A FORMER NATO boss has warned Europe could be locked in nuclear war with Russia “within a year” triggered by a Russian incursion into Baltic States; Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The chilling warning comes from General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander. He said an attack would trigger article five of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) which deemed aggression against one member an attack on all.
“I have this awful vision of the Baltic States being seized, NATO unable to respond, Putin then blackmails using nuclear weapons what is called chillingly ‘nuclear de-escalation’ and NATO is unable to do anything about it,” the retired general said.
“The alliance collapses and at a stroke, Putin has destroyed … the organisation perhaps he most fears the most, NATO. America is decoupled from Europe and the world is changed irrevocably.”
While it might sound far-fetched, the “fact-based prediction” is the basis for his new book War With Russia, which is a fictional account of how a nuclear war in the continent could unfold. Billed as an “urgent warning from senior military command” it’s designed as a “wake-up call” to military and political elites who could be sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster, General Shirreff claims.
“Add the other chilling aspect of this, that nuclear weapons are hardwired into Russian defence thinking, then it gets really serious and potentially existential,” he said.
“Because if there is any hint of a Russian military foot stepping across those borders of Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania that means war under article five of the NATO treaty … but it also means nuclear war in Europe.
“I pray that it does not happen but I have this awful sense of drift towards this ghastly potential result,” he told reporters in London on Wednesday.
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