“We have never faced the prospect of nuclear Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
So resounding and apocalyptic was the statement that Joe Biden made last night, during a fundraising event for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, alluding to Vladimir Putin's threats to resort to atomic weapons in the war in Ukraine.
The US president thus made clear his fear that the Russian leader is serious and not bluffing with his warning: Putin is "a guy I know pretty well," he said, "and I don't think he was joking when he spoke to use tactical nuclear or biological or chemical weapons.
Beyond the nature and predisposition of the Russian president, a compelling reason to believe him lies in "the significantly inferior performance" of his army with respect to the Ukrainian forces, he explained, referring to the recent setbacks that the invading army has suffered in the battlefield.
So "for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis" in October 1962, "we face the threat of a nuclear weapon if things continue to go the way they have been," Biden reiterated. And he added: "I don't think you can use tactical nuclear weapons without ending up in Armageddon" or apocalypse.
Unlike previous occasions in which Biden has seemed like a free verse in the government he leads, expressing himself in much more extreme terms than the rest of his team, this time his statements fully coincide -perhaps with a tone of greater alarm- with those of their advisers.
Just two weeks ago, his National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, spoke of "catastrophic consequences" and "decisive response" if Putin resorted to nuclear weapons. Sullivan called for "taking seriously" the threat that the Russian president had made hours earlier in this regard.
