“Arguing that, yes, the U.S. should still police the world is Bret Stephens. Stephens is an opinion columnist for The New York Times and editor in chief of Sapir. As a foreign affairs columnist of The Wall Street Journal, he was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. And he is the author of America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.
Bret was joined by James Kirchick, contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, writer at large for Air Mail, and contributing writer for Tablet. He is the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. He is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Arguing that no, the U.S. should not still police the world is none other than Matt Taibbi. Taibbi is a journalist, the founder of Racket News, and the author of 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers.
Matt was joined by Lee Fang. Lee is an independent investigative journalist, primarily writing on Substack at LeeFang.com. From 2015 to 2023, he was a reporter for The Intercept.”
Ukraine fired long range missiles into Russia proper earlier today. Read BBC report here:
Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused Washington of trying to escalate the conflict.
“That Atacms was used repeatedly overnight against Bryansk Region is of course a signal that they [the US] want escalation,” he said.
“And without the Americans, use of these high-tech missiles, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has said many times, is impossible.”
He said Russia would “proceed from the understanding” that the missiles were operated by “American military experts”.
“We will be taking this as a renewed face of the Western war against Russia and we will react accordingly,” he told a press conference at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro.
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Putin lowers the threshold for using his nuclear arsenal after Biden’s arms decision for Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons, a move that follows U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russian territory with American-supplied longer-range missiles.
The new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine fired six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles early Tuesday at a military facility in Russia’s Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, adding that air defenses shot down five of them and damaged one more. Ukraine’s military claimed the strike hit a Russian ammunition depot.
While the doctrine envisions a possible nuclear response by Russia to such a conventional strike, it is formulated broadly to avoid a firm commitment to use nuclear weapons and keep Putin’s options open.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that the Ukrainian strike in Bryansk marked an escalation and urged the U.S. and other Western allies to study the modernized nuclear doctrine.
Russia’s reaction to the prospect of ATACMS strikes
The news that the United States will allow Ukraine to use its missiles to hit targets inside Russian territory was an unpleasant surprise for Russia’s leaders on Sunday evening. It is by no means certain that it will hand Ukrainian forces a significant advantage on the battlefield, but Vladimir Putin has previously said that he would regard such a move as equivalent to the US directly entering the war. According to The Bell’s sources, that is not just rhetoric — the Kremlin leader genuinely does see it that way. Now that it has become a reality, Moscow is searching for a response.
The US decision to permit Ukraine to strike at Russia’s internationally recognized territory with long-range ATACMS missiles has not yet been announced publicly by any administration official. However, on Sunday evening several US media outlets reported simultaneously, citing administration insiders, that the green light had been given — and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky also referenced it cryptically in his evening address. The Kremlin did not respond right away, but on Monday, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the US decision injected a “significant new round of tension” into the conflict. Hours later, the foreign ministry said the decision radically changes the nature of the conflict and said Moscow would respond “appropriately and palpably”. Both directly referred to Putin’s speech of Sep. 12, when he spoke at length about the potential consequences of such a decision.
At that time, Putin’s statement came in response to a New York Times report (which on that occasion turned out to be premature) that Biden might allow Ukraine to use ATACMS to strike deep into Russia. Putin said such a move “would mean that NATO countries — the US, European countries — were at war with Russia.” He added that Ukraine is not capable of carrying out such strikes by itself and that NATO personnel would have to enter the flight assignments and targets for the missiles. His words were indirectly backed up today by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who explained Germany’s refusal to supply Ukraine with its own long-range Taurus rockets was because Germany would have to take part in setting up the strike parameters — helping with targeting — something that was unacceptable to Scholz.
Judging by TV broadcasts, Russian propaganda appears to be in a holding pattern — awaiting further instructions on how to respond. So far they have adopted something like “moderate nuclear threat” mode. Leading state TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, whose main weekly show was prepared ahead of the news, inserted a quick segment about a possible Russian response into a section about Joe Biden’s talks with European leaders at this week’s G20 in Brazil. “It could be anything, it’s not for nothing that we revised our nuclear doctrine,” Kiselyov said. The on-duty hawks, such as lawmaker Andrey Gurulyov, warned there “might be nothing left of America.” However, such threats have long been standard on Russian TV.
