I don't know what will happen in Ukraine. But I'm just writing to say that, even with Trump in the saddle, I don't think the western alliance structure is going to collapse like the Warsaw Pact in 1989-1991 - though it may well go through transformative changes.
Something that encourages me to think this, is an article in the Financial Times which points out that every developed democracy that voted this year, had a trend against the incumbents. I attribute this to a mix of common economic and ideological trends. To me, this indicates the extent to which the developed democracies are organically connected to each other.
“If we fail to ensure Ukraine’s victory over Russian aggression, it will have far-reaching strategic consequences not only for Ukraine and our partners in Europe, but for other simmering and dangerous hot spots.” (Robert Holley)
The United States is incapable of ensuring a Ukrainian victory. There are no weapons that we can provide that will allow Ukraine to win. Ukraine simply doesn’t have enough soldiers to defeat the Russians. When Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, Israel’s fighting-aged men immediately returned home in large numbers to fight. When Russia attacked Ukraine, many thousands of Ukrainian men of fighting age fled the country.
Besides, the American armed forces, supposedly the envy of the world, couldn’t figure out how to defeat the ragtag Taliban despite having 20 years to figure it out. How exactly is the United States supposed to “ensure” a victory for Ukraine?
For sure there are weapons that could squash Russian forces in Ukraine. Just artillery shells alone in sufficient numbers would do it; Ukraine fires one shell back for every several it receives. Ditto for other classes of ammo. Give Ukrainians mountains of munitions, and the crimes there will cease.
Or drones. A large Ukrainian sortie is around a hundred drones at a time. How about a million drones at a time? This is quite doable, especially given how easy and cheap they are to make, and the years we've had to make them. A few million-drone sorties from Ukraine would be the end of Russia's military. No extra soldiers needed.
This is all common knowledge. And yet it won't happen. Why not? That part isn't common knowledge.
Exactly right on all points. Of *course* Ukraine could win if we armed it properly and took the shackles off. We haven't been spending this much money on our military for nothing. What they need is a fraction of what we've got sitting in stockpiles. Even if it weren't, we're still perfectly capable of doing exactly what we did in the First and Second World Wars: producing so much materiel, so quickly, that the enemy doesn't know what hit them. We're just choosing not to do it. So yours is exactly the right question to ask.
I would guess that the answer is that Biden is persuaded that if Russia faced defeat, it would use nuclear weapons. My question is why he believes this. Has he come to this conclusion based on the information that's publicly available? If so, I believe he's been duped by Russian information operations and psychological warfare. Or does he have a reason to which we're not privy to believe this? It's possible we have a mole or another source of information in Putin's inner circle and that his reasons for believing this are better than we understand. This is what the people in his circle who spoke to Bob Woodward were implying.
They may have said this to Woodward because it's true. They may have said it not because it's true, but as an exercise in reputation laundering. (I'm sure they're aware that history won't regard them kindly for their failure, and perhaps they wanted to suggest that rather than destroying our deterrence and losing Ukraine--and with it, much more--they saved the world from nuclear war.) Or it may be that they believe it, but again have fallen victim to a Russian intelligence operation: They may *think* they have a mole in Russia's inner circle, for example, but that mole could be a double. Such things happen. We will not know for a very long time, if ever, what they were really thinking, and we certainly won't know whether they were right to think it (unless Putin's regime suddenly collapses and we gain access to archives recording the deliberations among Putin and his intimates, which seems unlikely, but it did happen once--when the USSR crumbled, there was a brief window in which researchers were able to see the Soviet archives.*)
While it's nothing more than a hunch, my guess would be that the Biden Administration is letting itself be spooked by Russia's psychological warfare, possibly with the aid of a mole, or several, who are actually working for Russia. But I certainly don't know this for sure, and I wouldn't be entirely surprised to learn that Putin really is prepared to use nuclear weapons if he's defeated.
But even if this is true, we're making the wrong decision. The way to respond to this threat is not to give into it, but to make it clear that we, too, have a nuclear arsenal and we are also prepared to use it. Otherwise, we set ourselves up--as we have--for a world defined by nuclear proliferation and nuclear blackmail. Crazy as it is, Mutual Assured Destruction is the only doctrine that allows us to escape from that world, and it has a track record of success.
