I did not know that. Cool.
We wouldn’t think so; but sometimes I think there is absolutely no overestimating the paranoia that seems to be a Russian national characteristic. “Safety” is defined as having the overwhelming power to annihilate any possible threat, and any resistance to that power is seen as an implicit attack. It’s like having to interact with a deeply neurotic person, whose projected fears you have to take into account no matter how unrealistic they are. The thing is, by Russian standards of discourse Putin may actually sincerely believe that the advance into Ukraine is “defending” Russia(!)
This is interesting.
Well, no, there are at least some limits. In the current example, I don’t actually expect Russia to invade a current member of NATO, because then NATO would fight back. You can justify using nukes when your own country is being invaded, but it’s harder to justify using nukes if you’re the one doing the invading, and you’re just getting your ass kicked. Even if Putin were to invade, say, Poland, the absolutely epic curb-stomping the NATO forces would dole out to the invading forces would be very unlikely to trigger a nuclear war.
If we were dumb enough to counter-invade Russia, though, all bets are off.
So basically, Putin can do pretty much whatever he wants to do, right up to the edge of the Polish border. Which admittedly sucks for everyone else on the wrong side of that border, but that’s the way the world is at the current moment. This is also why so many countries wanted to join NATO before the shit hit the fan.
Why does Putin need to justify using nukes to anyone but himself? Do you think the consequences would be different if he came up with a good reason?
Because The Button is just a bit of imagery. Putin by himself can’t do much more than any other person. He has power because he has people around him who ultimately agree to do the things he orders them to do, for whatever reasons they may have.
And for those people, “Nuke Washington because the US army is on the outskirts of Moscow!” is a bit different than “Nuke Washington because I screwed up sending Spetsnaz into Poland!”
So the future of the free world depends on the morality of the Russian chain of command?
And the american and to a lesser extent the Chinese one, have you been asleep since August 6, 1945?
Latest campaign assessment from the Institute for the Study of War:
Yeah that’s the rub – to Putin, there is an “existential threat” (just to his power, we’d say? l’Etat, c’est moi, y’know). And the POV of Putinists and Russian hard-nationalists seems to be that controlling their rightful “sphere of influence” around their vicinity is existentially essential to Russia being Russia. A lot of the power circles in Moscow still fear not knowing what happens to them under whatever replaces Putin, more that they fear what may happen under Putin.
You’re assuming that Russia has any interest whatsoever in “rebuilding” anything.
No, the future of the entire world potentially depends on the morality of the Russian chain of command. Because a strategic nuclear war is going to frack up the world for absolutely everyone.
It’s also depends on the morality of the chain of command of the US and China as well.
Lesser nuclear powers, with only a few or even a few dozen nukes, maybe not so much… an attack by them might not result in global nuclear war - but any lesser power attempting that will be turned in glass craters by the bigger powers.
My dad had this book. He probably bought it new when it was published in 1945. I remember reading it as a kid…with a lot of it probably going over my head.
Not so much the morality per se, but rather the common sense and the naked self-interest.
What is the life expectancy of someone in the Russian chain of command who defies the will of Putin? Reports of Chechen kill squads shooting deserters puts a whole new spin on self interest.
Yes, this. Framing it as “morality” confuses the issue. It’s more a matter of pragmatism.
You have to ask, “What are these people willing to die for? What are they willing for all their friends and family to die for?”
Die to save your country from an invading army? Yeah, sure, probably. Die to protect the ego of some tyrant? Maybe not so much.
It’s a bit of a balancing act. Use the death squads enough to keep people in line, but not so much that the death squads themselves start thinking they might be next. Lots of tyrants in history have screwed up that balance and paid the price.
We’ve already seen Putin arresting people from his intelligence and security services. I’m sure that everyone who just moved up a rank because of that is both thrilled and scared. The real question is how much of each?
Klingon promotion does have its drawbacks. Let’s just hope whoever has Putin in his sights is a little saner.
Job #1 for any replacement is going to have to be “Please stop the sanctions! I need to look good to all the other Russians!” Hopefully that means they’ll at least act sane for a few years.
In the mega-hypocrisy category:
Left unsaid: “Because of our shelling, our missiles, our artillery, our troops…”
Taking a page from Henry V, perhaps?
(Referring to Henry’s speech before the surrender of Harfluer where, as the sparknotes summary aptly describes, “King Henry urges the surrender of Harfleur with the same complex, morally shaky rhetoric that we see in earlier scenes.”)