Nuclear war dissertation about the conflict in Ukraine with Morgan Williams / Central Station Records – Australia, by Marius Creati (part 2)

Morgan Williams is a former Private Secretary at New Zealand Parlament, now co-owner of the great Australian company Central Station Pty Ltd.

He deals with international transactions in the financial distribution, commercial distribution, discography, real estate, export of raw materials sectors.

He enjoys enormous commercial influence on the Australian continent, whose company is internationally known.

MORGAN: I would like you to comment on Eric Schlosser’s article on the conditions of the conflict in Ukraine

What if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine?

A look at the grim scenarios—and the U.S. playbook for each By Eric Schlosser

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The 12th main directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense operates a dozen central storage facilities for nuclear weapons. Known as “Object S” sites and scattered across the Russian Federation, they contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with a wide variety of explosive yields. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. According to Pavel Podvig, the director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project and a former research fellow at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, now based in Geneva, the long-range ballistic missiles deployed on land and on submarines are Russia’s only nuclear weapons available for immediate use. If Putin decides to attack Ukraine with shorter-range, “tactical” nuclear weapons, they will have to be removed from an Object S site—such as Belgorod-22, just 25 miles from the Ukrainian border—and transported to military bases. It will take hours for the weapons to be made combat-ready, for warheads to be mated with cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, for hydrogen bombs to be loaded on planes. The United States will most likely observe the movement of these weapons in real time: by means of satellite surveillance, cameras hidden beside the road, local agents with binoculars. And that will raise a question of existential importance: What should the United States do?

President Joe Biden has made clear that any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be “completely unacceptable” and “entail severe consequences.” But his administration has remained publicly ambiguous about what those consequences would be. That ambiguity is the correct policy. Nevertheless, there must also be open discussion and debate outside the administration about what is really at stake. During the past month, I’ve spoken with many national-security experts and former government officials about the likelihood of Russia using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the probable targets, and the proper American response. Although they disagreed on some issues, I heard the same point again and again: The risk of nuclear war is greater today than at any other time since the Cuban missile crisis. And the decisions that would have to be made after a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine are unprecedented. In 1945, when the United States destroyed two Japanese cities with atomic bombs, it was the world’s sole nuclear power. Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons, others may soon obtain them, and the potential for things going terribly wrong has vastly increased.

Several scenarios for how Russia might soon use a nuclear weapon seem possible: (1) a detonation over the Black Sea, causing no casualties but demonstrating a resolve to cross the nuclear threshold and signaling that worse may come, (2) a decapitation strike against the Ukrainian leadership, attempting to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky and his advisers in their underground bunkers, (3) a nuclear assault on a Ukrainian military target, perhaps an air base or a supply depot, that is not intended to harm civilians, and (4) the destruction of a Ukrainian city, causing mass civilian casualties and creating terror to precipitate a swift surrender—the same aims that motivated the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Any response by the Biden administration would be based not only on how Russia uses a nuclear weapon against Ukraine but also, more important, on how Russia’s future behavior might be affected by the American response. Would it encourage Putin to back down—or to double down? Cold War debates about nuclear strategy focused on ways to anticipate and manage the escalation of a conflict. During the early 1960s, Herman Kahn, a prominent strategist at the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute, came up with a visual metaphor for the problem: “the escalation ladder.” Kahn was one of the primary inspirations for the character Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 film, and yet the escalation ladder remains a central concept in thinking about how to fight a nuclear war. Kahn’s version of the ladder had 44 steps. At the bottom was an absence of hostilities; at the top was nuclear annihilation. A president might choose to escalate from step No. 26, “Demonstration Attack on Zone of Interior,” to step No. 39, “Slow-Motion Countercity War.” The goal of each new step upward might vary. It might simply be to send a message. Or it could be to coerce, control, or devastate an adversary. You climbed the ladder to reach the bottom again someday.

