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A Rose has bloomed In the Blinken/Sullivan/Biden desert of ideas on Ukraine. I refer to Rose Gottemoeller , 69, who was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control during the Obama/Biden second term and knows much more about the real world than the boys Biden has in the back room (if I may risk damning her with faint praise).
Looking for adults in the room? Gottemoeller could be the woman of the hour if Biden's ivy-mantled advisers would stop preening, sit down and listen.
Lowering The Nuclear Temperature
Writing in The Financial Times two weeks ago, Gottemoeller referred to the "quiet bargain" that ended the Cuban missile crisis of exactly 60 years ago. As for Ukraine, she dismisses military options:
Which brings us to diplomacy. Is there any chance that negotiation could change Putin's calculus? The Cuban missile crisis ended with a quiet bargain " some quiet nuclear diplomacy might produce results.
Two years ago, Putin offered to remove Russia's new ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missile from Europe under verifiable conditions, thus underpinning a moratorium on such missiles in Europe. When Putin and Xi Jinping met in Beijing prior to the February invasion, they spoke of extending such a moratorium to Asia.
Perhaps it is time to launch discreet talks, if only at a technical level, to explore what the two men had in mind. It would not solve the horrendous crisis in Ukraine, but it might lower the nuclear temperature.
Now get this. Gottemoeller's very sensible suggestion found its way past the Washington Post censors. Columnist Ishaan Tharoor was able to tack some of the former Under Secretary of State's thoughts onto the end of an article Tuesday titled "The uncomfortable need to talk about diplomacy with Russia." Common sense in the Post on this issue is something of a breakthrough.
Biden: Still Looking for an Off-Ramp?
The day before Gottemoeller's article appeared, President Biden lamented:
"First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going " I'm trying to figure out what is Putin's off ramp?"
It should be no secret to Biden that there is, as Gottemoeller suggests, in so many words - an off-ramp for both - a ramp with time-tested guardrails called "inspections." Trust but verify.
As I noted in an earlier piece, which compared the Cuban crisis to the current one in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Dec. 21, 2021 that "if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7-10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems." [Emphasis added.] (Shades of MRBMs detected 60 years ago in Cuba.)
On December 30, 2021, Biden and Putin talked by phone at Putin's urgent request. The Kremlin readout stated: "Joseph Biden emphasized " that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine." [Emphasis added.]
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