WWIII

There’s so much to unpack here that even though I’m well known for very lengthy posts I’m going to do my best to be as brief as possible. Simple ideas can be expressed simply and briefly. This is not a simple situation and it cannot be addressed rightly by a paragraph or few.

There is to me an unfathomable and unexplainable idea that the first time even so much as a nuclear firecracker goes off within minutes the world will be automatically and unavoidably be consumed in a thermonuclear fireball of death.

This is a misconception that has a lot to do with the fact that most people have heard that for their whole lives and do not understand the realities involved. Real life isn’t a dystopian disaster movie. This universal apocalypse thing is a false narrative meant to frighten people who do not know better and do not understand the practical, correct use of military force.

If you find yourself repeating versions of that narrative then you are one of those people.

The use of nuclear weapons has always been a arrow in the quiver of our National Defense posture and the application or potential application of thermonuclear weapons is a vital aspect to the maintenance of our freedom and sovereignty.

During the Cold War the United States and our NATO allies had an ‘openly secret’ policy of using tactical nuclear weapons to repulse a Russian invasion of NATO countries. This was a direct and open threat that approached the certitude of a promise that we would indeed resort to tactical nukes the minute we felt it was necessary to defeat a Russian invasion.

In short, we kept Russia out of Europe not by the threat of nuclear armageddon but by the threat that we would vaporize their forces if they tried to invade. It’s not at all the same thing. One does not automatically precipitate the other.

We would be using those weapons on our own ground. Our own ground occupied by Russian aggressors. Indeed, this was the whole point behind the development of the neutron bomb. Which is a low yield, high radiation weapon that would kill in a comparatively large area without unsustainable intensities of blast, cratering and fallout. It’s not pretty but I would leave large areas devoid of enemy actuals while not turning the whole place into a nuclear wasteland for the comprehensible future.

We would not be using STRATEGIC nuclear weapons on Moscow. Strategic nuclear deterrence is not at all the same thing as the deployment and use of a TACTICAL nuclear weapon. The use of a tactical nuke does not automatically guarantee an all out nuclear apocalypse that will destroy all life on planet Earth.

The difference between both the mission and action of a city-busting intercontinental nuclear warhead of megaton (+) yield is not the same as the application and use of a tactical warhead of one or several kiloton(s) yield. It’s like the difference between a sixteen pound sledgehammer and a 10 ounce finishing hammer. The right tool for the job at hand.

A strategic nuke is a weapon of deterrence meant to keep the other side from destroying our major cities. A tactical nuke is a weapon meant for desperate measures on the battlefield when everything else has failed or when you want to keep your own people in reserve to go in and fight the remnants left over from the tactical strike.

The actual fact is that through thick and thin, throughout many decades of fighting with Russians in both cold and hot wars, by proxy and by applications of Special Operations forces, through all of that up to and including the moment when the Russian government imploded and was for all practical purposes without leadership … We have menaced Russia with nuclear weapons and they have done the same to us. Yet neither of us has been stupid enough to initiate a global armageddon and there’s no reason to think that has or will change.

If we were to wilt like a daisy in the sun and structure all our policies and defense around threats from Moscow we’d never survive. All Moscow would have to do is call up the POTUS and tell him “Hey, we’re going to do this thing and if you do anything about it we’ll nuke the crap out of you.”

Ask yourself why that has never worked and never should work. IF it works this time through the sloth and stupidity of Americans and their leadership then that’s the card the Russians will ALWAYS play. Russians are real big on what works.

If anyone is advocating for policy based on an irrational, highly unlikely fear of Russian nuclear weapons … That person is working for the Russians knowingly or not.

Because we’ve got those bad boys too. So if Russia can sway U.S. policy with threats of a nuclear armageddon that is WEAKNESS that will provoke Russian belligerence. If you run from a Bear you only die with claws and teeth in your back.

Also for the purposes of discussion on this topic there are two main types of State Actors.

There are rational state actors. Like Vladimir Putin. Putin might be vile and evil but he’s not irrational. If anything he’s hyper-rational. He is a cold and calculating chessmaster type not a wild-eyed suicide bomber. He knows as well as we do that throwing nukes at the U.S. and NATO is the end for him, his country that he so badly wants to return to its former glory, and mostly likely the world. ‘Knows as well as we do’ that the same applies if we start chucking ICBMs at Russia.

