NEWS: Real threat of nuclear escalation, warns Jomo

Prominent economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram warns that Russia’s nuclear threat is “real” as fears mount over the global security situation.

Transcript

00:00 So we are now living in a situation where you have the former superpower, Russia,

00:09 collapsing by half, taking another 22 years to get back to the same size as previously.

00:19 They can't spend very much on military, so what do they have?

00:23 They have the arsenal, the military arsenal, the equipment from before the end of the Cold War.

00:32 And what was there? That was basically nuclear.

00:36 That when you have very, very limited weapons, when you need to go and buy drones from Iran,

00:43 when you need to go and seek Kim Jong-un, you need to go to him to buy your weapons,

00:50 you really are in a fairly desperate situation.

00:53 So I would say that the threat is a real threat, because you are going to do something

00:59 which the Soviet Union did to the US in the early 1960s.

01:08 They moved missiles to Cuba, and Kennedy said, "No way."

01:21 But fortunately, Kennedy was willing to talk, and he contacted Khrushchev,

01:26 and he said, "No way, you get your missiles out."

01:30 And the missiles were removed, and that was the end of that threat.

01:36 Now, that same scenario has been flipped over, where the US is saying,

01:41 "We are going to move NATO right to your border, right to Ukraine."

01:48 And we have already seen the experiences of this.

01:50 Remember the MH flight which was shot down?

01:54 That was partly the consequence of this kind of situation.

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