25 September 2022). A headline by The Guardian read, "Putin again flirts with the grim prospect of nuclear war. This time, he might mean it (25 September 2022)."

The catalyst to nuclear war revolves around the fact that the US is now involved directly in the war in Ukraine, sending HIMARS missiles by remote control from a secret command center deep in the US continent. They are eyeball-to-eyeball digitally. If "cornered," Putin may have several options: Take out the command center in the US continent with either ICBMs or smart hypersonic missiles, nuclear or conventional, or silent Electro Magnetic Wave bombs to jam and paralyze HIMARS signals; or destroy with a precision power laser the satellite controlling the HIMARS. All these powerful Russian weapons are on operational mode. (Read more: "Can HIMARS Trigger a Nuclear War?"

https://tribune.net.ph/2022/09/23/can-himars-trigger-a-nuke-war/)

Asked what would be the reply of the US to Putin's "bluff," US President Joe Biden simply said, "Don't, don't, don't." Asked to be more specific in US efforts to prevent World War 3, Blinken failed to answer the question, and simply said, "No one (Russian people) is telling Putin that he is doing the wrong thing," implying there is no such plan to prevent WW3, no sincere effort toward peace. Everyone, the two proxies, are all on a "war footing."

Blinken admitted that Biden had been talking to Putin without elaborating on details. In truth, back-door diplomacy between US and Russia is fast disappearing. Perhaps it will be opened only at the last minute if a nuclear war is imminent.

As of now, Putin and Biden are talking through the media to get international support by condemning the enemy. This is the worst for foreign diplomacy to achieve peace and reconciliation. Zelensky ambiguously said that he did not believe Russia would use nuclear weapons, but did not rule out the possibility.

The US foreign policy culture of speaking from a position of superiority dates back to the "successes" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW2. The US saw the value of force to achieve peace. Their logic was "deterrence" to force the other side to fall to its knees. From then on, American foreign policy started using sanctions, intimidation, threats and the strategy of "regime change" to replace their enemies with inside friends or puppets.

Right after the fiasco of Russian defeat against Ukrainian counteroffensive, Putin announced escalation rather than concede defeat, what The Guardian considered as Russia's "biggest escalation of the Ukraine War." First was the planned referendum on getting support from ethnic Russians in four areas within the Russian-occupied Donbas region, which was labelled by The Guardian as a justification for "annexation."

Mark Galeotti, the West's Russian political analyst, said that Russia's referendum goal was for "the West and Ukraine to accept Russia's territorial gains." Blinken said the referendum was a "sham" to install a puppet government. Residents argued that the referendum was valid in a predominantly decades-old Russian ethnic enclave, forced to the rule of a reportedly CIA-assisted westernized Ukrainian regime.

The second escalation was Putin's plan to recruit and mobilize the Russian citizenry for 300,000-man troops, which shocked the West. However, troops, whether well-trained or not, are becoming less important in a remote digital war of hypersonics, attack drones, unmanned stealth submarines, smart super-torpedoes, and other satellite-driven weapons.

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