OPINION: What’s Wrong With Tulsi Gabbard?

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued an ominous warning about the risks of a nuclear holocaust in a video posted on X on Tuesday, accusing political elites and warmongers of “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.”

Gabbard, who sits on top of the CIA, NSA, and all the other intelligence agencies, is certainly right about the risks of such an apocalypse, which have indeed increased.

But she conspicuously fails to mention who is primarily responsible for this. Namely, the ultimate warmongers in the Kremlin and their cronies on Russian television, who have made a habit out of rattling Russia’s nuclear saber and joking about it. Not only has their constant escalatory rhetoric lowered the threshold for nuclear blackmail and war, but it has also caused more nations to ponder the possibility of acquiring nukes, either to use them as a deterrent or as an extortion tool.

And let us not forget Russia’s cooperation with North Korea. In exchange for having deployed troops to the Kursk Oblast to roll back Ukrainian forces, Pyonyang receives growing technological assistance which potentially bolsters North Korea’s development of ICBMs and SLBMs, nuclear-powered submarines, as well as low yield nuclear weapons.

Gabbard’s obscure reference to “warmongers,” however, seems nothing but a dog whistle pointed against Ukraine, along with its allies and supporters, who keep on being denounced by the Russophile blaming-the-victim crowd for supposedly provoking Russia’s murderous war of conquest and even risking World War III by not capitulating, but fighting back.

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It is worth reminding, that although Gabbard served in the Hawaii National Guard, she never had anything to do with intelligence or intelligence gathering and analysis. Even as a member of Congress she was not on the House Intelligence Committee. Notwithstanding her inexperience, in March 2020 she echoed false Kremlin claims that Ukraine was housing American biolabs, developing chemical or biological weapons. In a post on X in 2023 she wrote: “Zelensky, Biden, NATO, congressional and media neocons are insane. And we are insane if we passively allow them to lead us into this holocaust like sheep to the slaughter.”

However, as Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s foreign minister under Yeltsin, wrote already in his May 2022 essay “Why Putin Must Be Defeated”: “Bowing to nuclear blackmail is also suicidal, as it opens the door for blackmailers to make endless demands.”

Though notorious for spreading Russian disinformation and being an apologist for Syrian dictator Assad, Gabbard’s appointment by Trump was rubberstamped by Republican Senators, except for Mitch McConnell’s lonely “nay.”

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.