Top Russia Expert: Ukraine Joining Nato Would Provoke Nuclear War

Stephen Cohen is one of America’s top experts on Russia.  Cohen is professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University, and the author of a number of books on Russia and the Soviet Union.

Cohen says that the West is mainly to blame for the crisis in Ukraine:

This is a horrific, tragic, completely unnecessary war in eastern Ukraine. In my own judgment, we have contributed mightily to this tragedy. I would say that historians one day will look back and say that America has blood on its hands. Three thousand people have died, most of them civilians who couldn’t move quickly. That’s women with small children, older women. A million refugees.

Cohen joins other American experts on Russia – such as former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock – in this assessment.

Cohen also says that if Ukraine joins NATO, it will lead to nuclear war:

[Interviewer:] The possibility of Ukraine in NATO and what that means and what—

STEPHEN COHEN: Nuclear war.

[Interviewer:] Explain.

STEPHEN COHEN: Next question. I mean, it’s clear. It’s clear. First of all, by NATO’s own rules, Ukraine cannot join NATO, a country that does not control its own territory. In this case, Kiev controls less and less by the day. It’s lost Crimea. It’s losing the Donbas—I just described why—to the war. A country that does not control its own territory cannot join Ukraine [sic]. Those are the rules.

[Interviewer:] Cannot join—

STEPHEN COHEN: I mean, NATO. Secondly, you have to meet certain economic, political and military criteria to join NATO.

Ukraine meets none of them. Thirdly, and most importantly, Ukraine is linked to Russia not only in terms of being Russia’s essential security zone, but it’s linked conjugally, so to speak, intermarriage. There are millions, if not tens of millions, of Russian and Ukrainians married together. Put it in NATO, and you’re going to put a barricade through millions of families. Russia will react militarily.

In fact, Russia is already reacting militarily, because look what they’re doing in Wales today. They’re going to create a so-called rapid deployment force of 4,000 fighters. What is 4,000 fighters? Fifteen thousand or less rebels in Ukraine are crushing a 50,000-member Ukrainian army. Four thousand against a million-man Russian army, it’s nonsense. The real reason for creating the so-called rapid deployment force is they say it needs infrastructure. And the infrastructure—that is, in plain language is military bases—need to be on Russia’s borders. And they’ve said where they’re going to put them: in the Baltic republic, Poland and Romania.

Now, why is this important? Because NATO has expanded for 20 years, but it’s been primarily a political expansion, bringing these countries of eastern Europe into our sphere of political influence; now it’s becoming a military expansion. So, within a short period of time, we will have a new—well, we have a new Cold War, but here’s the difference. The last Cold War, the military confrontation was in Berlin, far from Russia. Now it will be, if they go ahead with this NATO decision, right plunk on Russia’s borders. Russia will then leave the historic nuclear agreement that Reagan and Gorbachev signed in 1987 to abolish short-range nuclear missiles. It was the first time nuclear—a category of nuclear weapons had ever been abolished. Where are, by the way, the nuclear abolitionists today? Where is the grassroots movement, you know, FREEZE, SANE? Where have these people gone to? Because we’re looking at a new nuclear arms race. Russia moves these intermediate missiles now to protect its own borders, as the West comes toward Russia. And the tripwire for using these weapons is enormous.

One other thing. Russia has about, I think, 10,000 tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called battlefield nuclear weapons. You use these for short distances. They can be fired; you don’t need an airplane or a missile to fly them. They can be fired from artillery. But they’re nuclear. They’re radioactive. They’ve never been used. Russia has about 10,000. We have about 500. Russia’s military doctrine clearly says that if Russia is threatened by overwhelming conventional forces, we will use tactical nuclear weapons. So when Obama boasts, as he has on two occasions, that our conventional weapons are vastly superior to Russia, he’s feeding into this argument by the Russian hawks that we have to get our tactical nuclear weapons ready.

