Essentially the most sobering briefing I acquired as White Home nationwide safety adviser got here on my third day in workplace, Sept. 20, 2019. I sat within the Scenario Room with navy officers and ran by way of the what-ifs and procedures for continuity of presidency and retaliation choices within the occasion of a nuclear assault on the U.S. or certainly one of our treaty allies.
The concept in 2022, a everlasting member of the United Nations Safety Council would use nuclear weapons to overcome a neighboring nation is unthinkable. But right here we’re. For months, Russian officers and commentators have been rattling their nuclear saber and touting Moscow’s doctrine of “escalating to de-escalate”—in different phrases, if Russia is shedding a warfare, even one it began, it reserves the appropriate to make use of a nuclear assault to finish it.
