This article was originally published by Connor O’Keeffe at The Mises Institute.
On Sunday, news broke that President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use long-range American missiles to strike deeper into Russian territory. After the US gave Ukraine the greenlight to strike targets on the Russian side of the border earlier this year, the Ukrainian government and its biggest cheerleaders in Washington have been pressuring the president to support longer-range strikes—especially after Ukraine launched its invasion of Russia’s Kursk region. Sunday, they got their wish. On Tuesday, the first missile was launched at a target in Russia’s Bryansk region.
This move has many in the West concerned. Back in September, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a change to Russia’s nuclear doctrine. According to the changes, the Kremlin now considers an attack on Russia carried out by a non-nuclear state with the support of a nuclear-armed power to be a joint attack. Also, under the new doctrine, a conventional attack that poses a “critical threat to Russian sovereignty” now meets the official threshold to trigger a Russian nuclear response. Yesterday, those changes were made official.
The American weapon system the Ukrainians are now using is the Army Tactical Missile System or ATACMS. They have a range of 190 miles and, importantly, require the US or its allies to provide the targeting coordinates every time it’s shot. So, the US is not merely allowing the Ukrainians to fire missiles deeper into Russia, it’s actively helping them do so.
Six days ago, China opened a deep-water port in Chancay, Peru—3,472 miles away from Washington DC. US officials and hawkish commentators condemned the move, calling it “a security threat” to the US because they consider this to be in “America’s backyard.” Yet this same group is now cheering on as the Biden administration orders the US military to help Ukraine launch missiles at targets
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