US nuclear weapons in UK to escalate tensions with Russia: Analyst
The UK’s consideration to once again host US nuclear missiles, if Western ties with Russia further deteriorate, will cause a “major escalation” of tensions, a former Pentagon official says.
“The possibility of the US deploying nuclear weapons to Europe will be a major, major escalation of what I would call Cold War 2,” said Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst at the US Department of Defense.
“This would constitute a major escalation of an already tense area in which military forces of both the United States and now Russia are going to be gathering to have another confrontation,” Maloof told Press TV on Tuesday.
“This does not bode well for either side and for the world,” he added. “All that the Russians would do is move in their own nuclear weapons and create a further of escalation.”
The British government could be open to hosting US nuclear weapons again should the West's relationship with Russia deteriorate further, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Monday.
"We have got to send a clear signal to Russia that we will not allow them to transgress our red line," Hammond said during a live interview on BBC1, when asked if the UK would consider a plan to host American intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
“We would look at the case. We work extremely closely with the Americans. That would be a decision that we would make together, if that proposition was on the table,” he said.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Monday that such a move would lead to escalation of tensions and that Russia is “monitoring” the situation, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.
Ties between Washington and Moscow have reached an all-time low over the crisis in Ukraine, which began after pro-Western forces ousted the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014.
The United States and its Western allies have imposed sanctions against Russia, accusing the country of supporting pro-Russian forces in the Ukraine conflict. The Kremlin denies the allegation.
However, US and Western European moves to isolate Russia and damage its economy for its reunification with Crimea last year have not forced President Vladimir Putin to back down.
During his two-day visit to Germany, US President Barack Obama urged leaders of the G7 industrial economies to stand up against what he called “Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
AHT/HRJ
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