Cuz I wanna know if I need to create and finish a bucket list if that’s the case lmao.
There’s just no way that there isn’t retaliation. We’re still operating under MAD. Between air force, Navy, and ICBMs, there’s too many nukes on both sides that dozens but more probably hundreds of millions of people would die. The entire point of the Ukraine war is to prevent NATO from getting any closer and possibly sticking nukes (or targets that would invoke a nuclear response from NATO) within striking distance such that retaliation couldn’t occur in time to sustain MAD. It’s very similar to the Cuban/Turkish standoff that occurred at the height of the cold war. I see the change in doctrine more matching the US’ first strike policy and Russia trying to assert itself as a world power again. They’re putting those words into action with their current military endeavors and diplomatic moves, but statements like these are continuous opportunities for the West to pull their heads out of their asses and recognize the change in reality beneath them.
There will for sure be retaliation but I doubt it’ll be with nuclear weapons at least in the near-ish future. MAD, despite its ghoulishness has worked and really us the only way to keep the world in balance after nuclear bombs were invented. It’s ugly but it kept Korea, Vietnam and God knows how many places potentially from being a nuclear crater. We know America was down to use nukes at will to get what it wanted before the soviets got the a bomb and fundamentally little has changed in that regard. So yeah, I agree. It’s been shown that nato winning the war on behalf of Ukraine is only possible through the destruction of the earth and I don’t think it’s quite important enough for that. But I also don’t think they’ll back down without doing something really stupid first.
It’s fucking horrifying that putting a nuclear gun to the world’s head is the only thing that stopped America from using nuclear genocide to crush all opposition and rule the world unopposed.
America would be the last people I’d trust with unilateral nuclear power, but any nation with that level of power is kinda scary. Once there was an atomic bomb there was really no other way.
My feelings on all this are best expressed in episode 8 of Twin Peaks the Return.
“Gotta light?”
