Richard Engel Floats Idea That U.S. Bomb Russian Military, Gets Promptly Thrashed on Twitter: ‘That Would Start World War III’
NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel raised some eyebrows with a tweet seemingly entertaining the idea that the United States and NATO bomb a Russian military convoy heading for Kyiv.
The U.S. and a slew of other countries have imposed heavy sanctions on Russia since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last week. Some in the international community have also been sending the besieged nation weapons to help fend off the attack.
On Monday, Engel posited a scenario in which the U.S. and/or NATO “destroy” the aforementioned Russian convoy heading toward Kyiv. While it’s not clear whether the reporter was advocating this, his framing could certainly be interpreted that way.
“Perhaps the biggest risk-calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far,” he tweeted. “A massive Russian convoy is abt 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?”
Western countries have thus far avoided directly engaging Russia militarily. That includes the U.S., which like Russia has nuclear weapons. It’s worth noting that aside from some small skirmishes over the last 50 years, no two nuclear powers have ever gone to war with one another.
In addition to being bloody from the standpoint of conventional warfare, there’s the question of whether two nuclear powers would be able to engage in such a war without ultimately resorting to the use of nuclear weapons and possibly destroy each other.
Engel received a tsunami of criticism for his tweet.
https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1498407366190157825
