No longer trying to ‘avoid World War III,’ Biden floats nuclear arms race

After allowing Ukrainian strikes on Russia with US weapons, the Biden administration threatens a nuclear weapons upgrade.

(Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

When President Biden authorized Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory with US weapons late last month, the White House insisted that the strikes would be limited. According to the New York Times’ David E. Sanger, administration officials described Biden’s move as “a narrow exemption to his 27-month-long insistence that American weapons can never be shot into Russian territory... a rule he established at the outset of the war in Ukraine to ‘avoid World War III.’”

Yet as is often the case when rules are broken, Biden’s “narrow exemption” to avoiding World War III is already creating new openings.