In 2022, the U.S. feared that Russia, humiliated by its failure to conquer Ukraine and its forces bogged-down in the country's east and south, might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. CNN reports that the Pentagon "planned rigorously" for this eventuality.
"That's what the conflict presented us, and so we believed and I think it's our right to prepare rigorously and do everything possible to avoid that happening," the first senior administration official told me.
What led the Biden administration to reach such a startling assessment was not one indicator, but a collection of developments, analysis, and – crucially - highly sensitive new intelligence.
The administration's fear, a second senior administration official told me, "was not just hypothetical — it was also based on some information that we picked up."
"We had to plan so that we were in the best possible position in case this no‑longer unthinkable event actually took place," the same senior administration official told me.
A big pinch of salt for you: this is one of those things the author supposedly knew about at the time but saved for the book now being promoted by the article. Putin surrogates threaten nukes to amuse themselves, Russia's own version of China's final warning.
