nuclear-news

The NATO leadership announced this week that Moscow is engaged in a high-level of military activities in the Baltic region, underscored by the 400 times that alliance jet fighters were scrambled this 2014 in response to incursions made byRussian military planes.

NATO declared that Russia’s recent actions “can be destabilising and potentially dangerous,” according to The Daily Mail.

Now the question begs: Will this bold display of power foreshadow the escalation of hostilities?

No pre-emptive strike

While the tense posturing between Russia and the West – the U.S. and NATO specifically, could potentially graduate into a shooting a war, the Kremlin, as dictated by its recently revised military doctrine, will not fire the first shot, according to a new report byRT.com.

“The renewed draft of the military doctrine would not have a reservation for preventive nuclear strikes on potential enemy,” the news site added, pointing to unnamed insiders from Russia’s Defence Ministry as sources.

It was indicated too in the same report that pre-emptive nuclear attack on specifically identified enemies was deliberated upon by the Russian military and political leaders but the option was not included in the doctrine that was finalised in 2010.

Russia, however, is not discounting the use of nuclear weapons, which they will be willing to rain down on deemed aggressors when provoked. “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in reply to strikes with nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction on its territory or on the territory of its allies,” the doctrine reportedly states………

Perceived threats

Not surprisingly, Moscow pinpoints Washington and its NATO allies as threats. “Russian foreign policy appears to be based on a combination of fears of popular protest and opposition to U.S. world hegemony,” writes Jonathan Masters, deputy editor for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Putin is apparently convinced that the U.S. and NATO is undermining Russia’s influence in the former Soviet Union republics, according to Masters, likely making the two as prime targets of Russia’s nuclear attack blueprint in the event World War III erupts.

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