New U.S. nuclear doctrine is next step to build infrastructure enabling global strike on Russia - MP Slutsky
MOSCOW. Jan 15 (Interfax) - The United States' new nuclear doctrine is aimed at protecting the infrastructure which is being created in Europe to enable a strike on Russia, the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Leonid Slutsky said on Facebook.
"It's hardly a revelation that the U.S. is building comprehensive infrastructure to support Prompt Global Strike. Under the pretext of deterring a missile strike by North Korea and Iran, supposed missile-defense positions are being built in Poland and Romania - they are capable of launching offensive cruise missiles at Russia without any serious modification," Slutsky said.
Hence, "the Americans have been consistently creating infrastructure enabling a global strike on Russia and have just approved a doctrine in defense of this infrastructure," he said.
Slutsky said he considered it necessary to comment on newspaper leaks regarding the U.S. nuclear doctrine "because of the blatant lies in the document, whose premises and arguments are false."
The doctrine presumes that "supposedly, Washington's biggest concern is the Russian national security strategy, which puts emphasis on the threat of limited nuclear escalation," Slutsky said. "Moscow is supposedly threatening to use nuclear weapons in a limited way first, giving the wrong idea that these threats can paralyze the United States and NATO," Slutsky said, said, adding that he was quoting the doctrine practically word-for-word.
"The question is who, where, and when has Moscow ever threatened? Why would Moscow threaten anyone at all? The strong does not threaten. The strong gives a warning. All Moscow did was warn that it would not tolerate an invasion. That it would retaliate against any invasion attempt," Slutsky said.
The U.S. presents "false arguments regarding the emergency circumstances" under which it will use nuclear weapons even in case of a conventional "strategic attack." "In addition to the natural reason of an attack on the U.S.' civilian population, it also mentioned an attack on allies and partners of the U.S. Clearly, this would be a reason for war under any circumstances, and in any case, Russia has no intention to do anything like that," he said.
There is one exception, however: "if the command-and-control stations and the attack-warning facilities, which are mentioned in the same context, are used as tools of attack on Russia," Slutsky said.