Anyway, in case if there's a confusion, and I think there is, it's about foiling a nuclear strike in first place, before it could take place.
That's the request, and it's pure fantasy to think it would work.
Russia's nuclear arsenal, like that of the US, is designed to be survivable: missiles on road mobile launchers, missiles on trains, missiles on submarines, bombs on aircraft on alert, missiles in hardened silos.
The US undoubtedly knows where many, but not all, are at any given time. Of those it knows about, some strikes will succeed, and some will fail.
And then Russia will turn around and use all of the surviving weapons in a nuclear strike on the US and Western Europe, causing World War 3 and killing millions of people. And they would be morally justified in doing so, because it's the response to a US attack, which is a valid casus belli.
The thing about a preemptive strike on a nuclear power is that you have to destroy all of the nuclear weapons or you lose. And there is 0% chance of the US being able to destroy all of Russia's nuclear weapons before they can use them.
It's not about eliminating the entire Russian arsenal but merely foiling what people believe can be some sort of a very small Russian tactical nuclear strike (maybe even with a prior warning about the target to be nuked, like let's say an isolated strategic bridge or an air base, if the Russians want to not look the worst doing it), instead of reacting to it with a NATO air campaign in Ukraine post fact. A conventional pinpoint attack based on precise intelligence, assuming there's such.
Think about like how Israelis only demolished the Iraqi and Syrian reactors with the F-16 raids or assassinated several key Iranian scientists over the decades (one recently, with a remote controlled gun), instead of going all in and destroying everything and killing everyone related to the programs at once.
But what he does really mean is for NATO to speak to Russia in the clear terms, not still diplomatically as in before February 24 when the merely vague warnings didn't work. And there's a good chance that actual direct threats of doing what they did would have been enough for Putin to stand down and thus defused the initial crisis. The "Zapad-21 exercises" would have finally ended, Russian troops would went back to their bases as they were officially supposed to (long overdue), and that would have been all of it if they just plainly said what's in the cards and also managed to showed they're not bluffing (because they/we really weren't bluffing and were serious about it), properly talking like you should speak to an elderly former Leningrad gangster without pretending they deal with some kind of a politician.
That's like with Saddam and Kuwait in 1990. The Americans didn't comprehend how Saddam was too isolated and "too stupid" (that's a quote from the later Congress hearings) to correctly understand their diplomatically wrapped warnings, with none of his terrified underlings daring to tell him. Putin's similarly both isolated and stupid, even if he doesn't have people from his meetings hauled out and shot outside right away like Saddam did.
Yeah, Russia is not Iraq or Syria. It's a nuclear power. It's just not within the realm of possibility that Russia would "back down" if the US or Western European power were to launch a military strike against it. That's simply not how great powers ever have or ever will work. It would demand retaliation. An attack on a nation's nuclear deterrent would almost certainly prompt a nuclear strike in response.
America (under Trump, who also wasn't a pussy like Obama in that he started slowly arming Ukraine) already smashed Russian military forces (back then still pretending to be a "private military company" but they stopped pretending since, they're the GRU component answerable almost directly to Putin through only his fellow "former" gangster Prigozhin while bypassing the Stavka) in the very same Syria and there was no nuclear response (nor any other). Because they respect strength and fear the strong (to quote Putin's famous saying, "the weak get beaten", he thought Biden would be weak like Obama).
Ukraine is "invading the Russian soil" (post-annexation) and still there's no nuclear response (and probably won't be, people have feared it since the beginning, but making totally clear we're going to let it happen will ensure it in fact won't happen).
That's the request, and it's pure fantasy to think it would work.
Russia's nuclear arsenal, like that of the US, is designed to be survivable: missiles on road mobile launchers, missiles on trains, missiles on submarines, bombs on aircraft on alert, missiles in hardened silos.
The US undoubtedly knows where many, but not all, are at any given time. Of those it knows about, some strikes will succeed, and some will fail.
And then Russia will turn around and use all of the surviving weapons in a nuclear strike on the US and Western Europe, causing World War 3 and killing millions of people. And they would be morally justified in doing so, because it's the response to a US attack, which is a valid casus belli.
The thing about a preemptive strike on a nuclear power is that you have to destroy all of the nuclear weapons or you lose. And there is 0% chance of the US being able to destroy all of Russia's nuclear weapons before they can use them.
It's not about eliminating the entire Russian arsenal but merely foiling what people believe can be some sort of a very small Russian tactical nuclear strike (maybe even with a prior warning about the target to be nuked, like let's say an isolated strategic bridge or an air base, if the Russians want to not look the worst doing it), instead of reacting to it with a NATO air campaign in Ukraine post fact. A conventional pinpoint attack based on precise intelligence, assuming there's such.
Think about like how Israelis only demolished the Iraqi and Syrian reactors with the F-16 raids or assassinated several key Iranian scientists over the decades (one recently, with a remote controlled gun), instead of going all in and destroying everything and killing everyone related to the programs at once.
But what he does really mean is for NATO to speak to Russia in the clear terms, not still diplomatically as in before February 24 when the merely vague warnings didn't work. And there's a good chance that actual direct threats of doing what they did would have been enough for Putin to stand down and thus defused the initial crisis. The "Zapad-21 exercises" would have finally ended, Russian troops would went back to their bases as they were officially supposed to (long overdue), and that would have been all of it if they just plainly said what's in the cards and also managed to showed they're not bluffing (because they/we really weren't bluffing and were serious about it), properly talking like you should speak to an elderly former Leningrad gangster without pretending they deal with some kind of a politician.
That's like with Saddam and Kuwait in 1990. The Americans didn't comprehend how Saddam was too isolated and "too stupid" (that's a quote from the later Congress hearings) to correctly understand their diplomatically wrapped warnings, with none of his terrified underlings daring to tell him. Putin's similarly both isolated and stupid, even if he doesn't have people from his meetings hauled out and shot outside right away like Saddam did.
Yeah, Russia is not Iraq or Syria. It's a nuclear power. It's just not within the realm of possibility that Russia would "back down" if the US or Western European power were to launch a military strike against it. That's simply not how great powers ever have or ever will work. It would demand retaliation. An attack on a nation's nuclear deterrent would almost certainly prompt a nuclear strike in response.
America (under Trump, who also wasn't a pussy like Obama in that he started slowly arming Ukraine) already smashed Russian military forces (back then still pretending to be a "private military company" but they stopped pretending since, they're the GRU component answerable almost directly to Putin through only his fellow "former" gangster Prigozhin while bypassing the Stavka) in the very same Syria and there was no nuclear response (nor any other). Because they respect strength and fear the strong (to quote Putin's famous saying, "the weak get beaten", he thought Biden would be weak like Obama).
Ukraine is "invading the Russian soil" (post-annexation) and still there's no nuclear response (and probably won't be, people have feared it since the beginning, but making totally clear we're going to let it happen will ensure it in fact won't happen).