I don't think the Biden Administration has been wrong to worry about escalation to nuclear war, if that's what's tied their hands. I'd be outraged to learn that they never worried about this: That would be intolerably reckless. But if my theory about the way they've been thinking and why is correct, they've traded the lowering of nuclear risk in the short-term for the raising of that risk exponentially in the long term. This would be typical of the decisions presidents and all elected officials tend to make--"better the catastrophe happen when someone else is in charge." It's why no one is going to deal with the debt until that time bomb goes off. The incentives to behave this way are so high that they seem to be irresistible (especially because the public is incapable of appreciating that something that goes wrong under a given president's watch may well be the previous president's fault). But in the case of nuclear proliferation (or the debt, for that matter), the irresponsibility of leaving this problem for the next guy to deal with is intolerable.
* The very odd thing is how few people were interested in those archives. I wrote about this a lot.
The answer to why the West won't help Ukraine expel Russia isn't fear of nukes. Russia won't use atomics; there is no plan to "defeat" Russia in the sense of demanding its unconditional surrender, no plan to attack Russia, and certainly no plan to "destroy" Russia physically/culturally/economically. The plan would be to get Russia's forces out of Ukraine/Crimea, and only that. Also, the U.S. has told Putin plainly that if he tries a tactical nuke, for example, America will immediately annihilate the entire Russian military by using just conventional arms.
The explanation is the instability that neutralizing Russia's invasion would bring. Remember the back of Zelensky's "Make Russia Small Again" t-shirt: what we think of as "Russia" is actually a very small place. The rest is what they call "nationalities," which are actually little more than tribal enclaves of mainly Asiatic and Islamic peoples. With Putin out of the picture, these can be encouraged to "go their own way," perhaps into the friendly embrace of, say, China. Belarus, Chechnya, Kaliningrad, Ossetia etc. too will suddenly have to figure out who they are. Kazakhstan, for example, is currently held together entirely by the Kremlin but is mightily coveted by China, and also by assorted Muslim "groups" who could really use the oil, population, territory... And this is not to mention how Russia's own internal calamities might unfold once the current rulers' death grip is loosened.
On the other hand, we know exactly what it would mean for Russia to occupy and control Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Hungary and all the rest. That was the governing situation for many decades and until quite recently, so we understand it and can live with it even if we don't like it. But a Eurasia without Moscow's centuries-old magic touch is a big unknown and thus a significant risk. We're not going there, not today. Too bad about Ukraine... but there are more important things. At least for us.
“The way to respond to this threat is not to give into it, but to make it clear that we, too, have a nuclear arsenal and we are also prepared to use it.” (Claire Berlinski)
This is absurd. Claire’s suggestion that we should threaten to engage in a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine veers into lunacy. A nuclear war is likely unsurvivable. If it were to ever occur, millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of Americans would perish; perhaps in an instant. Our country would be destroyed physically and economically and so would Russia.
The idea that we should risk this possibility over a few Russian speaking eastern Ukrainian provinces makes no sense. The American nuclear umbrella was extended to NATO and our Asian allies during a period of American dominance. That era has ended or mostly ended. In large part it was destroyed by the neoconservative uniparty which dissipated American vitality in a series of endless wars that made no sense and that, by the way, we lost. It was also destroyed by the neoliberal uniparty that ruined the economic prospects of tens of millions of American workers.
The real problem is that the American nuclear umbrella is increasingly leaking. If a North Korea armed with nuclear capable ICBMs was to attack South Korea with either conventional or nuclear forces, would an American President of either political party risk launching nuclear weapons against North Korea if it meant putting Seattle, Portland or San Francisco at risk of utter devastation? Would the American public support an American nuclear attack under those circumstances?
There is considerable doubt that the American public would even support a nuclear response to a Russian nuclear attack on NATO nations most Americans have never heard of like Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania. Would Americans be willing to risk incoming Russian ICBMs if Russia were to launch a nuclear attack with tactical nuclear weapons against our newest NATO allies, Sweden and Finland? Maybe, but I doubt it.
The idea that the United States should be prepared to launch nukes based on anything Russia might do in a non-NATO nation like Ukraine is fundamentally blinkered.
