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By\u00a0Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity<\/a><\/p>\n MEMORANDUM FOR:\u00a0The President May 1, 2022<\/p>\n Mr. President:<\/p>\n Mainstream media have marinated the minds of most Americans in a witches\u2019 brew of misleading information on Ukraine \u2013 and on the exceedingly high stakes of the war. On the chance you are not getting the kind of \u201cuntreated\u201d intelligence President Truman hoped for by restructuring intelligence, we offer below a 12-point factsheet. Some of us were intelligence analysts during the Cuban missile crisis and see a direct parallel in Ukraine. As to VIPs\u2019 credibility, our record since Jan. 2003 \u2013 whether on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Russia \u2013 speaks for itself.<\/p>\n 1. The growing possibility that nuclear weapons might be used, as hostilities in Ukraine continue to escalate, merits your full attention.<\/p>\n 2. For almost 77 years, a common awareness of the awesome destructiveness of atomic\/nuclear weapons created an (ironically stabilizing) balance of terror called deterrence. Nuclear-armed countries have generally avoided threatening to use nukes against other nuclear-armed countries.<\/p>\n 3. Putin\u2019s recent reminders of Russia\u2019s nuclear weapons capability can easily fit into the category of deterrence. It can also be read as a warning that he is prepared to use them\u00a0in extremis.<\/p>\n 4. Extremis? Yes; Putin regards Western interference in Ukraine, particularly since the coup d\u2019etat in Feb. 2014, as an\u00a0existential threat. In our view, he is determined to rid Russia of this threat, and Ukraine is now a must-win for Putin. We cannot rule out the possibility that, backed into a corner, he might authorize a limited nuclear strike with modern missiles that fly many times the speed of sound.<\/p>\n 5. Existential threat? Moscow sees U.S. military involvement in Ukraine as precisely the same kind of strategic threat President Kennedy saw in Khrushchev\u2019s attempt to put nuclear missiles in Cuba in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Putin complains that US\u201dABM\u201d missile sites in Romania and Poland can be modified, by simply inserting an alternate compact disk, to launch missiles against Russia\u2019s ICBM force.<\/p>\n 6. As for putting missile sites in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin readout of your Dec. 30, 2021 telephone conversation with Putin, you told him the US\u201dhad no intention of\u00a0deploying offensive strike weapons in\u00a0Ukraine\u201d. So far as we know, there has been no objection to the accuracy of that Russian readout. Nevertheless, your reported assurance to Putin disappeared into thin air \u2013 contributing, we imagine, to Russia\u2019s growing distrust.<\/p>\n 7. Russia can no longer doubt that the US and NATO aim to weaken Russia (and to remove him, if possible) \u2013 and that the West also believes it can accomplish this by pouring weapons into Ukraine and urging the Ukrainians to fight on. We think these aims are delusional.<\/p>\n 8. If Secretary Austin believes that Ukraine can \u201cwin\u201d against Russian forces \u2013 he is mistaken. You will recall that many of Austin\u2019s predecessors \u2013 McNamara, Rumsfeld, Gates, for example \u2013 kept assuring earlier presidents that corrupt regimes could \u201cwin\u201d \u2013 against foes far less formidable than Russia.<\/p>\n 9. The notion that Russia is internationally \u201cisolated\u201d also seems delusional. China can be counted on to do what it can to prevent Putin from \u201closing\u201d in Ukraine \u2013 first and foremost because Beijing has been designated \u201cnext in line\u201d, so to speak. Surely, President Xi Jin-Ping has been briefed on the Pentagon\u2019s \u201c2022 National Defense Strategy\u201d identifying China as the #1 \u201cthreat\u201d. Russia-China entente marks a tectonic shift in the world correlation of forces. It is not possible to exaggerate its significance.<\/p>\n 10. Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine will not escape attention on May 9, as Russia celebrates the 77th anniversary of the victory by the Allies over Nazi Germany. Every Russian knows that more than 26 million Soviets died during that war (including Putin\u2019s older brother Viktor during the merciless, 872-day blockade of Leningrad). Denazification of Ukraine is one of the key factors accounting for Putin\u2019s approval level of above 80 percent.<\/p>\n 11. The Ukraine conflict can be called \u201cThe Mother of All Opportunity Costs\u201d. In last year\u2019s \u201cThreat Assessment\u201d, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines identified climate change as a major national security and \u201chuman security\u201d challenge that can only be met by nations working together. War in Ukraine is already diverting much needed attention from this impending threat to coming generations.<\/p>\n 12. We note that we sent our first Memorandum of this genre to President George W. Bush on Feb. 5, 2003, critiquing Colin Powell\u2019s unconfirmed-intelligence-stuffed speech at the UN earlier that day. We sent two follow-up Memos in March 2003 warning the president that intelligence was being \u201ccooked\u201d to justify war, but were ignored. We end this Memo with the same appeal we made, in vain, to George W. Bush:\u00a0\u201cYou would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.\u201c<\/p>\n Lastly, we repeat the offer we made to you in December 2020 (in the VIPs Memorandum referenced above):\u00a0\u2019We stand ready to support you with objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis.\u2019\u00a0We suggest you might benefit from \u201coutside\u201d input from veteran intelligence officers with many decades of experience on the \u201cinside\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nFROM:\u00a0Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
\nSUBJECT:\u00a0Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Un-invented, Thus \u2026
\nPRECEDENCE:\u00a0IMMEDIATE
\nREF:\u00a0Our Memo of 12\/20\/20, \u201cDon\u2019t Be Suckered on Russia\u201d<\/p>\n