Nuclear danger

2 years ago
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Scott Horton of Antiwar.com and a former Army LieutenantCol.President Joe Biden has stated that the world has not been this close to nuclear armageddon since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Daniel Davis has issued a warning regarding the grave danger of the war in Ukraine escalating. https://reason.com/video/2022/11/07/t...After making grave threats, Vladimir Putin has backtracked.He stated in a televised address toward the end of September that he would employ "all available means to protect Russia and our people."
He stated, "This is not a bluff."
"There is no point in [using nuclear weapons], neither political nor military," he said in a speech on October 27.However, Russian military leaders recently met without Putin to discuss when and how to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, as reported by The New York Times last week.
Scott Horton, editor of the new book Hotter Than The Sun for Antiwar.com:According to Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, we ought to take seriously the possibility that the conflict in Ukraine could turn into a war that would end the world.He points out that since their invasion of Ukraine in February, Putin and several of his top military leaders have repeatedly threatened nuclear attacks.
"Biden's stated policy is to help Ukraine no matter how long it takes to win back their territory," according to senior fellow for Defense Priorities Daniel Davis, a former lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, "can't be accomplished without throwing us in extraordinarily high nuclear risk."Davis asserts that Russia's military is quite capable despite its mistakes, and he anticipates that forthcoming reinforcements will tip the balance of power in Moscow's favor in December.
Lt.Col.Davis adds that if Ukrainian President Zelenskyy does not succeed in driving Russia out of all of Ukraine, including Crimea, it will increase the likelihood that Russia will use nuclear weapons to keep Putin in power."Backdoor negotiations and diplomatic channels with both sides" should be opened by the United States in order to bring the war to an end as soon as possible, he says, and the United States should provide just enough defensive weapons to prevent Russia from completely dominating the country.
Horton says that a strategic arrangement might have been arrived at back in April, highlighting an article co-composed by Fiona Slope, a previous ranking executive for European and Russian undertakings on the Public safety Gathering, expressing that "as per various previous senior U.S. authorities… in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian mediators seemed to have likely settled on the blueprints of an arranged break settlement."A Ukrainian newspaper and a British government press release claim that Zelenskyy was advised by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson to steer clear of such negotiations with Russia.
At the end of September, Putin made the announcement that he was annexing four territories in Ukraine that border Russia. He said that the people who live in the occupied areas would always be Russian citizens and that any attacks on the annexed areas would be considered aggression against Russia itself.Horton argues that "is going to be virtually impossible now" to persuade Putin to back down from these annexations.
According to Lieutenant, "Nobody in Ukraine and nobody in the West wants to allow Russia to keep even a centimeter of territory that they've taken."Col.Davis.However, it is not attainable to accomplish that objective.What is realistically possible is to freeze the war where it is at right now before Ukraine loses any more territory in order to achieve that objective. To attempt to achieve that objective would almost certainly escalate the conflict to a nuclear conflict.
However, what would the moral hazard of resigning be?According to Yale historian Timothy Snyder, negotiating with Putin will only "make future nuclear war much more likely" because it will teach future dictators "that all they need to get what they want is a nuclear weapon and some bluster."
Lt.Col.Davis asserts that "that already exists, and that is a component of the reality."You won't reverse that because North Korea and Russia both possess nuclear weapons.
"With all of the losses it has already suffered up to this point, Russia has done so much damage to itself that it will take decades to recover.At least not in our lifetimes, many of these sanctions will never be lifted.Therefore, the harm that Russia has already endured and will continue to endure is significant and unlikely to serve as a model for others.
Horton asserts that the conflict in Ukraine demonstrates that deterrence is an excessively risky strategy and should reenergize the campaign for disarmament.He argues that deterrence "only works until it stops working."And that is the end of it once it stops working.Because it can be used completely, it's called the Doomsday Machine.
John Osterhoudt was the producer;edited by Zach Weissmueller and Osterhoudt;Regan Taylor contributed additional graphics.

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