Of course, the argument is academic because the uniparty has just been routed. All of its dreams and aspirations for Ukraine are kaput. The war in Ukraine is headed for an imperfect armistice. As imperfect as that armistice will be, it will be preferable to Ukraine losing the war and it will be far better than a Ukraine reduced to rubble by Russian nukes. All of this should be a reminder about how foolish it was for Biden to incite the Russian invasion in the first place.
As for the American nuclear umbrella, there is no doubt that it’s fraying. It saved the world from nuclear war for decades. Sadly, it’s time to figure out what comes next.
The fundamentals of nuclear deterrence and MAD seem to come as a complete surprise to you. I'm not surprised that you're shocked. It would be shocking to me, too, if it was the first time I'd learned of it. But this was the cornerstone of our foreign policy from the end of the Second World War until the very recent past. It's how we deterred the USSR from conquering all of Europe.
Yes, everything about nuclear weapons is insanity. But they exist. Given this, there are two options: Surrender to the other nuclear power, or rely on MAD.
Actually, the fundamentals of nuclear deterrence do not come as a shock to me and you’re right that the concept of mutually assured destruction has facilitated the peace between the superpowers for decades.
The problem is that the edifice of MAD depends on a bluff. If you launch nuclear weapons at us, we will respond with our own nuclear attack on you and we have a second strike capability which guarantees we will succeed. It’s why we built a TRIAD.
This approach was designed to deter a Russian nuclear attack on our NATO allies as well as a massive invasion by Russia of NATO nations using conventional forces. During the Cold War, Russia supposedly had a significant advantage in the number of their conventional forces so the threat of a nuclear response to a potential conventional invasion seemed prudent.
None of this suggests that it would be wise or even justifiable to use American nuclear weapons to respond to a Russian attack using tactical nuclear weapons against a nation like Ukraine that is.not a NATO member and is largely irrelevant to the security of the West, at least in terms of geography.
The other issue with MAD is that it rests on the assumption that all the players are rational. The United States and the Soviet Union were both rationale players during the Cold War. There is a big question about whether two of the current nuclear powers, Pakistan, North Korea are rational players who could be deterred by the potential of a second strike. If Iran joins the nuclear club it is doubtful that it would be a rational player either.
When the United Stares extended its nuclear umbrella to our Asian allies in South Korea and Japan, it was a risk-free proposition. A nuclear-armed China was a rational player and, in any event, didn’t have a robust nuclear infrastructure at the time though it does now. North Korea didn’t have the means to respond to the United States if we attacked it with nuclear weapons in response to their nuclear attack on South Korea or Japan. Now North Korea does have that capability.
The simple reality is that one way or the other, the American nuclear umbrella is coming apart at the seams. In Asia, it’s kaput. No American President will risk the complete destruction of the West Coast of our country by launching a nuclear attack on North Korea in response to that countries attack on our Asian allies. Anyone who believes we would is delusional. As far as Asia goes, our nuclear umbrella is reminiscent of the story about the emperor who has no clothes.
As far as Ukraine goes, the American nuclear umbrella is a fraud. If Russia attacks Ukraine using tactical nuclear weapons there is no way Americans would tolerate putting our country at risk by responding to Russia with a nuclear attack of our own.
The bluff is easy to see through. If Russia were to use tactical nuclear weapons on its own territory to eliminate the Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory or if Russia were to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States would huff and puff but it wouldn’t blow the Russian house down. We would bluster but it is obvious we would never respond with our own nukes. Biden wouldn’t have, Harris wouldn’t have and Trump won’t.
Threatening to respond with nuclear weapons as you’ve suggested Claire, would just make us look more ridiculous than we already do.
Even if Donald Trump doesn't alter Biden's Ukraine policy, this entire war should be a sobering cautionary tale for small countries tempted to place too much confidence in faraway allies, including the United States. The fact of the matter is that the US's interest in defending places like Ukraine or Korea or whatever was only marginal, and whether or not Trump is as uniquely evil as this blog's proprietrix seems to think, the hard geopolitical reality of the situation guaranteed that sooner or later, someone would call America's bluff.