The “escalation vortex” is a more recent and more complex visualization of a potential conflict between nuclear states. It was developed by Christopher Yeaw, who served as chief scientist at the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command from 2010 to 2015. In addition to the vertical aspects of the escalation ladder, the vortex incorporates horizontal movement among various domains of modern warfare—space, cyber, conventional, nuclear. An escalation vortex looks like a tornado. An illustration of one, featured in a Global Strike Command slideshow, places the worst outcome at the widest part of the funnel: “the absolute highest levels of permanent societal destruction.”

in october 1962, Sam Nunn was a 24-year-old recent graduate from Emory University School of Law who’d just gotten a security clearance and a job as a staff member for the House Armed Services Committee. When a colleague backed out of an overseas tour of NATO bases, Nunn took his place, left the United States for the first time—and wound up at Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Nunn remembers seeing NATO fighters parked near runways, each loaded with a single hydrogen bomb, ready to fly toward the Soviet Union. Pilots sat in chairs beside their planes, day and night, trying to get some sleep while awaiting the order to take off. They had only enough fuel for a one-way mission and planned to bail out somewhere, somehow, after dropping their bombs. The commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe told Nunn that if a war began, his pilots would have to get their planes off the ground within a few minutes; Ramstein Air Base would be one of the first NATO targets destroyed by a Soviet nuclear attack. The commander kept a walkie-talkie with him at all times to give the takeoff order.

The Cuban missile crisis left a strong impression on Nunn. During his 24 years as a United States senator, he worked tirelessly to reduce the risk of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. As the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he championed close cooperation with Moscow on nuclear matters. To continue those efforts, he later co-founded a nonprofit, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, with which I have collaborated on a number of projects. All of that work is now at risk of being undone by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the strident nuclear rhetoric accompanying it.

I heard the same point again and again: The risk of nuclear war is greater today than at any other time since the Cuban missile crisis.

Before the attack on Ukraine, the five nations allowed to have nuclear weapons by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France—had reached agreement that the use of such weapons could be justified only as a purely defensive measure in response to a nuclear or large-scale conventional attack. In January 2022, those five countries issued a joint statement affirming Ronald Reagan’s dictum that “a nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won.” A month later, Russia violated norms that had prevailed under the NPT for more than half a century. It invaded a country that had given up nuclear weapons; threatened nuclear attacks against anyone who tried to help that country; and committed acts of nuclear terrorism by shelling the reactor complexes at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya.

Nunn supports the Biden administration’s strategy of “deliberate ambiguity” about how it would respond to Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon. But he hopes that some form of back-channel diplomacy is secretly being conducted, with a widely respected figure like former CIA Director Robert Gates telling the Russians, bluntly, how harshly the United States might retaliate if they cross the nuclear threshold. During the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy and First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev both wanted to avoid an all-out nuclear war—and still almost got one, because of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mistakes. Back-channel diplomacy played a crucial role in ending that crisis safely.

Nunn describes Russia’s violations of long-standing norms as “Putin’s nuclear folly” and stresses that three fundamental things are essential for avoiding a nuclear catastrophe: rational leaders, accurate information, and no major blunders. “And all three are now in some degree of doubt,” he says.

If Russia uses a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, Nunn thinks that an American nuclear retaliation should be the last resort. He favors some sort of horizontal escalation instead, doing everything possible to avoid a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States. For example, if Russia hits Ukraine with a nuclear cruise missile launched from a ship, Nunn would advocate immediately sinking that ship. The number of Ukrainian casualties should determine the severity of the American response—and any escalation should be conducted solely with conventional weapons. Russia’s Black Sea fleet might be sunk in retaliation, and a no-fly zone could be imposed over Ukraine, even if it meant destroying anti-aircraft units on Russian soil.  