A source familiar with the Russian leadership’s thinking told The Bell that within the Kremlin the mood behind closed doors is very much that “NATO has gone to war with us” and they are proceeding from that basis. At the very least, Russia will step up its strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, as well as on government agencies. But there could be more radical options, The Bell’s source suggested.
Russia was already escalating its aerial attacks even before news came from Washington. Through Saturday night and into Sunday morning, Russian forces launched one of their largest mass missile and drone assaults since last winter, targeting Ukraine’s electricity grid with 120 missiles and 90 drones. But that was not the end. Hours later a missile hit an apartment block in the city of Sumy, killing 12 people, and then on Monday, Russia launched a missile strike on a residential quarter of Odesa, killing another 10. Russia’s logic is clear — it’s trying to hit Ukraine as hard as possible to force it into negotiations that it hopes Donald Trump will broker.
Why the world should care
The two months before Trump’s inauguration will be tough for Ukraine and anxious for the rest of the world. Russia will seek to raise the stakes as much as possible ahead of any talks in order to sap Kyiv’s morale and advance its own hardline demands. It’s hard to say at this stage how serious the latest Russian threats about a response are.
Ian was a senior officer at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019, at a time when UK-Russia relations were particularly tense. He performed a number of roles in Moscow, including as Head of Chancery, Economic Counsellor – in charge of advising UK Ministers on economic sanctions – Chair of the Crisis Committee, Director of the Diplomatic Academy for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Vice Chair of the Board at the Anglo-American School. He oversaw the Embassy’s preparations for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia and rebuilt embassy staffing structures following the mass expulsion of staff that followed the March 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack.
Many western commentators are frantically predicting the imminent onset of World War III following Joe Biden’s decision to permit the use of US ATACMS missiles inside of Russia. The Russian media and political establishment will undoubtedly respond furiously to this move. But much depends on how the missiles are used. With a Trump Presidency on the horizon on a mandate to end the war in Ukraine, I believe Putin will be measured in his response.
Republican commentators have condemned the move by Biden as escalating risk of WWIII
Unlike in 2016, there has been fairly widespread condemnation from supporters of Trump at Biden’s move, which has been viewed as a blatant escalation. Donald Trump Junior went to X to claim the Biden administration was trying to ‘get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.’ Other Republican politicians including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia have echoed the World War 3 warning. Venture Capitalist and Trump Support David Sacks asked if Biden’s goal was ‘to hand Trump the worst situation possible?’
Biden copies Obama’s final move, to break up the diplomatic ground for an incoming Trump Presidency
Biden’s move was designed to make the diplomatic terrain harder for Trump to navigate on Ukraine policy.
Putin will view it in those terms too.
He will remember that President Obama pulled a similar – though less dangerous – stunt during this final days in office. In one of his final foreign policy moves Obama announced sanctions against Russia for alleged election meddling, and expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the USA. This prompted a frenzy of reporting about how Putin might respond, much like we have seen over the past twenty-four hours. In the end, Putin chose not to respond and, instead, he paused to see where US policy would go under the incoming administration President Trump.
ATACMS decision not as significant as it appears as Zelensky’s hands still tied
Biden’s decision is an extension of the decision from May to allow limited use of US HIMARS systems to hit military installations in the borderlands of Russia to reduce attacks on Kharkiv. Zelensky won’t have weapons free to strike at will within Russia. While escalatory, it is not as significant as it seems.
The indications coming out of the US administration are that the ATACMS missiles may only be used to quell an expected major Russian assault on Ukrainian formations dug in in Kursk oblast.