(Poland's failure to build a regional alliance system in the 1920s-30s, and its eventual reliance on Britain instead, was equally disastrous. I have an article at my own substack going into this in more detail, entitled "The Poland Paradox: How Faraway Allies Make Small Countries Less Safe." https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/the-poland-paradox)
For what it's worth, I don't share the author's negative opinion toward nuclear proliferation. I think it was foolish for the Taiwanese to yield to western bullying and give up their nuclear program in the 1980s (what kind of country entrusts its future to "allies" that don't even formally recognize its sovereignty, and have repeatedly broken their treaties with it in the past?) Europe would also be much safer if Poland had nuclear weapons and led a close alliance of Eastern European countries capable of fielding a Russian-sized army without American help.
Right now, the only American "ally" that actually takes its own survival seriously, and is intent on being strong enough to defend itself with or without foreign help, is Israel. The goal of American foreign policy should be to make all of America's putative allies act more like Israel.
Because countries with nuclear weapons don't go to war with each other.
This is the main reason why the post-1945 world has been more peaceful than what came before. And after all, Ukraine had nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up, and then dismantled them to appease Russia and the United States. How well did that work out for Ukraine?
Now it's true that there's always a small risk of a nuclear accident, which is one of the reasons I don't recommend nuclear weapons for all countries - only countries like Poland, South Korea, and Taiwan where the risk of invasion by an aggressive neighbor is much larger than the risk of an accidental launch.
America and Europe have had almost three years to provide Ukraine with the weapons needed to actually win this war. They obviously haven't done so, and there's no reason to think that a Harris government would have acted any differently.
Everything you say is likely to happen under Trump was likely to happen under Harris, maybe just pushed back a few years. All Trump will do is accelerate what would have happened if the Democrats had remained in power.
I don't know what will happen in Ukraine. But I'm just writing to say that, even with Trump in the saddle, I don't think the western alliance structure is going to collapse like the Warsaw Pact in 1989-1991 - though it may well go through transformative changes.
Something that encourages me to think this, is an article in the Financial Times which points out that every developed democracy that voted this year, had a trend against the incumbents. I attribute this to a mix of common economic and ideological trends. To me, this indicates the extent to which the developed democracies are organically connected to each other.
“If we fail to ensure Ukraine’s victory over Russian aggression, it will have far-reaching strategic consequences not only for Ukraine and our partners in Europe, but for other simmering and dangerous hot spots.” (Robert Holley)
The United States is incapable of ensuring a Ukrainian victory. There are no weapons that we can provide that will allow Ukraine to win. Ukraine simply doesn’t have enough soldiers to defeat the Russians. When Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, Israel’s fighting-aged men immediately returned home in large numbers to fight. When Russia attacked Ukraine, many thousands of Ukrainian men of fighting age fled the country.
Besides, the American armed forces, supposedly the envy of the world, couldn’t figure out how to defeat the ragtag Taliban despite having 20 years to figure it out. How exactly is the United States supposed to “ensure” a victory for Ukraine?
For sure there are weapons that could squash Russian forces in Ukraine. Just artillery shells alone in sufficient numbers would do it; Ukraine fires one shell back for every several it receives. Ditto for other classes of ammo. Give Ukrainians mountains of munitions, and the crimes there will cease.
Or drones. A large Ukrainian sortie is around a hundred drones at a time. How about a million drones at a time? This is quite doable, especially given how easy and cheap they are to make, and the years we've had to make them. A few million-drone sorties from Ukraine would be the end of Russia's military. No extra soldiers needed.
This is all common knowledge. And yet it won't happen. Why not? That part isn't common knowledge.
Exactly right on all points. Of *course* Ukraine could win if we armed it properly and took the shackles off. We haven't been spending this much money on our military for nothing. What they need is a fraction of what we've got sitting in stockpiles. Even if it weren't, we're still perfectly capable of doing exactly what we did in the First and Second World Wars: producing so much materiel, so quickly, that the enemy doesn't know what hit them. We're just choosing not to do it. So yours is exactly the right question to ask.
I would guess that the answer is that Biden is persuaded that if Russia faced defeat, it would use nuclear weapons. My question is why he believes this. Has he come to this conclusion based on the information that's publicly available? If so, I believe he's been duped by Russian information operations and psychological warfare. Or does he have a reason to which we're not privy to believe this? It's possible we have a mole or another source of information in Putin's inner circle and that his reasons for believing this are better than we understand. This is what the people in his circle who spoke to Bob Woodward were implying.
