The Pentagon refuses to say whether Joe Biden even informed it of his reckless decision to allow the strikes, which the DoD has strenuously opposed, reports Joe Lauria.
The Pentagon seems to have been kept in the dark about a decision that could lead to a third world war. (Joe Lauria)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Ukraine on Tuesday fired six U.S. ATACMS missiles into Russian territory just two days after outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden gave them permission to despite a Russian warning of a potential U.S.-NATO war as a result.
Ukraine says its attack before dawn targeted an ammunition dump not in Kursk, which Biden had authorized, but in neighboring Bryansk, a region in southwest Russia, 110 kilometers from neighboring Ukraine’s border.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down five of the six ATACMS. According to The New York Times, a representative of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the strike hit depots containing “artillery ammunition, including North Korean ammunition for their systems, guided aerial bombs, antiaircraft missiles and ammunition for multiple-launch rocket systems.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V Lavrov told a press conference: “The fact that multiple ATACMS were used last night against the Bryansk Region signals that they [in the West] want escalation. You see, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles without the Americans, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly said this.”
On Monday, the Kremlin spokesman had reiterated Putin’s warning that because NATO personnel were required to fire such missiles it meant NATO would enter into direct war with Russia, changing the meaning of the conflict. That has now happened.
November Surprise
As a result Biden is risking what he had previously warned would be “World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine,” he told reporters in March 2022 when he listened to the Pentagon and overruled his secretary of state Antony Blinken on a NATO no-fly zone.
Then just two months ago, in September, Biden deferred to Pentagon realists by opposing long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia for fear it would lead to a direct NATO-Russia war with potentially unimaginable consequences.
And yet now, in a kind of November Surprise, after American voters resoundingly sent his party packing from the White House, a dishonorable Biden, with just weeks to go in power, is at the roulette wheel piling humanity’s chips high on the table to save his reckless Ukraine gamble and to make it that much more difficult for incoming president Donald Trump to end the war.
And when the war ends with the inevitable Ukrainian defeat Biden can then blame Trump and try to get himself off the hook for the disaster he created. [See: On Way Out Reckless Biden Allows Deep Russia Strikes]
Did the Pentagon Even Know?
Whereas the Pentagon twice before restrained Biden from starting a direct war with Russia, this time it seems he didn’t even tell the Defense Department, defying it with his extraordinarily irresponsible move.
Asked point blank by reporters on Monday whether Biden had consulted with the brass before unleashing Ukraine with the ATACMS, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh repeatedly dodged the question.
“Q: So the White House has not notified the Pentagon that they’ve allowed Ukraine to start doing long range strike?
DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SINGH: I just don’t have anything to add to the reporting over the weekend.
Q: But can you confirm that the Pentagon, like that Biden let Secretary of Defense Austin know that this is greenlighted now?
DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SINGH: I cannot confirm the reports and I cannot go into more details about the reporting. All I can tell you is that in terms of your second question on the ATACMS, we over the course of different presidential drawdown packages, we have provided Ukraine with, you know, ATACMS. Our support for Ukraine, you know, continues with different PDAs. But when it comes to the reporting that you’re referencing from over the weekend, I just don’t have more to provide at this time.”
The ATACMS the Pentagon provided previously were for use only within the pre-2022 borders of Ukraine, not to be shot into Russia. Perhaps Singh couldn’t provide any more details beyond the weekend’s reporting because the Pentagon may have only learned of this momentous decision by reading about it in the paper like everybody else.
Russian Restraint Until Trump Takes Over?
Will Moscow resist following through on its warning to hit back at NATO targets until Jan. 20, when Trump takes over and possibly withdraws permission from Ukraine? It may depend on how many ATACMS Ukraine is given and how intense the strikes are.
Biden is evidently among those in NATO who thinks Putin is bluffing. With these ATACAM strikes today the 8-week president thinks he’s calling that bluff, playing poker with the future of humanity. As it happens, on Tuesday, the very day of Ukraine’s strikes, Putin unveiled Russia’s new nuclear war doctrine with two major changes.
The first says: “An aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies of any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state will be regarded as their joint attack.” That clearly would include Ukraine.
The second significant change reads: “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear arms and/or other weapons of mass destruction against itself and/or its allies … if such an aggression creates a critical threat for their sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.”
The language “critical threat” was substituted for when “the very existence of the state is in jeopardy,” lowering the bar for using a nuclear weapon.
All this was brushed off by the White House in a statement from the U.S. National Security Council that said it had observed “no changes to Russia’s nuclear posture.” In a chilling article presaging a world sleep walking into nuclear annihilation, David Sanger of The New York Times wrote:
“It was telling that the reaction in Washington on Tuesday was just short of a yawn. Officials dismissed the doctrine as the nothingburger of nuclear threats. Instead, the city was rife with speculation over who would prevail as Treasury secretary, or whether Matt Gaetz, a former congressman surrounded by sex-and-drug allegations though never charged, could survive the confirmation process to become attorney general.
The Ukraine war has changed many things: It has ended hundreds of thousands of lives and shattered millions, it has shaken Europe, and it has deepened the enmity between Russia and the United States. But it has also inured Washington and the world to the renewed use of nuclear weapons as the ultimate bargaining chip. The idea that one of the nine countries now in possession of nuclear weapons — with Iran on the threshold of becoming the tenth — might press the button is more likely to evoke shrugs than a convening of the United Nations Security Council.”
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.