Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, who is now the President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, claims that the United States should prepare for a nuclear strike against Russia if Putin should launch a nuclear strike in Ukraine and the nuclear fallout or radiation stretches into a neighboring NATO country.
According to Daalder, should such fallout reach Poland, it would merit a nuclear response from the West.
However, Business Insider notes that this level of defense is not limited to a nuclear strike from Russia. Should Putin launch a chemical weapons attack on Ukraine, and the fallout from such an attack reach Polish territory, government officials have argued, a nuclear strike in reprisal is still the appropriate response.
Additionally, Daalder argued that NATO would not need to use Article 5 to use force.
“You don’t need Article 5 to use force,” Daalder told Business Insider. The outlet reports that Daalder said the use of a “weapon of mass destruction” would mean that “of course we should use force.”
Article 5 of the NATO treaty requires an attack on one member state to be viewed as an attack on all of the member states. Ukraine’s interest in joining NATO was one of the reasons cited by the Kremlin for its “special military operation” in that country, as NATO promised not to expand toward Russia’s borders after the fall of the Soviet Union.
As noted by Military.com, even Democrats are eager to commit American resources to defend NATO from Putin, including in a nuclear exchange.
“If a nuclear device is detonated and the radiation goes into a [neighboring] country, that could very well be perceived as an attack against NATO,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed told the outlet. Reed, who is a Democrat, added that the same could be true of “some chemical, biological attacks.”
This comes after some believed Joe Biden threatened to use chemical weapons against Russia if Putin launched a chemical weapon attack first, as he previously said such a provocation would be answered “in kind.” Today the White House clarified that Biden was not suggesting the use of chemical weapons, but stressed that the consequence for such an attack would be severe.
This also comes as Biden told U.S. troops with the 82nd Airborne in Poland that they would soon see the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians first hand, leading some to believe he was suggesting that American soldiers were headed to Ukraine.
Soon after he made the remarks, the White House clarified that there was no plan to send troops to Ukraine.
Russia claims it launched a “special military operation” against Ukraine last month to protect ethnic Russians in the disputed Donbass region from Ukrainian state violence. Ukraine and much of the international community say the invasion was unprovoked.
