Yes, thanks, @ Pardel-Lux
Also agree. I think that’s the reason for his recent videos slamming the Russian army leaders and the lack of artillery supplies. I think he is laying the groundwork for a coup.
Probably.
I mean, the North Koreans had a wrecked economy AND literally millions of starving people, no functional power grid outside of Pyongyang, etc., etc. and they managed to build functional nukes from scratch.
It’s all a matter of priorities. If an authoritarian regime values nukes above the welfare of the masses they’ll have nukes.
The USSR was massively, massively corrupt and not only built an arsenal of thousands of nukes, they also built the largest one ever detonated. So corruption is not an absolute bar to a working nuclear arsenal.
Russia’s nuclear threat is definitely real. Yes, they’re hopelessly corrupt, and terrible at maintenance, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, as @Broomstick said upthread, only 10% of their arsenal is actually functional. But they have 6000 nukes, on paper. 600 of them working is still enough to give the entire rest of the world a very, very bad day. If they decide to aim only 10% of those at the US, that’s every city from Lexington, KY on up.
That said…
If Russia nukes Kyiv, then the West might not nuke Moscow… but we would nuke or otherwise destroy all of Russia’s remaining launch facilities. All of the silos, all of the submarines, all of the bomber airfields, all of the surface ships capable of carrying cruise missiles. Because any nation with both nukes and the will to use them is an existential threat to every nation on the plane.
What happens when somebody with power and influence in RuZZia realises that the atomic arsenal is the problem? It allows RuZZia to punch above his weight, without the nukes Putler would not have dared to operate the way he has, and I do not mean only Ucraine, but also Georgia, Dagestan, Syria, Wagner, Grozny, the murders of Litvinenko, Boris Nemzov, Boris Berezovski… you name it. So the rational thing to do is to get rid of the nuclear arsenal completely.
Ah, but that is utopic! But punching above his weight* is what has caused the problems RuZZia is experiencing right now, and it will lead to a terrible downfall in due time. So what is to be done?
Getting rid of the atomic arsenal destroys the current state, a military-industrial-oligarch complex. The very essence of the current state. There will be so many losers when this happens that the opposition will be fierce, it may well lead to a civil war and the collapse of the RuZZian union. But it has to be done if Russia (without the ZZ) is to have a future. Can it be achieved? By whom? What can we do to help?
I don’t know. If Russia does not manage to get rid of the nuclear arsenal, it will implode, probably causing unimaginable damage to the rest of the world. But achieving this liberating goal is fraught with enormous obstacles, goes against deeply entrenched interests, has never been done before ever in history and opens new problems (China comes to mind).
Long term? They have to, otherwise they are screwed, and so will we be. Will they manage? My bet would be no: they won’t. I am a pessimist. But they have to. I see no alternative. But I also must admit I see no viable path towards that goal.
* Russia, remember, has a PIB on the level of Italy’s! They suffer from one of the worst cases ever (!) of Dutch Disease, relying almost exclusively on raw materials for export, with an ever diminishing industrial base, a terrible demographical problem, brain drain, and alcoholism.
In general I agree w your whole post, but here’s something to consider about the snip here.
I said all those same things about the Soviet Union. No path forward, no way for them to back down, etc. Somehow they did; the Soviet Union quietly imploded without destroying half the world.
Admittedly it did not settle into a happy place and here we are again 40 years later. Had a few things gone differently in the Yeltsin years we might already have a normal-ish Russia that resembles a cold India: Deeply corrupt dynastic politics and oligarchic commerce on the back of a nominal democracy with economic stagnation for the masses.
My point here is not to argue that Pollyanna is sure to be pleased with post-Putin Russia. Merely that prophesying 100% doom has so far, in all of history, proven to be wrong.
So there will be a Mandela figure rising up in Russia (I know that South Africa is in a funk now, but Mandela is still a powerful ideal)? OK, would be nice if you were right. But I maintain that the fact that the world has not been blown to pieces yet is no guarantee that it cannot happen. And the odds are not getting better.
I’m not optimistic that the leader Putin+1 will be any better. He will at least be different. Andropov was no picnic after Brezhnev. Good thing he died quickly.
I merely suggest that they’ll bumble along as the gangster politics coupled to the gangster economy for awhile until the whole thing grinds to a de facto halt under its own curse of rust & alcohol. Then when the public has had enough, something different will emerge. I probably won’t live to see it, but not because I’ll be killed by Russia before it emerges. It’ll just take longer than the 40-50 years absolute max 0.00001% chance that I have left.
