Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Thursday that people tend to underestimate the threat of nuclear war.
“If, God forbid, something like this happens, it might destroy the whole of civilization or perhaps the entire planet,” Putin said. “These issues are therefore serious, and it is a great pity that there is such a tendency to underestimate the problem, and that this tendency is probably becoming more pronounced.”
Those remarks were prompted by a question about what he would say to a child who “fears a nuclear war.” Putin, who has made the upgrading of Russian nuclear forces a prominent feature of his military posture, faulted the United States for withdrawing from international nuclear arms control pacts — moves that will require Russia “to take some steps to ensure our safety,” as he put it.
“And they should not whine later that we are allegedly trying to gain certain advantages,” the Russian leader said. “We are not. We are simply trying to maintain the balance and ensure our security.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to begin the process of withdrawing from the INF Treaty, which bans ground-based intermediate range ballistic missiles, in February. That decision was announced at the NATO summit in Brussels, following years of western complaints that Russia is violating the pact.
“Moscow has fielded multiple battalions of SSC-8, and all of them are positioned for offensive purposes,” State Department under secretary Andrea Thompson, using the formal U.S. name for the missile, said during a Dec. 6 media call. “If we want credible arms control deterrent, we’ve got to demonstrate that our treaties are worth the paper they’re written on.”
U.S. officials believe that Russia is developing relatively-small nuclear weapons for the purpose of winning conflicts without triggering a full-scale nuclear war. But Putin said it’s the United States that is pursing that plan.
“There are plans to create low-impact nuclear charges, which translates to tactical rather than global use,” he said. “Such ideas are coming from Western analysts who say it is okay to use such weapons. However, lowering the threshold can lead to a global nuclear disaster. This is one danger we are facing today.”
Still, he ended on an optimistic note. “I believe humanity has enough common sense and enough of a sense of self-preservation not to take these things to the extreme,” he said.
