This is John Bachelor, speaking with my colleague, Peter Hussi of the Hudson Institute,

about the intention, says the Kremlin, to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and the

dictator Lukashenko. The answer is complicated on the basis of previous history of the Russian

Federation under Boris Yeltsin and tactical nuclear weapons and their use on the battlefield

from Russia's point of view. Here's Peter. This is all part of a using nuclear weapons for coercion

and blackmail, create high uncertainty in the West, engage in totally reckless rhetoric. If you

see this one from Putin for a year and a half, in the hopes that the United States and its allies

stand down, the issue here is uncertainty breeds miscalculation and miscalculation can be an

opposite. If this is an opposite with nuclear weapons, we're in a total different kettle of fish

John than we would be if it was. Remember the missile that went from Ukraine over Poland and it was

worried whether it was an Russian missile or a Ukraine missile. This is why this is so dangerous

and it's uncertain where Mr. Putin is going with this, but if you go back to 1999, when Yeltsin says,

give me battlefield nuclear weapons. I can use in a conflict on the battlefield to push the other

guys to stop fighting and to stand down so we can win conventionally and we don't have to go

nuclear because they were worried about their capability conventionally to stand up to what they

saw in the United States as it stormed and then you saw the break take down the Taliban and the

take down a Saddam under the Bush administration. So John, that's where this is all coming from

and the question is how reckless do you think they are and how much of it do we think is a bluff

and otherwise administration has said we say no movement of Russian nukes we don't see any reason

to change our posture. A number of the officials have said, if even of attack with nuclear weapons,

we will respond with better conventional weapons, but that's down the road. So the question is,

we're very basically behind eight ball when it comes to nuclear weapons in Europe. We have gravity

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