Nuclear Arms no Longer Key to Peace

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

Russia has fitted its fleet with tactical nuclear weapons both in the North Sea and in the Atlantic. The United States and NATO have convinced themselves that they can destroy Russia and China and neither will retort to nuclear weapons.  Nobody ever questions: What if we are wrong?

Once upon a time, it was PRESUMED that having nuclear weapons promoted peace. We needed the nuclear arms race to promote deterrence and thus peace. That theory is now completely dead. Everyone has nuclear weapons and now they think nobody will use them and we can now conquer foreign lands even if they have nukes. So why did we invade Iraq?

After having serious discussions about the “what-if” scenario that Russia nukes a major city in Ukraine justifying itself as did the United States with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I found that there was no playbook for such an event and there remains nothing but disagreement as to how the U.S. would even respond. Macron has come out and stated that France would NOT launch nuclear weapons if Russia nuked Ukraine. Macron is not an insane neocon. If there was any retaliation, the cloud of nuclear fallout would be drifting over NATO countries in Western Europe. That would wipe out crop production and unleash further food shortages. We would see instead of a volcanic winter event, it would be a nuclear winter event.

Actually, most people do not realize but during the Obama administration, they conducted a war game simulating Russian use of nuclear weapons in the Baltics. Even back then, there were fundamental disagreements about how to respond. The US policy is to conquer and destroy Russia. They know this. It has been the US demanding no peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Under this proxy-war reality, Russian military doctrine published since 2000 has envisioned the first use of nuclear weapons in response to a conventional threat in a regional war. This is precisely what the US and NATO are carrying out right now. Even Russia’s smallest nuclear warheads are many times the explosive power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Russia nuking Ukraine has been talked about behind closed doors for months. Those in the military arm have been warning the Biden administration for several months that Russia could be pushed into a corner where they will do the unthinkable. The Biden Administration “prefers” to think they can accomplish their end goal without nuclear weapons. Those behind Putin would push the button in the blink of an eye. They see that as a serious option and believe it would end the war as did Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There is no clear-cut scenario. Many say it would depend if they used a small nuke to wipe out Ukrainian troops rather than nuking a major city. The only thing that the Biden Administration seems to agree on is just to increase the sanctions. That will only further divide the world economy and increase the chances of world war III. Other are saying that unless a NATO country was hit by Russia, then the U.S. would not have any obligation to respond.

This leaves the door open that perhaps the ONLY way to stall World War III is to take nuclear action against Ukraine in some measured manner. With subs armed with supersonic nuclear missiles just offshore of the USA, they could take out Washington DC before Biden could even make it to a safe room. Perhaps nuking Ukraine becomes the only way to wake up the population of Europe demanding to end this warmongering. All they had to do was honor the Minsk Agreement and Putin would have no choice but to withdraw.