Former Attorney General Bill Barr warned during an interview this week that the United States cannot allow Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion into Ukraine to escalate into a nuclear war.
“We have to be very careful about getting into direct conflict with Russia — Russia is a nuclear power, and we can’t allow this to escalate into a nuclear war,” Barr told Fox News. “I do think now is the time for prudence, and that we do not escalate — I know people see what’s going on, and they feel terrible about it — but that’s the nature of countries getting nuclear weapons: our options are curtailed.”
“That’s why having North Korea get nuclear weapons is a problem, and that’s why Biden’s efforts now in reopening these negotiations with Iran and letting Iran become a nuclear power is very sobering,” Barr continued. “After Ukraine, say some things like this happen in Israel — we would be dealing with a nuclear power.”
Barr said that he believes that Putin is “committed” and that there is “no off-ramp for him,” adding, “It is hard to see a way he saves face without continuing to push forward.”
Barr said that Russia has “diminished themselves in the eyes of the world as a military power, because their military is not functioning very well” and that “even on paper, they don’t have the military power to do more than what they’re doing.”
Barr said that Putin is going to try to install a “a puppet regime in Ukraine like in Belarus” and that once that is accomplished he will try to destabilize the Baltic States, which include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
“I don’t think there is any risk in the short term of him expanding this to include invasions of other countries,” Barr continued. “I don’t think that there is a game plan to move beyond Ukraine at this point.”
“A lot of our foreign adversaries think President Biden is a weak leader, and I think that’s partly what invited the aggression in Ukraine. Putin has always made it clear that he would not tolerate Ukraine as a part of NATO, but there was no real urgency on that,” Barr said. “I just think that he saw that there was an opportunity for him to move quickly against a leader who he didn’t think would resist very effectively.”
“Putin also saw that Biden had curtailed American energy independence, thus increasing the leverage of Russia,” Barr concluded. “He didn’t do anything by moving equipment and resources into Ukraine before hostilities began, which might have deterred Russia,” Barr said. “If he had put planes there and built up the Javelin missiles upfront, you may have had more of an effect in deterring it.”
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