Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Thursday night, President Joe Biden kept with his tradition of overstating or misspeaking to such a degree that someone else in the U.S. government was forced to intercede, clarify, and contextualize.
During remarks given to top donors at the home of a powerful investor, Biden warned the United States “faced the prospect of Armageddon” in a palpable way for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“We’ve got a guy I know fairly well; his name is Vladimir Putin,” Biden said. “I spent a fair amount of time with him. He is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical and nuclear weapons, or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.
“It’s part of Russian doctrine that they will not — they will not — if the motherland is threatened, they’ll use whatever force they need, including nuclear weapons.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily lose a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
Friday, the Pentagon leapt into action as it sought to sooth the nerves of Americans, particularly American journalists, who understandably fixated on the use of Biblical language.
In a strange irony, based on the Pentagon’s follow-up fefforts, Biden’s remarks proved that Americans also face astronomical amounts of over-charged rhetoric on par with what one might have experienced at the height of the early Cold War.
“[To] be clear: we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” Politico quoted Defense Department spokesperson J. Todd Breasseale as having said.
In short, the Department of Defense has not seen evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has become quite fond of mentioning the use of nuclear weapons in order to try to get his way on the foreign policy front, has any intention of making good on his threats.
However, Breasseale defended Biden’s use of such a chilling word as necessary to communicate the seriousness with which the United States is taking Putin’s threats, even if those remarks are for now mostly bluster.
Friday, aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would not elaborate on why Biden chose to use the word Armageddon or why he did do so during a speech at one of his key donor’s homes rather than before a governing body.
“[The] President’s comments [have] been very consistent,” Jean-Pierre said. “He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously we … take these threats about nuclear weapons, as we have done when the Russians have made these threats throughout the conflict. So the kind of irresponsible rhetoric we have seen is no way for the leader of a nuclear-armed state to speak. And that’s what the President was making very clear about.”
Jean-Pierre confirmed that Biden had received no new information that would have necessitated a sudden escalation in rhetoric.
“[We] have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” Jean-Pierre said.