Biden’s decision an attempt to help Zelensky save face after blunder of Kursk offensive
Ukraine has lost around half of the territory in Kursk that it occupied during its audacious raid in August. Clinging on to that territory until peace talks inevitably happen to end the war, Zelensky has said, will allow him symbolically to trade Russian land for Ukrainian land occupied by Russia. Since the Kursk offensive, Ukraine has lost more land to the relentless, grinding Russian advance in the Donbas, which takes small steps most days. Losing the foothold in Kursk will reveal what many commentators already point out, that the Ukrainian incursion was a strategic blunder by Zelensky that won’t change the outcome of a war he is losing. So, a US decision to permit the use of ATACMS at best is an attempt by the Biden Administration to help Zelensky save face.
Russia’s response will depend on actual ATACMS strikes
With the use of ATACMS entirely dependent on US intelligence and targeting, it is unlikely that the outgoing Biden administration will permit wider attacks outside of the Kursk theatre or in military centres that are in range of Kursk. However, we have yet to see how the missiles will be used and Putin will take his cue from that, rather than acting pre-emptively.
Putin will have to respond in some way
However, and despite the use of HIMARS already inside of Russia, Putin will have to reciprocate in some way, having said on screen in St Petersburg in September that he would. He doesn’t have the political space not to act.
Putin has been here before and probably won’t overreact
Putin knows that a major Russian retaliation that targeted US military or other assets would make it far harder for Trump to sue for peace between Russia and Ukraine, as he has promised to do. I assess it unlikely that Putin would escalate to a nuclear level on the back of what is essentially a tactical change in western weapons’ use. He won’t want to close off any space that Trump has to negotiate, which is Biden’s aim in taking the ATACMS decision.
While he has the resources and political support to continue bleeding Ukraine white, the war in Ukraine still comes at a significant economic and human cost to Russia. Trump offers a potential off-ramp that would leave Putin in a better position that he was in March 2022, when the US and UK blocked the Istanbul peace agreement.
Putin will be happy for Russian state commentators to whip up the risk of over-escalation
As happened in late 2016, Putin will undoubtedly encourage Russian talking heads to sow panic in the western media about a Russian over-escalation. That will give him space to respond in a moderate way and illuminate the western press as hysterical and Russophobic, a common attack line.
More likely, he will:
up strategic attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine;
possibly target NATO weapons’ distribution hubs in Poland;
make a limited and pre-signaled strike on a US military facility in Europe or elsewhere.
The risk to the UK and France
There are signals that the UK and France are following America’s move in possibly authorising the use of Storm Shadow and Scalp Cruise Missiles inside of Russia. I believe the same limitations on targeting would apply, as above. The same risks of a limited Russian strike on UK and French assets therefore apply.
However, the bigger risk is that a Trump Administration will reverse the decision on ATACMS use inside of Russia, leaving both countries on a limb in which Ukraine still hits Russia with their weapons while Trump pushes for peace talks between Zelensky and Putin.
That will mean France and Britain have a bigger climb down from their position of unquestioning support for war in Ukraine, when ceasefire talks start. In Britain in particular, that may increase pressure on the government’s enormous spending on supporting the ongoing war, at a time when taxes are taking a massive hike and the cost of living crisis continues. There is more scope for France to pivot its position within the EU, which will be unable to match US financial military support for Ukraine if Trump pushes, instead for peace.
Keir Starmer has already got off to a bad start with Trump but sending Labour party activists to support the Harris campaign. He risks leaving the UK increasingly isolated and irrelevant on Ukraine policy. Plus ca change!
For now, don’t expect World War III to start overnight. Keep calm and carry on pressing for this mindless war to end.
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RT: Republicans condemn ATACMS use for strikes deep inside Russia
The US, along with France and the UK, has reportedly permitted Kiev to use long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia. The French SCALPs and British Storm Shadows have a range of about 250 kilometers, while the new American ATACMS can reach up to 300 kilometers. In response, Trump’s team accuses the Biden administration of escalating tensions and bringing the world closer to a larger conflict. RT’s senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev reports on this significant escalation.