{"id":44021,"date":"2019-02-25T06:41:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T11:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44021"},"modified":"2019-02-25T06:41:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T11:41:56","slug":"putin-rattles-sabre-as-nuclear-pact-collapses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44021","title":{"rendered":"Putin rattles sabre as nuclear pact collapses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.asiatimes.com\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Putin-e1550828490820.jpg\" alt=\"RUSSIA-POLITICS\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his state of the nation address in Moscow on Wednesday. Photo: AFP \/ Alexander Nemenov<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.asiatimes.com\/2019\/02\/article\/putin-rattles-sabre-as-nuclear-pact-collapses\/\">Putin rattles sabre as nuclear pact collapses<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Russian President warns West that deploying missile launchers in Europe could ignite \u2018tit for tat\u2019 response<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President Putin\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.kremlin.ru\/events\/president\/transcripts\/messages\/59863\">state of the nation address<\/a>&nbsp;to the Federal Assembly in Moscow this week was an extraordinary affair.&nbsp;While&nbsp;heavily focused on domestic social and economic development, Putin noted, predictably, the US decision to pull out of the&nbsp;Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and clearly outlined the red lines in regard to possible consequences of the move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It would be na\u00efve to believe that there would not be a serious counterpunch to the possibility of the US deploying launchers \u201csuitable for using Tomahawk missiles\u201d in Poland and Romania, only a 12-minute flight away from Russian territory.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Putin cut to the chase: \u201cThis is a very serious threat to\u00a0us. In this case, we will be forced \u2013 I want to\u00a0emphasize this \u2013 forced to\u00a0take tit-for-tat steps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later that night, many hours after his address, Putin detailed what was construed in the US, once again, as a threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIs there some hard ideological confrontation now similar to what was [going on] during the Cold War? There is none. We surely have mutual complaints, conflicting approaches to some issues, but that is no reason to escalate things to a stand-off on the level of the Caribbean crisis of the early 1960s\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was a direct reference to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when President Kennedy confronted USSR\u2019s Nikita Khrushchev over missiles deployed off the US mainland.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, has discreetly assured that conference calls with the Pentagon are proceeding as scheduled, every week, and that this bilateral dialogue is \u201cworking\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his state of the nation address in Moscow on Wednesday. Photo: AFP \/ Alexander Nemenov Putin rattles sabre as nuclear pact collapses Russian President warns West that deploying missile launchers in Europe could ignite \u2018tit for tat\u2019 response President Putin\u2019s&nbsp;state of the nation address&nbsp;to the Federal Assembly in Moscow this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15907,281,22463,22461,542,4076,827],"class_list":["post-44021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-asia-times","tag-europe","tag-inf-treaty","tag-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty","tag-moscow","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44022,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44021\/revisions\/44022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}