Biden approves long-range missiles for Ukraine

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 19th of November.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

As mentioned earlier, Russia warned against the use of missiles supplied by the U.S. for Ukraine to use to strike inside Russia.

Joining us now to talk about it is Robert Peters. He researches nuclear deterrence and missile defense for the Heritage Foundation.

REICHARD: Bob, good morning.

BOB PETERS: Good morning.

REICHARD: We spoke with you a couple months ago when Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelenskyy first appealed to NATO countries to let Ukraine use western missiles to strike targets within Russia. The answer then was no. But on Friday, President Joe Biden changed his position and said yes to that request. Why did he change his mind?

PETERS: Well, it's hard to say. There's not a lot of strategic logic for making the change at this point that is radically different from where we were two months ago. So it's difficult to assess why President Biden reversed a decision that's been in place basically since the start of the war, other than perhaps he's looking at it as that he's got two more months in office and he's going to do what his heart feels is correct. And in two more months, it's you know, any escalation dynamics are not going to be his problem. But I don't really see the strategic logic for reversing course.

REICHARD: Well, I'd read that one possible reason was that Russia put 10,000 North Korean soldiers on the ground. Could that have factored in?

PETERS: I doubt it. I mean, it's possible, but I mean, those North Korean soldiers are pretty poorly trained. They're basically being sent to the front to serve as cannon fodder against Ukrainian forces. I'm not sure that even Kim Jong-Un is expecting a great many of them to come back alive to North Korea.

REICHARD: You’ve warned before that we can only go so far before Putin is forced to respond. Do you think this change in policy could provoke that response?

PETERS: So, the problem is that we've got a bit of a boy who cried wolf that's going on with Putin and he's brought this on himself. And so, it's just it's really hard to say. What I would say, though, is that while Americans want Ukraine to win and it's in America's interest to degrade Russian combat capabilities so that they're not able to threaten our NATO allies, it's not America's interest to get into this to see nuclear weapons used in Ukraine. From purely American interest perspective, Ukraine is not worth, you know, a limited nuclear war in Europe.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about the best and worst case scenarios that’ll come from U.S. involvement like that.

PETERS: So, from an American perspective, the best case scenario is that lifting the restrictions on long range fires has some modest improvements on the battlefield for Ukraine and they're able to stop the Russian advance or at least slow the Russian advance or perhaps bring Russians to the negotiating table, which I think is actually the ultimate goal. No matter what the odds are. I wouldn't give it that great odds for that happening. That's the best case scenario from an American perspective.

Worst case scenario is that the Russians could say, “I've had it, this is far enough, the Americans aren't listening. I need to use, I don't know, small number, less than six low yield nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine to get the attention of the Western capitals, which clearly are not listening to me.” That's the worst case scenario.

REICHARD: Meantime is the U.S. depleting its own missile supply?

PETERS: Yeah, so the answer to that is yes, we are. We're almost empty on our own long range fires.

REICHARD: A new Trump administration is transitioning back into power. What does this decision by the Biden administration mean for President-elect Trump?

PETERS: Well, so it's going to create a dilemma for President-elect Trump in that he's either going to have to continue with the restrictions that the Biden administration has placed, which now includes these lifted restrictions on the employment of long range fires deep into Russia. Or he's going to have to reverse course and say, no, no, we're going to reimpose restrictions on the Ukrainians. If he does that, if he does the latter and reimpose restrictions, it'll cause consternation amongst some allied capitals in Europe and it'll certainly cause consternation in Kiev. If he continues and says, well, I think President Biden, as he was going out the door, made the right decision to lift the restrictions, he risks courting, potential Russian escalation against Ukraine itself. So he's got a dilemma that he's going to have to figure out as soon as he gets into the Oval Office.

REICHARD: Is there an aspect of this you think is underreported that Americans need to understand?

PETERS: Yeah, I think Americans need to know that, you know, while both Russia and the United States have nuclear arsenals and, you know, they're credible and they're effective and they're viable, Russia has about 2000 non-strategic nuclear weapons that are ranged to hit targets in Western Europe.

We got rid of most of our non-strategic nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War. Russia held on to theirs. And they did that because I think they see their conventional forces as being weaker to those that the United States and our NATO allies. But the reason why he kept them was for scenarios like this in which their army is losing on the conventional field of battle and they're being humiliated. And they see that nuclear weapons could be a way for them to snap victory out of the jaws of defeat. And we shouldn't dismiss the potential that Putin could say, you know what? Some very small, low-yield nuclear weapons, smaller than what the United States dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, is a way to change the course of the war decisively in my advantage. And we could see a situation in which Russia does use nuclear weapons to try to end the conflict on terms that they deem acceptable. And I think that we're too dismissive of the Russian nuclear threats, and that's a dangerous thing to do.

REICHARD: Bob Peters is a research fellow for the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security. Thanks for joining us this morning.

PETERS: Thank you.

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