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China Talked Putin Out of Using A-Bombs on Ukraine: Blinken [1]
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Date: 2025-01-04
The Financial Times (behind a paywall) interviewed Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in London today, and Blinken said that Putin had “seriously considered” using nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, but that China’s Xi talked him out of it. China Told Putin Not To Use Nuclear Weapons, Blinken Says:
Russia had seriously considered using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but was dissuaded from doing so by China, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. Amid repeated nuclear threats from Moscow, Washington's top diplomat told the Financial Times that Beijing had "engaged Russia and said, 'don't go there.'"
It’s unclear when this intervention took place, though another news story on this same topic suggests it may have been in October 2022.
This concern has long been a factor in US strategy towards Ukraine:
Blinken was asked by the FT how seriously Washington took Putin's nuclear saber rattling, which was considered a reason why the U.S. did not provide Ukraine with certain long-range weapons over the war for fear of escalation. Blinken told the newspaper that Washington was "very concerned" about the prospect Putin would use nuclear weapons and that even if the probability "went from 5 to 15 percent, when it comes to nuclear weapons, nothing is more serious." "We have reason to believe that China engaged Russia and said, 'don't go there,'" he said. . . . Blinken also rejected criticism that the Biden administration had delayed providing weapons, saying issues such as whether Kyiv can operate and maintain the systems were factors in decision making.
Such calculations are what we expect from a competent administration, along with nuanced back-channel diplomacy of the sort that has kept the world from blowing itself up since 1945. Maybe not for much longer: Project 2025 and Trump Are Cooking Up a Recipe for a New Nuclear Arms Race
Project 2025 and its authors want America to do more. They want to put America’s “nuclear enterprise on a wartime footing.” That means more nukes, different kinds of nukes, and more trillions spent whose only purpose is the total annihilation of all life on the planet.
And. . . Milley acted to prevent Trump from misusing nuclear weapons, war with China, book says:
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley took steps to prevent then-President Donald Trump from misusing the country's nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency, according to a new book by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa obtained by NBC News.
That was because
Milley received intelligence that Chinese officials believed the U.S. was getting ready to attack them. To defuse tensions, Milley called the head of China's military, Gen. Li Zuocheng, and told him the "American government is stable" and "we are not going to attack."
That’s the sort of action expected between nuclear armed powers who want to avoid blowing up the world by mistake — the same phone call Trump later called an act of "treason." While thinking about that, here is one last item from the FT interview:
The FT article published on Friday said that Blinken believed a "similar dynamic" was at play when the U.S. told China that the Russian president was planning to put a nuclear weapon in space.
Would a Trump administration take a similar step to defuse tensions? Or would that be another “act of treason?”
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