Former Polish president – and famed anti-communist activist – Lech Walesa agrees that the U.S. and Nato’s arming of Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war

Cohen also notes that the West has entered into an agreement to cover-up what happened to Malaysian airlines flight 17, because Russia was not responsible:

Comments

[Paveway IV]

A long-standing doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is going to make it narly impossible for any superpower to be the first to pull the trigger - tactical or otherwise. You can always find a retired American or Russian general to warn everyone that the next provocation will send the nukes flying. And they've been wrong for the last forty or fifty years (knock on wood). 

You should be much more worried about the threat to your life from in-place nukes. Zaporizhie Nuclear Power Plant is Europe's largest - six massive one gigawatt Russian VVER PWR reactors. It sits on the South shore of the Kahovskoe Reservoir of the Dneiper River about two hours West of Marioupol or an hour NorthWest of Melitopol. Like Chernobyl's Pripyat, the Zaprorozhye NPP has a small city of it's workers next to it: Enerhodar. The plant is a good 25 miles South West of Zaprorizhia City proper. 

What's that got to do with the situation in Ukraine? Well, one of the oligarch clan heads, Igor Kolomoisky, went rogue from Kiev and announced he was taking over the military operations in South Central Ukraine. Think of a big triangle with the tip at Dnepropetrovsk and the bottom corners at Odessa and Marioupol. Zaporizhia NPP is right in the middle of that.  A little over a week ago when Kolomoisky enacted his so-called Plan B, he went to the DneproGES hydroelectric dam just North of Zaporizhia and ordered the workers to either prepare to have the dam blown up or to have charges set in order to blow it up if the separatist militia makes it to Zaprorizhie and takes it over. Blowing the dam means no power and the city (and militants) go for a swim. Scorched earth policy, I guess.

The DneporoGES is on the Dnieper River. Blowing that dam would send a torrent of water down the Dneiper, into Zaporizhia and across the relatively shallow Kohovskoe Reservoir downstream. Zaporizhie NPP probably wasn't built with tsunamis in mind and may not even have plans for simultaneous loss of on-site and off-site power. It may survive, or you might end up with six simultaneous meltdowns. That would easily dwarf Fukushima and Chernobyl - combined. Even if the plant survived the initial wall of water, the downstream Kohovskoe Dam probably would not. As a result, the Kohovskoe Reservoir either empties or turns into a shallow swamp, either way a particularly bad situation for the six reactors that depend on it for cooling. Bonus radiation hazard: about thirty or forty years of spent fuel rods stored on site. The reactors could survive but the spent fuel could go up like a few tens-of-thousands of Roman candles. 

You can worry all you want about Putin letting the Topol-M's fly. Personally, I'm not. He doesn't seem particularly insane.

Igor Kolomoisky, on the other had, is a typical psychopathic Ukrainian-Jewish oligarch. Think Sampson option: if he can't have his toys (DneporoGES station) then nobody will. I'm sure he's not the kind to think through the risk of flooding the Zaporizhia NPP, but he could probably care less. I'm sure he doesn't want the separatists to get the nuclear plant either - it generates about a fifth of all the electricity in Southern Ukraine today. 

Think Ukraine is lying and covering up the facts of MH-17 now? You ain't seen nothing yet. If Zaporizhia NPP melts down, you won't know about it in North America until your face starts melting off.

[Reptil]

You are correct. Blowing the dam would halt an offensive. Stalin did it in 1941: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-9h9DRrQvg

[Arnold]

MAD is gone, thanks to you.

Trophys to all participants.

[old naughty]

"A long-standing doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is going to make it narly impossible for any superpower to be the first to pull the trigger - tactical or otherwise."

Ever wonder why the trigger (and all them at the end of the wire) exists? And all those generation plants built and leaked?

"They" need their "food" !

And as awakening are more and more, the other food (fear) subsides...so they hike all their tactics, including likely, god-forbid nuclear war..

btw, no one can help us, only us can help us.

So, how to deal with "fxck the EU"?