In the near term I’m a lot more concerned about the USA going Fascist for 40 years than I am the Russians blowing up the EU, NATO, or the US.
Define PIB, please? I’m guessing it’s something Industrial Base?
Oh, yes! I can relate to that.
Sorry, mixed up my languages, I meant GDP (PIB is Spanish for GDP: Producto Interno Bruto → Gross Domestic Product).
It seems to me that Russia, like many other countries, has long defined themselves in terms of their previous prestige. Given that, the idea of disarmament may be deeply unappealing.
When did Russia become “RuZZia”? I am confused by your use of this term and what it implies to you.
Mandela seems a poor analogy for the Russian situation. He succeeded by putting together a coalition of local and regional groups and pressure on international banks and businesses at a time where these were especially influential, being relatively inclusive, delaying negotiation, getting international support (from countries like Russia!), not generally relying on violence, being locally respected, good timing, having some support from progressives, articulating goals clearly, and having pragmatic people in government that might consider negotiations in certain circumstances. Few of these conditions would seem to apply to current Russia, in my humble opinion, except for some international support and some laudable characters.
RuZZia is a term I and some others use because Putin has used the “Z” as the symbol for the “special military operation” in Ucraine (aka: WAR), and it has the added value of becoming a swastica when you rotate one of the "Z"s by 90° and put it on top of the other.
It is relevant in this context that the letter “Z” does not exist in the Cyrillic alphabet, it was chosen by Putler (that reference is clear, I hope?) because it is half a swastica. Thus, take two "Z"s and you get the intended meaning.
I wrote that I am a pessimist, LSLGuy wrote that not all is lost yet. I agree with you more than with him in this regard.
Do you mean “the rational thing” for someone in power in Russia, or “the rational thing” for everyone else in the world?
If the latter, I agree with you, but I can’t see the logic in the former.
I’ve been saying this for a while now, but Ukraine today is the perfect example of why countries want to have nukes, and why, once they have them, they should never ever give them up, at least not completely. Had Ukraine in the 90s kept even just a few nukes, there’s no way Russia would have invaded them. The equation is simple: if you have nukes, you’re immune to invasion.
So I don’t expect Russia to ever be completely nuclear-free. What I do hope is that we can convince them to scale back their nukes to a number that protects them from invasion, but which doesn’t allow them to hold the entire world hostage. We can debate the particular numbers, but there’s no real need for thousands of warheads. China does just fine with about 300-500 warheads, most other nuclear powers have even fewer.
How to get there from here is the real problem.
I mean the latter, and I also mean the rational thing for Russia. That this is not the same as the rational thing to think or to do for the person in power in Russia is regrettable, but that is the way the coockie crumbles.
But I really believe that it would be best for Russia not to have a nuclear arsenal: having nukes puts ideas into Russia’s leaders that do not end well. Nukes make Russia punch above its weight, i.e. possibilities. It can ill afford it, and it always ends up showing. And I do not believe that Russia had to fear being invaded before it started invading other countries (now, all bets are off: revenge I understand). <sarc>I mean, who would want to invade that shithole country, if I may use this presidential expression outside the Pit? It is worse than invading Honduras, South Sudan and Myanmar rolled into one, and colder too!</sarc>
Napoleon and Hitler tried. In addition to the cold weather, Russia razed everything in their path so they couldn’t resupply.
I suspect that would be less effective these days. When was the last time a Western army seriously worried about starvation among the troops?
So you’re saying that NATO could invade Russia easily?
No, I’m saying that this isn’t the reason we can’t invade them.
Take nuclear weapons out of the equation, though, and we’d be eating MREs in Moscow within a week.
I think that this is a fascinating and extremely relevant, important and timely discussion. I worry that Russia will be a worrisome and potential threat/issue of perpetual concern that will have to be taken into consideration in any geopolitical activity for decades into the future. Even if someone who was morally good (IMO a Gorbachev 2.0) was to finesse Russia out of its current state, he/she would have to do a very delicate balancing act of strongman/woman who can:
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keep opponents appeased and/or at bay, depending on the opponent;
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convince the Russian population that he/she is doing this in their best interest without causing an unreasonable amount of public sacrifice and suffering; and
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somehow manage pragmatic, honest relations with the west such that he/she could convince the west that the strongman performance is critical and necessary to the success of the transition exercise.
This person would also have to convince everybody that returning to “previous glory” is a dangerous non-starter.