Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Warns, Kagan’s Chatter of ‘Tactical’ Use of Nuclear Weapons Could End This World

May 5, 2022 (EIRNS)—Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.) took to the airwaves to call out the dangerous incompetence of chickenhawk, think-tank warriors—explicitly naming Robert Kagan. “You even have people like Victoria Nuland’s husband, who essentially tells the rest of us that we are just shrinking violets because we won’t use the bold threat of using nuclear weapons,” he told Paul Jay on April 29. But Kagan’s fantasy of adding nuclear weapons to the poker game goes against all military experience and reality. Further, simply the ease, the mere facility with which Kagan’s language about the utility of nuclear weapons on the battlefield is accepted is, in itself, dangerous.

Countless studies and investigations over 70 years have weighed in intensively against this tactical nuclear fantasy.

“We had a saying in the military; if you use one, you’re going to use them all or enough to destroy the globe.... I’ve war-gamed this too much and too often, to think that the other side wouldn’t react, and react in a way that you could predict, and that way is to use them back on you. That way is to use them back on you. Would it be a tit for tat, or would it be a massive counter-strike?... That’s for humans to sit down and count the number of angels on the head of a pin.... I don’t think you can control it once the genie is out of the bag.”

Wilkerson was taken aback by the language of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin after their trip to Ukraine. He said he’s heard their remarks that afternoon and “It didn’t help any. It’s almost like we are going to take you. We’re going to get you. We won’t fight, but we’re going to get you more money.”

In his considered judgment, the present leadership in the West is possibly the worst we’ve ever had.

“You would have no trouble whatsoever in convincing me that there could be a confluence of leadership that would start a world Holocaust. No difficulty convincing me at all. I’ve been there.... I’ve seen how self-interested they can be in their decision-making. Frankly, Paul, I’ve seen how stupid they are. I do mean that, how stupid they are.”

Forget everything that you are told about Ukraine, he said:

“I think the situation is made doubly dangerous by the fact that we have so many interests playing around in Ukraine right now in things that have nothing to do with Ukraine. ... That is not what it’s about. It’s not about NATO. It’s not about NATO membership.... It’s about interests that are profiting from what’s going on, either politically, financially, economically, or geopolitically. That latter being the most dangerous one of them all. This all involves bringing Putin down, destabilizing Russia, and clearing that flank for a war with China. That’s the grand strategic thing that’s driving this. They do not give a dang about a single baby, a single woman, or a single person in Ukraine. They will use every one of them if they can or have to get to Putin and to get to their ultimate objective. That’s why this is so dangerous."