Joe Biden spoke of the Russian nuclear threat during an election event in California. The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, he said, is a “real” danger. For the first time since the fall ofSoviet Unionthe Russia deploys devices of this type outside its borders. These weapons, it is the reasoning of the US president, could be used in a selective, but still highly destructive way, to support the Russian military effort in Ukraine. Apart from the validity or otherwise of Biden’s statements, what is striking is the place where they were pronounced: an electoral event in California. It had already happened in the past, for example when – in the context of a speech in front of party activists a New Yorklast October – Biden had hinted at the possibility of a “Armageddon nucleare”. The places where Biden chooses to raise his alarms are therefore as significant as the alarms themselves. They reveal challenges, strategies, dangers that the Biden administration’s policy faces on the eve of the 2024 presidential elections.
First of all, one thing must be remembered. US military intelligence has consistently maintained that Russian nuclear use in Ukraine is highly unlikely. This, in particular, for two reasons. The first. It’s not convenient in Moscow, from a political and diplomatic point of view, to use nuclear power in Ukraine. The use of even low-power nuclear devices would still cause thousands of deaths. The outrage towards Russia would be total and global, such as to make Moscow lose the partial support of countries like Russia Chinese, rallying international public opinion against the invasion of Ukraine. Then there is a second element. The effects of the use of nuclear power could easily spread far beyond the chosen objectives. The nuclear waste they could easily run over Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, but also enter Russian borders. It would be a difficult maneuver for Russian public opinion to digest. How would the Russian president justify the deaths of thousands of his compatriots (in addition to the many lives of soldiers already lost on the battlefield)? With what face Putin would you ask the Russians to support an invasion that started as a cakewalk and would instead end in a nuclear conflict? These are the reasons why US intelligence and the Pentagon they have always considered the hypothesis of nuclear war unrealistic. And for which they continue, even today, to consider it unlikely. So much so that the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus has not caused an increase in the atomic alert in the United States.
So why does Joe Biden keep talking about a nuclear threat? The reasons lie precisely in the next one presidential campaign, so much so that the alarms come in the midst of electoral events and not official political occasions (where Biden has always shown to be rather measured). Biden knows one thing very well by now. Hope that the war in Ukraine will end before the election campaign begins is especially remote. The elections will be held on November 5, 2024. As is tradition, the electoral campaign will get underway much earlier, at the end of the summer of 2023. This means that the war will still be going on, barring sensational twists and turns. We will therefore have to support the Ukrainian military operations, in particular the counteroffensive recently started. There will be to send new weapons e new funding. A recalcitrant Western coalition will have to be kept together. Above all, it will be necessary to convince American public opinion that all of this has a sense, reasons and counterparts. One of the ways to do this is precisely to agitate the spectrum of Russian threat – in particular of the Russian nuclear threat – for global balances.
“You remind us that freedom has no price”, said Biden during his surprise trip to Ukraine last February, speaking of the Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invasion. He added, “It’s worth fighting for as long as it takes. And that’s what we’ll do. We will stay with you for as long as necessary”. Convinced Atlanticist, grew up politically during the Cold Warproponent of an America that is the bulwark of the western valuesconcerned about the loss of global influence of United States, Biden is doing exactly that. He is leading America in continuous and total support, “for as long as necessary” in fact, to the Ukrainian military effort. However, the US president cannot overlook the feelings and attitudes of his public opinion. The Americans had no trouble initially backing Biden’s policy on Ukraine. Putin was clearly perceived as the one who, with the invasion, had started a brutal war, the unscrupulous politician ready to execute thousands of his young fellow citizens in the name of crazy and authoritative designs. For months, support for the war in the United States was almost total, with the only critical voices coming not from the democratic left, traditionally pacifist, but from a small group of conservative republicans concerned about the flood of dollars heading towards Kiev.
However, we have reached the 483rd day of war. The end of the conflict is not in sight. Indeed, the Ukrainian counter-offensive has just started and the general Mark Milleychairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, the highest American military office, never misses an opportunity to say that “the war will be long”. Meanwhile, the Americans have supported a large part of Kiev’s war effort. Since the beginning of the war, administration and Congress have budgeted 75 billion dollars between military, humanitarian and financial aid (just to make a quick comparison: the war in Vietnam, over the decade 1965-1975, cost the United States 92 billion). The failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, or in any case the failure to achieve the desired results, would then risk being very embarrassing also for Washington. Indeed, how can such poor military results be justified in the presence of such an impressive American economic outlay? Then there are the voices of the Republicans, who are now openly questioning Biden’s strategy. Just to name a few: Donald Trump announced that, if he were president, he would “end the war in 24 hours” (he didn’t say how), while the other Republican candidate, Ron DeSantiswho had downgraded the war to a “territorial dispute”, now explains that the time has come cease-fire.
In this context, after all these months, with no end in sight, the orientations of public opinion have also changed. According to a survey by Pew Research Center, in March 2022 7% of Americans thought the US was offering “too much support” to Ukraine. As of June 2023, 28% believe the aid is excessive. In that 28% there are many Republicans but there are also slices of the Democratic people that Biden cannot afford to lose in a presidential election which, like those of the recent past, will be decided in many states on the edge of a few thousand votes. Hence, therefore, the choice that the US president has made on the occasion of some electoral event and which will in all probability be a strong argument in his electoral campaign. That of justifying the American commitment alongside Ukraine in the name of American interests, of common democratic ideals with Kiev, of the threat, even nuclear, that Russia brings to Europe and to the world.