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Ukrainian Tipping Points – UPDATE 4: US Blocks Long-Range Missile Attacks Until After Elections?

Russian and Eurasian Politics, by Gordonhahn, September 16, 2024,  https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/16/ukrainian-tipping-points-update-4-us-blocks-long-range-missile-attacks-until-after-elections/

As I expected in my original article (included further below), the, the political wing kicked down the road until after the elections the escalation against Russia that would have occurred by allowing Kiev to hit the country with US long-range missiles.

The US has refrained from removing its prohibition on Ukraine’s use of US ATACM or JSSSAM long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia’s pre-2014 territory. Against all military and political logic, the UK lobbied hard during its prime minister’s visit to Washington and had approved use of its Storm Shadow missiles for such use (https://ctrana.news/news/471905-london-razreshil-ukraine-bit-po-rossii.html).

The US is operating under military and political logic. The Biden administration demanded that Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy present a list of potential Russian targets to the White House, after the Pentagon questioned the military utility of such attacks (https://ctrana.news/news/471904-ssha-trebujut-ot-kieva-stratehiju-dalnobojnykh-udarov-po-rf.html). 

Politically, as I noted, it is not in the Biden administration’s and Democratic party’s interest to have a crisis of a status of the Cuban Missile Crisis or have have Ukrainian forces suffer a grave collapse before the November 5 presidential elections.

This precluded any lifting of the prohibition before then, but afterwards things could change, and there those such as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and other neocons will be pressing hard to work out a reversal of this sane decision.

It appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning that such attacks would require NATO country officers’ involvement and thus would mean that NATO is directly fighting Russia and so Moscow would regard itself to be in a state of war with the country or countries’ the missiles of which were used played a role in the US’s decision to back down. The political configuration after the election could overcome the hesitation Putin induced among top US decision makers.

September 18, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war