A New York Times report that the United States has been providing real time intelligence to the Ukrainian army with the specific purpose of killing Russian generals brings America a long step closer to actual war with Russia.
This also means a risk of nuclear war that is now greater than it has ever been, even perhaps during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Biden administration and the U.S. establishment need to ask themselves just one question: If the position were reversed, how would the United States react to a third country deliberately helping to kill U.S. commanders?
As this indicates, there are in fact many ways that Russia can abandon its restraint so far and retaliate for the killing of its generals: cyber attacks on key Western infrastructure (widely predicted, but so far non-existent); the targeting with missiles and drones of U.S. offices and personnel in Kiev; the assassination of U.S. diplomats, military personnel, and intelligence officers in other countries; and warning shots aimed at NATO supply lines in Poland.
Any of these actions would create a fierce reaction in the United States, and no-doubt renewed calls for a no-fly zone, enforced by fighters flown out of NATO bases in Poland. These bases would then be subject to missile attack by Russia, even as U.S. planes over Ukraine were being shot down by missiles based in Russia itself. Russia would also very likely declare its own no-fly zone over much of the Baltic Sea.
Two things would then probably happen: the United States and the West would lurch towards mutual nuclear annihilation; and seeing this, France, Germany, and other NATO members would break ranks with Washington and seek a peace agreement.
To ward off this threat, the Biden administration must move immediately to assure Russia that U.S. strategy is to help defend Ukraine, but not to impose a complete defeat on Russia and use this to weaken or destroy the Russian state.
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