On September 22, Scowcroft Center acting director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in a Washington Post article on how the Biden administration should respond to a possible nuclear use by Putin. The article highlighted Kroenig’s recommendation that the United States conduct limited conventional strikes on any Russian assets in Ukraine that participated in conducting the nuclear attack. The article drew on Kroenig’s recently published “Memo to the President.”
If it’s Russian forces in Ukraine that launched the nuclear attack, the United States could strike directly against those forces…It would be calibrated to send a message that this is not a major war coming, this is a limited strike. If you are Putin, what do you do in response? I don’t think you immediately say let’s launch all the nukes at the United States.
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