Since the beginning of the invasion, Russia’s nuclear threats have been aimed at discouraging the United States and its NATO allies from providing military supplies to Ukraine. And the threats are backed by Russia’s capabilities. Last year, during a training exercise involving about 200,000 troops, the Russian army practiced launching a nuclear assault on NATO forces in Poland. “The pressure on Russia to attack the supply lines from NATO countries to Ukraine will increase, the longer this war continues,” Nunn says. It will also increase the risk of serious blunders and mistakes. An intentional or inadvertent Russian attack on a NATO country could be the beginning of World War III.

during the summer of 2016, members of President Barack Obama’s national-security team secretly staged a war game in which Russia invades a NATO country in the Baltics and then uses a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon against NATO forces to end the conflict on favorable terms. As described by Fred Kaplan in The Bomb (2020), two groups of Obama officials reached widely divergent conclusions about what the United States should do. The National Security Council’s so-called Principals Committee—including Cabinet officers and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—decided that the United States had no choice but to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Any other type of response, the committee argued, would show a lack of resolve, damage American credibility, and weaken the NATO alliance. Choosing a suitable nuclear target proved difficult, however. Hitting Russia’s invading force would kill innocent civilians in a NATO country. Striking targets inside Russia might escalate the conflict to an all-out nuclear war. In the end, the NSC Principals Committee recommended a nuclear attack on Belarus—a nation that had played no role whatsoever in the invasion of the NATO ally but had the misfortune of being a Russian ally.

Deputy staff members at the NSC played the same war game and came up with a different response. Colin Kahl, who at the time was an adviser to Vice President Biden, argued that retaliating with a nuclear weapon would be a huge mistake, sacrificing the moral high ground. Kahl thought it would be far more effective to respond with a conventional attack and turn world opinion against Russia for violating the nuclear taboo. The others agreed, and Avril Haines, a deputy national security adviser, suggested making T-shirts with the slogan deputies should run the world. Haines is now President Biden’s Director of National Intelligence, and Kahl is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. 

In 2019, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) ran extensive war games on how the United States should respond if Russia invades Ukraine and then uses a nuclear weapon there. DTRA is the only Pentagon agency tasked exclusively with countering and deterring weapons of mass destruction. Although the results of those DTRA war games are classified, one of the participants told me, “There were no happy outcomes.” The scenarios for nuclear use were uncannily similar to the ones being considered today. When it comes to nuclear warfare, the participant said, the central message of the 1983 film WarGames still applies: “The only winning move is not to play.”

None of the national-security experts I interviewed thought the United States should use a nuclear weapon in response to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine. Rose Gottemoeller—who served as the chief American negotiator of the New START arms-control treaty with Russia and later as the deputy secretary general of NATO—believes that any nuclear attack on Ukraine would inspire global condemnation, especially from countries in Africa and South America, continents that are nuclear-weapon-free zones. She thinks that China, despite its tacit support for the invasion of Ukraine, would strongly oppose Putin’s use of a nuclear weapon and would back sanctions against Russia at the United Nations Security Council. China has long supported “negative nuclear assurances” and promised in 2016 “unconditionally not [to] use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or in nuclear-weapon-free zones.”

The decisions that would have to be made after a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine are unprecedented.

If the United States detects tactical weapons being removed from Russian storage sites, Gottemoeller thinks the Biden administration should send a tough warning to Moscow through back channels—and then publicize the movement of those weapons, using the same tactic of openly sharing intelligence that seemed to thwart Russian false-flag operations involving chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine. Over the years, she’s gotten to know many of the top commanders who oversee Russia’s nuclear arsenal and developed great respect for their professionalism. Gottemoeller says they might resist an order to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. And if they obey that order, her preferred option would be “a muscular diplomatic response” to the nuclear strike, not a nuclear or conventional military response, combined with some form of hybrid warfare. The United States could launch a crippling cyberattack on the Russian command-and-control systems tied to the nuclear assault and leave open the possibility of subsequent military attacks.

Scott Sagan, a co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, at Stanford University, believes that the risk of Russia using a nuclear weapon has declined in the past month, as the fighting has shifted to southern Ukraine. Putin is unlikely to contaminate territory he’s hoping to seize with radioactive fallout. And a warning shot, such as the detonation of a nuclear weapon harmlessly over the Black Sea, would serve little purpose, Sagan says. It would signal irresolution, not resolve—a conclusion that the United States reached half a century ago about the potential utility of a NATO demonstration strike to deter the Red Army. Sagan concedes that if Russia were to lose major battles in the Donbas, or if a Ukrainian counteroffensive seemed on the verge of a great victory, Putin might well order the use of a nuclear weapon to obtain a surrender or a cease-fire. In response, depending on the amount of damage caused by the nuclear explosion, Sagan would advocate American conventional attacks on Russian forces in Ukraine, Russian ships in the Black Sea, or even military targets inside Russia, such as the base from which the nuclear strike was launched.