They may have said this to Woodward because it's true. They may have said it not because it's true, but as an exercise in reputation laundering. (I'm sure they're aware that history won't regard them kindly for their failure, and perhaps they wanted to suggest that rather than destroying our deterrence and losing Ukraine--and with it, much more--they saved the world from nuclear war.) Or it may be that they believe it, but again have fallen victim to a Russian intelligence operation: They may *think* they have a mole in Russia's inner circle, for example, but that mole could be a double. Such things happen. We will not know for a very long time, if ever, what they were really thinking, and we certainly won't know whether they were right to think it (unless Putin's regime suddenly collapses and we gain access to archives recording the deliberations among Putin and his intimates, which seems unlikely, but it did happen once--when the USSR crumbled, there was a brief window in which researchers were able to see the Soviet archives.*)
While it's nothing more than a hunch, my guess would be that the Biden Administration is letting itself be spooked by Russia's psychological warfare, possibly with the aid of a mole, or several, who are actually working for Russia. But I certainly don't know this for sure, and I wouldn't be entirely surprised to learn that Putin really is prepared to use nuclear weapons if he's defeated.
But even if this is true, we're making the wrong decision. The way to respond to this threat is not to give into it, but to make it clear that we, too, have a nuclear arsenal and we are also prepared to use it. Otherwise, we set ourselves up--as we have--for a world defined by nuclear proliferation and nuclear blackmail. Crazy as it is, Mutual Assured Destruction is the only doctrine that allows us to escape from that world, and it has a track record of success.
I don't think the Biden Administration has been wrong to worry about escalation to nuclear war, if that's what's tied their hands. I'd be outraged to learn that they never worried about this: That would be intolerably reckless. But if my theory about the way they've been thinking and why is correct, they've traded the lowering of nuclear risk in the short-term for the raising of that risk exponentially in the long term. This would be typical of the decisions presidents and all elected officials tend to make--"better the catastrophe happen when someone else is in charge." It's why no one is going to deal with the debt until that time bomb goes off. The incentives to behave this way are so high that they seem to be irresistible (especially because the public is incapable of appreciating that something that goes wrong under a given president's watch may well be the previous president's fault). But in the case of nuclear proliferation (or the debt, for that matter), the irresponsibility of leaving this problem for the next guy to deal with is intolerable.
* The very odd thing is how few people were interested in those archives. I wrote about this a lot.
The answer to why the West won't help Ukraine expel Russia isn't fear of nukes. Russia won't use atomics; there is no plan to "defeat" Russia in the sense of demanding its unconditional surrender, no plan to attack Russia, and certainly no plan to "destroy" Russia physically/culturally/economically. The plan would be to get Russia's forces out of Ukraine/Crimea, and only that. Also, the U.S. has told Putin plainly that if he tries a tactical nuke, for example, America will immediately annihilate the entire Russian military by using just conventional arms.
I'm not saying that the fear, if this is the explanation for our vacillation, is rational. I'm saying it may nonetheless be the explanation.
What do you think the explanation might be?
The explanation is the instability that neutralizing Russia's invasion would bring. Remember the back of Zelensky's "Make Russia Small Again" t-shirt: what we think of as "Russia" is actually a very small place. The rest is what they call "nationalities," which are actually little more than tribal enclaves of mainly Asiatic and Islamic peoples. With Putin out of the picture, these can be encouraged to "go their own way," perhaps into the friendly embrace of, say, China. Belarus, Chechnya, Kaliningrad, Ossetia etc. too will suddenly have to figure out who they are. Kazakhstan, for example, is currently held together entirely by the Kremlin but is mightily coveted by China, and also by assorted Muslim "groups" who could really use the oil, population, territory... And this is not to mention how Russia's own internal calamities might unfold once the current rulers' death grip is loosened.
On the other hand, we know exactly what it would mean for Russia to occupy and control Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Hungary and all the rest. That was the governing situation for many decades and until quite recently, so we understand it and can live with it even if we don't like it. But a Eurasia without Moscow's centuries-old magic touch is a big unknown and thus a significant risk. We're not going there, not today. Too bad about Ukraine... but there are more important things. At least for us.
