By Ray McGovern
October 22, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "
Anti War"
- A Rose has bloomed In the Blinken/Sullivan/Biden
desert of ideas on Ukraine. I refer to Rose
Gottemoeller, 69, who was Under Secretary of
State for Arms Control during the Obama/Biden
second term and knows much more about the real
world than the boys Biden has in the back room
(if I may risk damning her with faint praise).
Looking for adults in the room? Gottemoeller
could be the woman of the hour, if Biden’s
ivy-mantled advisers would stop preening, sit
down, and listen.
Lowering the Nuclear Temperature
Writing in The Financial Times two weeks
ago, Gottemoeller referred to the "quiet
bargain" that ended the Cuban missile crisis of
exactly 60 years ago. As for Ukraine, she
dismisses military options:
Which brings us to diplomacy. Is there any
chance that negotiation could change Putin’s
calculus? The Cuban missile crisis ended with a
quiet bargain … some quiet nuclear diplomacy
might produce results.
Two years ago, Putin offered to remove
Russia’s new ground-based intermediate-range
nuclear missile from Europe under verifiable
conditions, thus underpinning a moratorium on
such missiles in Europe. When Putin and Xi
Jinping met in Beijing prior to the February
invasion, they spoke of extending such a
moratorium to Asia.
Perhaps it is time to launch discreet
talks, if only at a technical level, to explore
what the two men had in mind. It would not solve
the horrendous crisis in Ukraine, but it might
lower the nuclear temperature.
Now get this. Gottemoeller’s very sensible
suggestion found its way past the Washington
Post censors. Columnist Ishaan Tharoor was able
to tack some of the former Under Secretary of
State’s thoughts onto the end of an
article Tuesday titled "The uncomfortable
need to talk about diplomacy with Russia."
Common sense in the Post on this issue is
something of a breakthrough.
Biden: Still Looking for an Off-Ramp?
The day before Gottemoeller’s article
appeared, President Biden
lamented:
“First time since the Cuban missile
crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of
a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue
down the path they are going … I’m trying to
figure out what is Putin’s off ramp?”
It should be no secret to Biden that there
is, as Gottemoeller suggests, in so many words –
an off-ramp for both – a ramp with time-tested
guardrails called "inspections." Trust but
verify.
As I noted in an earlier
piece, which compared the Cuban crisis to
the current one in Ukraine, Russian President
Vladimir Putin warned on Dec. 21, 2021 that
"if US and NATO missile systems are deployed
in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be
only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for
hypersonic systems." [Emphasis added.]
(Shades of MRBMs detected 60 years ago in Cuba.)
On December 30, 2021, Biden and Putin talked
by phone at Putin’s urgent request. The Kremlin
readout stated: "Joseph Biden emphasized …
that Washington had no intention of deploying
offensive strike weapons in Ukraine."
[Emphasis added.]
The mood in the Kremlin was upbeat. The
Geneva negotiations, just ten days away were off
to a good start. Oops! A couple of days after
those talks started, Biden’s promise on
the non-deployment of strike weapons systems on
Ukrainian territory had fallen into the
cracks. This became
clear during the next conversation between
Biden and Putin (Feb. 12).
Putin may feel diddled – and not for the
first time. Yet, his chief strategic concern, in
my view, is the medium-range ballistic missiles
(cruise and hypersonic) that can be inserted
virtually overnight into capsules in Romania,
Poland, and eventually elsewhere on Russia’s
periphery. The evidence suggests that, in due
course, Putin would be willing to deal on this
issue.
Is Biden, Like Dan Quayle, ‘No John
Kennedy’?
The jury is out. Harvard’s Graham Allison
claims that:
"In Biden, we have a seasoned cold warrior
who has thought about the Cuban Missile Crisis
and has thought about nuclear war. He has
thought about what a full-scale war would look
like, he’s even gone through scenarios on this —
I know, personally."
In my view, much will depend on whether
President Biden can be brought to recognize how
poorly served he, and the country, have been by
his current coterie of advisers. Gottemoeller
has a generation more experience than Jake
Sullivan. She has dealt extensively with the
Russians and with NATO. (From 2016 to 2019 she
was Deputy Secretary General at the UN, so she
knows how to mold the malleable Jens
Stoltenberg, as well.)
Will the Biden boys let an adult into the
room. They had better.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year
career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and
preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief.
He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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