Ukraine Weapons Shipments Exacerbate The Risk Of Larger War

By Brad Wolf, LA Progressive

A recent New York Times article stated that President Biden tells his staff, when discussing weapons shipments to Ukraine, that he’s trying to avoid World War III. His strategy is to slowly and incrementally ship to Ukraine ever more dangerous and powerful weapons believing if the U.S. shipped all these weapons at once, the Russians would react precipitously. Instead, the U.S. is slowly “boiling the frog” by gradually turning up the heat on Russia.

“Boiling the frog” refers to a person or thing in a gradually worsening situation without any realization of the peril until it is too late. While that may be an interesting (and cruel) biology experiment, when the frog is the world’s largest nuclear power the consequences are a bit more severe. The frog has options. Nuclear options. Do President Biden and the Pentagon truly think Putin hasn’t realized the ever-increasing caliber of weapons sent to Ukraine?

“This is the first General Assembly of a fundamentally divided world,” said Richard Gowan, the U.N. director at International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research group. “The gloves are off.”