What's your evidence for thinking that the Biden Administration thinks this way?
“The way to respond to this threat is not to give into it, but to make it clear that we, too, have a nuclear arsenal and we are also prepared to use it.” (Claire Berlinski)
This is absurd. Claire’s suggestion that we should threaten to engage in a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine veers into lunacy. A nuclear war is likely unsurvivable. If it were to ever occur, millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of Americans would perish; perhaps in an instant. Our country would be destroyed physically and economically and so would Russia.
The idea that we should risk this possibility over a few Russian speaking eastern Ukrainian provinces makes no sense. The American nuclear umbrella was extended to NATO and our Asian allies during a period of American dominance. That era has ended or mostly ended. In large part it was destroyed by the neoconservative uniparty which dissipated American vitality in a series of endless wars that made no sense and that, by the way, we lost. It was also destroyed by the neoliberal uniparty that ruined the economic prospects of tens of millions of American workers.
The real problem is that the American nuclear umbrella is increasingly leaking. If a North Korea armed with nuclear capable ICBMs was to attack South Korea with either conventional or nuclear forces, would an American President of either political party risk launching nuclear weapons against North Korea if it meant putting Seattle, Portland or San Francisco at risk of utter devastation? Would the American public support an American nuclear attack under those circumstances?
There is considerable doubt that the American public would even support a nuclear response to a Russian nuclear attack on NATO nations most Americans have never heard of like Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania. Would Americans be willing to risk incoming Russian ICBMs if Russia were to launch a nuclear attack with tactical nuclear weapons against our newest NATO allies, Sweden and Finland? Maybe, but I doubt it.
The idea that the United States should be prepared to launch nukes based on anything Russia might do in a non-NATO nation like Ukraine is fundamentally blinkered.
Of course, the argument is academic because the uniparty has just been routed. All of its dreams and aspirations for Ukraine are kaput. The war in Ukraine is headed for an imperfect armistice. As imperfect as that armistice will be, it will be preferable to Ukraine losing the war and it will be far better than a Ukraine reduced to rubble by Russian nukes. All of this should be a reminder about how foolish it was for Biden to incite the Russian invasion in the first place.
As for the American nuclear umbrella, there is no doubt that it’s fraying. It saved the world from nuclear war for decades. Sadly, it’s time to figure out what comes next.
The fundamentals of nuclear deterrence and MAD seem to come as a complete surprise to you. I'm not surprised that you're shocked. It would be shocking to me, too, if it was the first time I'd learned of it. But this was the cornerstone of our foreign policy from the end of the Second World War until the very recent past. It's how we deterred the USSR from conquering all of Europe.
Yes, everything about nuclear weapons is insanity. But they exist. Given this, there are two options: Surrender to the other nuclear power, or rely on MAD.
Actually, the fundamentals of nuclear deterrence do not come as a shock to me and you’re right that the concept of mutually assured destruction has facilitated the peace between the superpowers for decades.
The problem is that the edifice of MAD depends on a bluff. If you launch nuclear weapons at us, we will respond with our own nuclear attack on you and we have a second strike capability which guarantees we will succeed. It’s why we built a TRIAD.
This approach was designed to deter a Russian nuclear attack on our NATO allies as well as a massive invasion by Russia of NATO nations using conventional forces. During the Cold War, Russia supposedly had a significant advantage in the number of their conventional forces so the threat of a nuclear response to a potential conventional invasion seemed prudent.
None of this suggests that it would be wise or even justifiable to use American nuclear weapons to respond to a Russian attack using tactical nuclear weapons against a nation like Ukraine that is.not a NATO member and is largely irrelevant to the security of the West, at least in terms of geography.
The other issue with MAD is that it rests on the assumption that all the players are rational. The United States and the Soviet Union were both rationale players during the Cold War. There is a big question about whether two of the current nuclear powers, Pakistan, North Korea are rational players who could be deterred by the potential of a second strike. If Iran joins the nuclear club it is doubtful that it would be a rational player either.
When the United Stares extended its nuclear umbrella to our Asian allies in South Korea and Japan, it was a risk-free proposition. A nuclear-armed China was a rational player and, in any event, didn’t have a robust nuclear infrastructure at the time though it does now. North Korea didn’t have the means to respond to the United States if we attacked it with nuclear weapons in response to their nuclear attack on South Korea or Japan. Now North Korea does have that capability.