That doesn’t mean he’s going to be nice about anything. It doesn’t mean that we are going to see things the same way either. It just means that Vladimir Putin knows he can kiss all his ambitions goodbye if he escalates to strategic nukes. Every single thing that he has ever accomplished in his life that meant anything at all to him will be gone and flash fried to a crispy crunch.

Vladimir Putin is no more willing to see that happen than Joe Biden is likely to denounce the far left puppeteers that pull his strings and wake up one day as a Rock Ribbed Conservative. Putin is a rational state actor.

Then there are irrational state actors. A very good example of this is Iran. The Iranians might be, we don’t know for sure but it’s a significant possibility, just nuts enough to use nukes on the U.S. and Israel if they ever get such weapons and a reliable means to deliver them. Because those people in charge of Iran do not have their own temporal interests at heart. They think that Allah would approve of such things and grant them rewards in the afterlife for doing them.

Then there are the semi-rational state actors like North Korea. North Korea makes a lot of noise and rattles its sabres constantly but they’re only ever as crazy as they have to be. North Korea has nukes. If they really, truly wanted to hit the U.S. with a nuclear attack there are ways to get those devices to U.S. targets without mounting them on the tips of ICBMs. North Korea does not really want to nuke us and suffer the consequences. Life would take a turn for the much worse for Korean leadership and they can’t have that.

That most people do not understand these things is not surprising. Most people have better things to do with their time than to study military strategy and rightfully leave that to the military strategists. I have met very few civilians in my life that firmly grasped the concepts of ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ and were familiar with the differences.

Giving Ukraine M1 Abrams tanks is not going to precipitate a global armageddon. It’s just not. There’s no rational, informed, educated reason to think that. The wisdom in letting that regime have such weapons is a different question.

Those tanks are not going to end up on the global arms market because they are extremely high maintenance systems. It takes almost as much to keep an Abrams running as it would a helicopter and if you know anything about helicopters you know that’s a whole lot of work. If you were say for instance Tajikistan and bought M1 Abrams tanks from Ukraine after this conflict ends you’re basically buying many tons of junk. Because all we need to do to disable those tanks is not sell parts for them. They’ll quit working PDQ if they can’t get parts.

I don’t give a fig about Ukraine as a nation. What I do care about is our real enemy, Russia. We’ve been fighting them since immediately after WWII in one manner or another and that has not significantly changed as a matter of threat to the U.S. Just because the Soviet Union, which was a RUSSIAN invention, fell — Does not mean that particular tiger has changed its stripes. SSDD

Ok, now all of that said and there’s a ton more I could say about this … Yes, the Baked Potato that sits behind the desk in our Oval Office is a useless git. He’s bungling the whole situation badly. He could probably have prevented this whole mess and failing that he’s not doing the things that will carry any promise of fixing it. Having failed to prevent this he’s squandering a prime opportunity to really put the Russian Bear back in its cage for a very long time.

But he’s not leading us into a nuclear war with Russia. I don’t know who you’re listening to or what their credentials are but I listen to people like H.R. McMaster, who Donald Trump also listened to and named him is National Security Adviser. Firing McMaster to hire that turncoat John Bolton was unwise and Trump paid for doing that. Then had to settle for second string with Robert O’Brien.

Find someone who can top General McMaster in credentials and experience if you want to convince people like me. Some internet blogger going by the name ‘moonbattery’ is just background noise by comparison.

The only way that happens is if Jello-Brain Joe launches a strategic first strike against Russia. I doubt even that creepy criminal crime conglomerate patriarch is that far gone to do such a thing.

Conservative media is every bit as eager to motivate people by fear as any outlet in the MSM Leftist media source. Crying about a looming nuclear war is unreasonable and unrealistic. Joe and company are terrible for this nation, they’re doing a lot of damage and there’s plenty to criticize them for without making up crap that is about as likely to happen as Hunter Biden becoming an upstanding citizen and exemplary father to his own disowned and denied child. In fact, even less likely. The Left never learned the lesson about The Boy Who Cried Wolf and they don’t care. Leave that sort of perfidy up to them.

We have plenty of real problems to worry about.