Oh, I’m not advocating it by any means. And it’s some scary shit. It begins to feel like the 70s and early 80s again visit a vis US-Russian/Soviet relations.
As for Applebaum, she’s a Russian and Eastern Europe specialist who lives in Poland and is strongly plugged into Eastern European governments at the highest level. Toss in her Pulitzer for writing on Russia and Eastern Europe and she’s got a better feel that we do. That’s what makes it so frightening.
I agree with Velocity, sure it could escalate to those levels but really its not the Cold War anymore, why would Russia and the West necessarily resort to nukes when they aren’t even fighting on their own soil?
btw this is a fascinating question, thanks Habeed.
You’re aware that Russia’s population experienced natural increase in the last two years, right? And that the birth rate decline seems to have mostly bottomed out?
Russia’s population is probably going to start declining again in a few years, because of the age structure of the population, but now that they’ve got their fertility rates increasing, I strongly doubt they’re ever going to ‘drop below 100 million’.
Is NATO totally neutered without the US as an immediate back up?
Can NATO field enough ground forces in a gradual build up of forces in the Ukraine?
Or can NATO field enough air forces or anti-air forces in a rapid build up in the Ukraine?
In a battle defensive forces are likely to take less losses in an engagement…is NATO not able to supply anti-air and/or anti-armor weapons in significant numbers and in a timely manner?
In very broad strokes this could be Putin telling the world that the US (NATOlol) can’t protect everyone…and this could be where NATO shows that they don’t need the US to be effective.
Again very broad strokes from a person who doesn’t come close to knowing all the details…
If Putin is really weighing such a possibility, then Putin is genuinely batshit crazy. I would suspect that the only possible American response to a Russian nuclear attack on a NATO ally would be an immediate all-out counterforce strike on Russia–launch our nukes at their nukes and try to take out as many of their warheads as we could before the crazy man over there nukes us. It wouldn’t work of course, but I would bet that’s what we’d do, because what the fuck hell else could we do, and then it’s Game Over for Western (and Russian) Civilization.
And I think the Shirtless One is probably non-crazy enough to know that.
I think a slightly more plausible road to World War III might involve something like Russia trying to pull a Crimea in some place like Ida-Viru County in Estonia–right on the Russian border, about 125 miles from St. Petersburg; “contains most of Estonia’s energy resources”; and, oh, yeah, has a population that’s over 70% Russian. Get a bunch of “oppressed Russians” forming a “local self-defense militia” (with a lot of uniforms and weapons that they, uh, got from Army-Navy surplus stores, natch) then “declaring independence” and then “asking to be reunified with the Motherland”. Or some similar stunt in some part of Latvia, which also still has a large number of ethnically Russian people.
Then Putin would truly see if NATO is “a hollow, meaningless entity” or not.
(I’m not saying I think that’s what’s going to happen. Russia already had troops present in Crimea, by agreement with the Ukrainians, which of course they don’t in Estonia and Latvia. Estonia and Latvia are both NATO members. Just that something like that is more likely than Russia just up and nuking Riga.)
While a nuclear attack on a non nuclear NATO country will certainly have very serious strategic repercussions, it is not certain it would necessarily lead to nuclear attacks on Russia itself (as opposed to say, Russian Naval forces in the Indian Ocean).
Against a major country, NATO without America is pretty nearly neutered. The European side found it a struggle to successfully act against Libya–and that was mainly just an air campaign!
Just suggesting he’d nuke Warsaw or some such place more or less guarantees NATO is, right now, gathering intelligence, running simulations and designing plans to figure out a way to launch either a preemptive or retaliatory strike.