The simple reality is that one way or the other, the American nuclear umbrella is coming apart at the seams. In Asia, it’s kaput. No American President will risk the complete destruction of the West Coast of our country by launching a nuclear attack on North Korea in response to that countries attack on our Asian allies. Anyone who believes we would is delusional. As far as Asia goes, our nuclear umbrella is reminiscent of the story about the emperor who has no clothes.
As far as Ukraine goes, the American nuclear umbrella is a fraud. If Russia attacks Ukraine using tactical nuclear weapons there is no way Americans would tolerate putting our country at risk by responding to Russia with a nuclear attack of our own.
The bluff is easy to see through. If Russia were to use tactical nuclear weapons on its own territory to eliminate the Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory or if Russia were to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States would huff and puff but it wouldn’t blow the Russian house down. We would bluster but it is obvious we would never respond with our own nukes. Biden wouldn’t have, Harris wouldn’t have and Trump won’t.
Threatening to respond with nuclear weapons as you’ve suggested Claire, would just make us look more ridiculous than we already do.
Even if Donald Trump doesn't alter Biden's Ukraine policy, this entire war should be a sobering cautionary tale for small countries tempted to place too much confidence in faraway allies, including the United States. The fact of the matter is that the US's interest in defending places like Ukraine or Korea or whatever was only marginal, and whether or not Trump is as uniquely evil as this blog's proprietrix seems to think, the hard geopolitical reality of the situation guaranteed that sooner or later, someone would call America's bluff.
(Poland's failure to build a regional alliance system in the 1920s-30s, and its eventual reliance on Britain instead, was equally disastrous. I have an article at my own substack going into this in more detail, entitled "The Poland Paradox: How Faraway Allies Make Small Countries Less Safe." https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/the-poland-paradox)
For what it's worth, I don't share the author's negative opinion toward nuclear proliferation. I think it was foolish for the Taiwanese to yield to western bullying and give up their nuclear program in the 1980s (what kind of country entrusts its future to "allies" that don't even formally recognize its sovereignty, and have repeatedly broken their treaties with it in the past?) Europe would also be much safer if Poland had nuclear weapons and led a close alliance of Eastern European countries capable of fielding a Russian-sized army without American help.
Right now, the only American "ally" that actually takes its own survival seriously, and is intent on being strong enough to defend itself with or without foreign help, is Israel. The goal of American foreign policy should be to make all of America's putative allies act more like Israel.
Why don't you share my negative opinion toward nuclear proliferation? I've argued here before that under these conditions, the risk of an accident leading to nuclear war is intolerable. I'd like to know why you think I'm wrong. See: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/false-alarms?utm_source=publication-search
Because countries with nuclear weapons don't go to war with each other.
This is the main reason why the post-1945 world has been more peaceful than what came before. And after all, Ukraine had nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up, and then dismantled them to appease Russia and the United States. How well did that work out for Ukraine?
Now it's true that there's always a small risk of a nuclear accident, which is one of the reasons I don't recommend nuclear weapons for all countries - only countries like Poland, South Korea, and Taiwan where the risk of invasion by an aggressive neighbor is much larger than the risk of an accidental launch.
Access? https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trump-and-future-american-power-stephen-kotkin?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=b343dd70ab-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_05_04_36_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-b343dd70ab-73042625
Plus there is RELIGION & w it Russia's "brother" Serbia, deeply humiliated bc 2 or more monasteries were taken during establishment of Kosovo.
And all that for this guy to amuse himaelf with
https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Struwwelpeter/Die_Geschichte_vom_b%C3%B6sen_Friederich#/media/File%3AH_Hoffmann_Struwwel_04.jpg
America and Europe have had almost three years to provide Ukraine with the weapons needed to actually win this war. They obviously haven't done so, and there's no reason to think that a Harris government would have acted any differently.
Everything you say is likely to happen under Trump was likely to happen under Harris, maybe just pushed back a few years. All Trump will do is accelerate what would have happened if the Democrats had remained in power.
"They all hate us anyhow, so let's drop the big one now!...Boom goes London, Boom Paris..."
(from "Political Science", words and music by Randy Newman)