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No, Vladimir Putin’s Not Going To Nuke Anybody
Everybody gasp and cower. Or duck and cover. If you forgot, the tsar has some nukes. A lot of them, actually, and gun to his head, he might have to use them.
Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a revised nuclear doctrine self-authorizing the Kremlin to deploy nuclear weapons in the event "any nonnuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state" demonstrates "aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies." In such a situation, the aggressors are considered to be acti
Not to question the morals of a politician, but if I’m Joe Biden and I don’t actually value the well-being of people over partisan strategy, I’m thinking about thinking about how convenient it would be to hand Trump a deteriorating situation where Kyiv is hitting oil facilities. Second order effect might be to boost Trump’s energy agenda but it also might be to throw another variable into a tenuously balanced s-show. IDK obviously, I’m not listening in to Biden’s calls with Zelensky, but it crossed my mind.
Why not just send them over some mobile deploy nukes? Wouldn’t that provide the deterrence they lack to actually scare Putin?
“The US is hoping the ATACMS threat will dissuade Kim. Somehow, I doubt it…”
This is pure win for Kim. It’s not like the West can make things any worse for him. We’ve already sanctioned just about everything coming out of or into North Korea, and two of the three countries that border it are quite happy to ignore those sanctions. NK maintains a huge standing army, but for the last 70 years, they haven’t seen much of anything in the way of real combat. Whatever soldiers make it back from Russia will be hardened veterans. The ones who don’t make it back will merit a huge shrug. They’ll probably get some banging parades in their honor though, which is more than they could have ever hoped for in life. As an added bonus, for as long as North Korea’s soldiers are on Russian soil, Kim doesn’t have to feed them.
Two disappointing things: 1) that it took this long for Biden to loosen the restraints, and 2) that it was telegraphed in advance. I’m sure the Russian MoD has spent a productive last few days in a massive scramble to move high-value assets out of ATACMS range.
Mostly correct except for the parade part. The Parade will be in Kim’s honor because they died for him. As will go any and all future military ceremonies in the US as well.
Happy to see Ukraine getting right after it with the ATACMS, though as often is the case with U.S. military tech/capability (nb: M-1 Abrams), the results are likely to fall short of the hype.
It’s a laughable piece of political propagandizing for Putin to sign a piece of paper to let us know he can now use nukes when he wants. Of course he’s always been able to do that. “Piece of paper, I don’t need no stinking piece of paper comrade!”.
Right.
If Americans can’t read a Trump con they sure should be able to see through Putin. He’s a mad dog calling wolf, an arsonist complaining about hot coffee.
The Americans who went over to Trump this election mostly don’t even know who Putin is.
I’ll take that thought a step (perhaps an Olympic long jump) further and suggest Biden should have been the one to threaten to use nukes, in the lead-up to Putin invading Ukraine almost 3 years ago. And perhaps send Zelensky a few tactical ones along with the next shipment of tanks and missiles…
Restrictions eased on use of Storm Shadow missiles, supplied by UK but containing US technology. US also supplying anti-personnel mines for the first time.
So, the Ukraine war will probably “end” aka temporarily pause, with Russia keeping provinces in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Ukraine will rebuild and re-arm for renewed hostilities. During the war, Ukraine has developed some domestic defense industry: 4MM drones/yr (the combat use of which they now know more about than any Western country) and munitions (to be expanded via a Rheinmetall-built facility). It will probably become an arms exporter, after the government lifts wartime export restrictions. I wonder if we’ll get the chance to invest in those companies?