Former CIA chief Petraeus drew attention in an interview. Should Russia use nuclear weapons, the US and its NATO allies would “eliminate every Russian conventional unit that we can see and identify on the battlefield.”
David Petraeus isn’t just any old ex. The retired four-star general led US troops in Iraq, was NATO supreme commander in Afghanistan and ultimately director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Despite his resignation in 2012 in the course of a betrayal affair, the 69-year-old is not only well connected in Washington and still enjoys a high reputation internationally. Now Petraeus has outlined a scenario of how the Western military alliance would react to an escalation in Russia’s Ukraine war.
Petraeus told host Jonathan Karl on ABC’s This Week Sunday night that the nuclear threat must be “taken seriously.” That is why the United States sent Russia its answer to a possible use of tactical nuclear weapons via several channels.
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It would look like this: all conventional Russian troops on the battlefields of Ukraine would be disabled. This applies to Ukraine, Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet. However, a response from NATO and the USA would be “non-nuclear for nuclear”. One does not want to get into a nuclear escalation, Petraeus continued, but it has to be shown that this can in no way be accepted.
Since Ukraine is not a NATO member, Petraeus clarified, it would not be a case of an alliance under Article 5. But it could still be justified, if only because “it’s so terrible that there has to be an answer.” Regarding the war as a whole, Petraeus said that the leadership in Moscow was “desperate”. It could always get worse for Putin and Russia. But even the use of a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield would not change that.
Petraeus had already said in an interview with “Bild” at the end of July, when the public still seemed hopeless, that he thought it possible that Ukraine could take back areas occupied by Russia in the war of aggression. “Indeed, it seems increasingly likely that Ukrainian forces could recapture much, if not all, of the territory captured by Russian forces over the past few months,” he said at the time, and was proved right.
“If NATO and other western states continue to allocate resources at the current pace, … I believe the Ukrainian forces will be able to stop further Russian advances and begin to retake the territories captured by the Russians since February 24 “, says Petraeus.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that given the Russian president’s “nuclear saber-rattling,” there was a “risk” that Putin might consider such an attack. However, he immediately added that he did not currently see any indication “of an imminent use of nuclear weapons”.
In an interview with FOCUS online, Russia expert Gerhard Mangott from the University of Innsbruck cannot rule out that a cornered Putin will exhaust all military means should the war develop into a complete disaster for him. “That also means ordering the use of tactical nuclear weapons,” warns Mangott. “What happens then, no one can seriously estimate.”
