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bevin's avatar

Thanks again for putting the effort into this very worthwhile work.

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richardstevenhack's avatar

"Updating the doctrine of nuclear deterrence does not add anything that the West does not know and that would differ from American doctrinal documents regarding the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons. We are convinced that this is, first of all, a weapon of deterrence and prevention of any nuclear war. This is how we treat this situation."

And this is precisely why all the boo-ha-ha over the Russian nuclear doctrine is so much hot air.

I posted this over at Ismaele's GeoPolitiq Substack and as a Substack Note today:

It's what I've said repeatedly. Russia can proclaim a readiness to use nukes all they want, but they are not going to start WWIII over a handful of conventional missiles attacking inside Russia.

If Ukraine launched a hundred or a thousand missiles (which they don't have) into Moscow, that might be a different story. But even then, what's the point of attacking the US directly? The most expedient way of dealing with that problem is blowing the Kiev regime out of existence which Russia can easily do using conventional weapons by killing Ukraine's command HQ and the entire Ukrainian political top. Not to mention every NATO weapons source inside Ukraine or the near abroad. Not to mention blowing up the satellites and aircraft the US is using to gather intelligence to support those missile launches.

None of that requires starting WWIII.

As Andrei Martyanov said the other day, Russia has escalation dominance with conventional weapons. They don't need to use nukes.

Between Ritter and the rest of the Judge Nap crowd, hyperbole does nothing to aid the discussion.

None of the above is meant to suggest that it is in any way a smart idea to escalate against Russia one more time. At some point, as Peskov said, direct attacks against NATO might well be in the cards. Article 5 of the NATO Charter really isn't relevant as NATO is a paper tiger with almost no ability to strike back at Russia, absent the US. And the US Pentagon is in no hurry to attack Russia (Iran is a different story.) So Russia may be considering doing so as a deterrent to the apparent NATO wish for a war with Russia by demonstrating how weak the European contingent of NATO actually is.

It would be interesting if Russia decides that in the course of making such a demonstration the Aegis Ashore installations in Romania and newly opened in Poland would be "accidentally" destroyed much like the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was hit "accidentally" during that conflict.

But as I've also been saying, Putin has many options to retaliate against the US globally, such as in Syria, Iran, supplying weapons to Hezbollah and Yemen, etc.

Interesting that I saw an article yesterday which claimed "Russian weapons" were found in Hezbollah caches. First, of course "Russian weapons" would be found there. AK's are used by half the world, more than the US AR platform rifle. Second, any more advanced non-small arms are obviously in use by Hezbollah - they have many Russian antitank weapons, for example. Third, the question is why would Israel make a big deal about "Russian weapons"? There are two answers to that: 1) Israel wants to drag the US in by counting on US antipathy to Russia, and 2) Israel didn't originate that report, but the US neocons did.

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