Sagan takes issue with how the back-and-forth of military conflict is commonly depicted. As an image, an escalation ladder seems too static. It suggests the freedom to decide whether you should go up or down. Sagan thinks nuclear escalation would be more like an escalator: Once it starts moving, it has a momentum of its own, and it’s really hard to get off. He would be deeply concerned by any sign that Putin is taking even the initial steps toward nuclear use. “We should not underestimate the risk of an accidental nuclear detonation if tactical weapons are removed from their storage igloos and dispersed widely among Russian military forces,” Sagan warns.

I recently had lunch with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry at his home in Palo Alto, California. Perry is 94 years old, one of the last prominent military strategists active today who witnessed firsthand the devastation of the Second World War. He served in the U.S. Army of Occupation of Japan, and nothing that he had read about the firebombing of Tokyo prepared him for what he saw there—a great city burned to the ground, the survivors living amid fused rubble, dependent on military rations. In Naha, the capital of Okinawa, the destruction seemed even worse. In his memoir, Perry writes that not a building was left standing, and includes a famous description: “The lush tropical landscape was turned into a vast field of mud, lead, decay, and maggots.” What Perry saw in Japan left him profoundly unsettled by the nuclear threat. Naha and Tokyo had been devastated by tens of thousands of bombs dropped in hundreds of air raids; Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by a single atomic bomb each.

Perry later earned advanced degrees in mathematics and became an early Silicon Valley pioneer, specializing in satellite surveillance and the use of digital technology for electronic warfare. During the Cuban missile crisis, he traveled to Washington, D.C., at the request of the CIA, and scrutinized satellite photographs of Cuba for evidence of Soviet nuclear weapons. He helped prepare the morning intelligence reports for President Kennedy and wondered every night whether the next day would be his last. As an undersecretary of defense during the Carter administration, Perry played a crucial role in developing stealth technology, and as secretary of defense during the Clinton administration, he led the effort to lock up nuclear weapons and fissile material at locations throughout the former Soviet Union. After leaving the Pentagon, he earned a dovish reputation, joining Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz in 2008 in a plea for the abolition of nuclear weapons; opposing American plans for new ground-based, long-range ballistic missiles; and calling upon the United States to make a formal declaration that it would never be the first to launch a nuclear attack. But Perry’s views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine are anything but warm and fuzzy. 

“The pressure on Russia to attack the supply lines from NATO countries to Ukraine will increase, the longer this war continues,” Nunn says.

We ate sandwiches that Perry had prepared, with bread he’d baked, sitting on a large terrace where the planters overflowed with flowers and hummingbirds hovered at feeders, beneath a brilliant blue sky. The setting could not have been more bucolic, the idea of nuclear war more remote. A few days earlier, Perry had given a speech at Stanford, outlining what was at stake in Ukraine. The peace that had reigned in Europe for almost eight decades had been shattered on February 24, he said, and “if Russia’s invasion is successful, we should expect to see other invasions.” Putin was now engaging in blackmail, threatening to use nuclear weapons for offensive, not defensive, purposes, trying to deter the United States from providing the conventional weapons that Ukraine badly needs. “I fear that if we give in to this outrageous threat,” Perry said, “we will face it again.” 

