Ten months after Russia invaded Ukraine and two years into the disaster-prone Biden presidency, there’s no denying the world is at a greater risk of nuclear escalation — not just in Eastern Europe, but also on the other side of the world in the South China Sea.
A majority of Americans overwhelmingly don’t want to go to war with Russia over Ukraine, especially as the conflict escalates to nuclear levels. Yet, objective reality indicates that, under President Joe Biden’s leadership, the U.S. is not only committed to an indefinite proxy war, but has only increased its contemplation of the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Just this week, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, admitted that at the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, he believed the chance of nuclear war to be zero. Now, he knows that the possibility of using nuclear weapons has changed.
“Look, Ukraine is a tragedy of monumental proportions, but it could actually be worse because if you asked me a year ago when this war began, ‘What are the chances that it will degrade to tactical nuclear weapons,’ which is sort of a longer way of saying, ‘entering nuclear weapons,’ I would have told you zero,” Netanyahu told Chuck Todd on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” “Today, I would still say that the odds are very low but they’re not zero. And that could be the greatest tragedy of all because in three quarters of a century, we have not crossed that threshold. We must not cross that threshold.”
Netanyahu isn’t the only one who thinks the world is much closer to nuclear conflict now than before. A majority of Americans, 69 percent, say they are “extremely” or “somewhat” concerned that the world could experience a thermonuclear war within the next five years. That number is up 8 percent since November 2021.
Even corrupt corporate media are willing to acknowledge the risk of nuclear war is “now a daily issue for the Biden administration.”
What they refuse to admit, however, is that Biden’s leadership (or lack thereof) has significantly contributed to that increased threat. Instead of questioning Biden’s penchant for escalation, the propaganda press blames Vladimir Putin not just for his own aggression but also for any failures of the American president.
It’s true that Putin’s wartime rhetoric and actions are not short on portending nuclear disaster, but neither are Biden’s.
“First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” Biden told attendees at a Democrat fundraiser in New York in October. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
Biden’s comments paired with the tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars flowing to Ukraine demonstrate that he is not backing down. As a matter of fact, Biden and his administration have done nothing but reassure Americans who say they don’t trust the Democrat to handle this conflict well that if Russia goes nuclear, the U.S. will too.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed that the White House is not above escalation in the form of retaliatory nuclear assault when he staunchly refused to deny that the U.S. would enter a war with Russia if Putin deployed nuclear weapons.
That was after he promised that “any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia.”
“We have communicated directly, privately, and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia, that the U.S. and our allies will respond decisively, and we have been clear and specific about what that will entail,” Sullivan said on “Face The Nation” in September.
White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby similarly confirmed that “the stakes are very high right now.”
The Biden administration hasn’t just signaled the willingness to go nuclear, it has also enabled Putin to escalate with nukes if he wants to. By signing off on Nord Stream 2, Biden helped give Putin the hegemonic confidence he needed to make a power grab in Ukraine.
“Nothing is going to stop them [Russia] now marching deeper into Ukraine, because their gas pipeline system — I mean the Ukrainian one — is going to be redundant pretty soon after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is completely established and fully operational,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki predicted in June of 2021.
Similarly, it was Biden’s laxity with China that opened the door for Xi Jinping to further follow through on his own hegemonic desires. Despite Jinping’s recent demonstrations of weaponry, the Biden administration still has made no formal announcement about defending Taiwan against China’s expansion, with Biden instead making off-the-cuff declarations that are quickly walked back by his staff. In the meantime, China is stockpiling hundreds of nuclear warheads.
There’s no denying the Biden administration’s history of seriously discussing nuclear aggravation. Yet, the media deliberately leaves the White House out of their finger-pointing. That decision is especially insulting given the press’s treatment of former president Donald Trump when it came to nukes.
For more than four years, the media and their Democrat allies accused Trump of bringing the world closer to the brink of nuclear war, only to be met with four years of peace. Contrast that with months of Trump accurately noting that the Biden administration’s dangerous pivot towards escalation has the potential to lead us straight into a nuclear conflict with dire consequences.
“We have to be very smart and very nimble. We have to know what to say, what to do. And we are saying exactly the wrong thing. We’ll end up in a World War III,” Trump said at an October rally in Arizona. “We must demand immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in World War III and there will never be a war like this. We will never have had a war like this and that’s all because of stupid people that don’t have a clue. And it’s also because of the kind of weaponry that’s available today.”
During another October rally, Trump warned his followers about the “n-word”– “nuclear.”
“The N-word is the nuclear word, and the nuclear word is something that’s not supposed to be discussed. You don’t talk about it. You don’t talk about it, but Putin’s been talking about it,” Trump said.
Instead of taking Trump’s warnings about the threat of nuclear war under Biden seriously, The Washington Post used the moment as an opportunity to accuse Trump of flirting with racism.
As my colleague John Daniel Davidson noted in April, “The chances that Putin will accept total defeat in Ukraine without escalation that involves the use of nuclear weapons, or that involves widening the war, are probably lower than most Americans are comfortable with.” Meanwhile, Xi Jinping in China is asserting power over his own people and over his country’s neighbors more aggressively too.
Putin isn’t backing down anytime soon and the Biden administration, as it has publicly made clear, isn’t either. Unless someone gives, the U.S. could be doomed to a nuclear tit-for-tat war with Russia over Ukraine, which Biden is doing nothing to stop. And while the Biden administration is busy dealing with Russia and depleting U.S. defense resources for Ukraine, Xi Jinping has pledged his willingness to take “all measures necessary” to expand the Chinese Communist Party’s rule to Taiwan.