US prepared for ”nonnuclear” response if Russia used nuclear weapons against Ukraine – NYT

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In late 2022, the White House was so concerned that Russia might launch a nuclear strike against Ukraine that US President Joe Biden’s administration created several task forces to develop a response plan.

Source: The New York Times (NYT), citing anonymous US officials

Details: Administration officials told the NYT that the United States’ countermove would have to be “nonnuclear”, though they also said that there would have to be “some kind of dramatic reaction”, including the possibility of a conventional attack on the units that had launched the nuclear weapons.

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Otherwise, Biden’s administration worried, the US would risk emboldening not only Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also every other authoritarian leader with a nuclear arsenal, large or small, the NYT reported.

“Some believed that the public warnings Russia was making that Ukraine was preparing to use a giant ‘dirty bomb,’ a weapon that spews radiological waste, was a pretext for a pre-emptive nuclear strike,” the NYT reported.

The “wargaming” at the Pentagon and at think tanks around Washington imagined that Putin might use a tactical weapon, possibly followed by a threat to detonate more, in a variety of different circumstances.

One simulation envisioned a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that would imperil Putin’s hold on Crimea; another involved a demand from Moscow that the West halt all military support for Ukraine in order to split NATO.

During a meeting in November 2022, William Burns, CIA Director and former US ambassador to Russia, told Sergei Naryshkin, Head of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, that “there would be clear consequences for Russia”.

It is unclear how specific Burns was about the nature of the US response, but Burns said that “Naryshkin swore that he understood and that Putin did not intend to use a nuclear weapon.”

Background:

• On 9 March, CNN reported that the US began “preparing rigorously” in late 2022 for a possible Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine.
• During an address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on 29 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation had been put on full alert and threatened NATO with “tragic consequences” if member states sent their own forces to fight in Ukraine.
• The US State Department criticised Putin’s claims about the threat of a nuclear war, saying that the US currently sees no threat of Moscow using nuclear weapons.

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