Foreign Policy Analyst Clint Ehrlich has warned tensions between the US and Russia could see a conflict reach levels not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Cold War. Mr Ehrlich has suggested Vladimir Putin may look to call President Biden’s bluff and deploy Russian military forces to Cuba and Venezuela if an agreement is not reached over Ukraine soon.
Mr Ehrlich told Express.co.uk: “Russia has already made noise about potentially making deployments to Venezuela and to Cuba.
“And they’ve said that whether that happens will depend on the response of the West and I don’t think that those are idle threats.
“In particular, President Biden has lectured Vladimir Putin about this being the 21st century and there no longer being spheres of influence and so, the Russians are considering calling our bluff and saying, look, if there aren’t spheres of influence, then how can you object to us stationing forces in your hemisphere?
“And, and frankly, they have an argument, they really do, I mean, it’s, it’s sort of understandable.
“I hope that they won’t do that but if they were to, I think that it would be very provocative, and it could lead to real conflict the way that we saw during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Now, I would hope that because the actual strategic effect of that would be relatively limited.
“Today, there are submarines that are constantly around our coastlines with nuclear weapons, ready to launch and so even if you have nuclear-capable bombers, they could put it in Cuba, for example, that really is not so much more of a threat.
“It’s a very public threat and so there could be pressure to deal with it the same way that there was pressure during the Cuban Missile Crisis, even if the deployment of missiles to Cuba was maybe not such a huge shift in the real balance of power, but what’s instead just a very public provocation.”
“Russia has been developing that as a potential weapon.”
He added: “It’s believed that one of them malfunctioned and it ended up on the bottom of the ocean.
“They had an elite team that tried to go and recover it and there was a nuclear accident that killed members of their elite Spetsnaz unit and scientists but they haven’t given up developing that technology.
“Because they’re so determined to maintain nuclear superiority over the West after the withdrawal of the [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty].”
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