Perry’s manner is thoughtful, calm, and gentle, not the least bit alarmist or overemotional. I’ve known him for more than a decade, and though his voice has grown softer, his mind is remarkably undimmed, and beneath his warmth and kindness lies steel. Perry has met Putin on a number of occasions, dating back to when he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg—and thinks Putin will use tactical weapons in Ukraine if it seems advantageous to do so. Although the Russian Federation’s declared policy is to use nuclear weapons only when confronted with an existential threat to the state, public declarations from Moscow should always be taken with a grain of salt. The Soviet Union adamantly denied having any missile bases in Cuba as it was building them. It publicly vowed for years never to be the first to use a nuclear weapon, while secretly adopting war plans that began with large-scale nuclear attacks on NATO bases and European cities. The Kremlin denied having any intention to invade Ukraine, right up until it invaded Ukraine. Perry always found Putin to be competent and disciplined, but cold. He believes that Putin is rational at the moment, not deranged, and would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine to achieve victory and thereby ensure the survival of his regime.

During the Cold War, the United States based thousands of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons in NATO countries and planned to use them on the battlefield in the event of a Soviet invasion. In September 1991, President George H. W. Bush unilaterally ordered all of America’s ground-based tactical weapons to be removed from service and destroyed. Bush’s order sent a message that the Cold War was over—and that the United States no longer considered tactical weapons to be useful on the battlefield. The collateral damage they would cause, the unpredictable patterns of lethal radioactive fallout, seemed counterproductive and unnecessary. The United States was developing precision conventional weapons that could destroy any important target without breaking the nuclear taboo. But Russia never got rid of its tactical nuclear weapons. And as the strength of its conventional military forces waned, it developed very low-yield and ultra low-yield nuclear weapons that produce relatively little fallout. In the words of a leading Russian nuclear-weapons designer, they are “environmentally conscious.” The more than 100 “peaceful nuclear explosions” conducted by the Soviet Union—ostensibly to obtain knowledge about using nuclear devices for mundane tasks, like the excavation of reservoirs—facilitated the design of very low-yield tactical weapons.

Two nuclear detonations have already occurred in Ukraine, as part of the Soviet Union’s “Program No. 7—Peaceful Explosions for the National Economy.” In 1972, a nuclear device was detonated supposedly to seal a runaway gas well at a mine in Krasnograd, about 60 miles southwest of Kharkiv. The device had an explosive force about one-quarter as large as that of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. In 1979, a nuclear device was detonated for the alleged purpose of eliminating methane gas at a coal mine near the town of Yunokommunarsk, in the Donbas. It had an explosive force about one-45th as large as that of the Hiroshima bomb. Neither the workers at the mine nor the 8,000 residents of Yunokommunarsk were informed about the nuclear blast. The coal miners were given the day off for a “civil-defense drill,” then sent back to work in the mine.

The weakness of Russia’s conventional forces compared with those of the United States, Perry suggests, and Russia’s relative advantage in tactical weapons are factors that might lead Putin to launch a nuclear attack in Ukraine. It would greatly benefit Russia to establish the legitimacy of using tactical nuclear weapons. To do so, Putin must choose the right target. Perry believes that a demonstration strike above the Black Sea would gain Putin little; the destruction of a Ukrainian city, with large civilian casualties, would be a tremendous mistake. But if Russia can destroy a military target without much radioactive fallout, without civilian casualties, and without prompting a strong response from the United States, Perry says, “I don’t think there’s a big downside.” Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other nation in the world. Its national pride is strongly linked to its nuclear weapons. Its propagandists celebrate the possible use of nuclear weapons—against Ukraine, as well as against the United States and its NATO allies—on an almost daily basis, in an attempt to normalize their use. Its military has already destroyed Ukrainian cities, deliberately targeted hospitals, killed thousands of civilians, countenanced looting and rape. The use of an ultra low-yield nuclear weapon against a purely military target might not seem too controversial. “I think there would be an international uproar, but I don’t think it would last long,” Perry says. “It might blow over in a week or two.”

If the United States gets intelligence that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon, Perry believes that the information should be publicized immediately. And if Russia uses one, the United States should call for international condemnation, create as big a ruckus as possible—stressing the word nuclear—and take military action, with or without NATO allies. The reprisal should be strong and focused and conventional, not nuclear. It should be confined to Ukraine, ideally with targets linked to the nuclear attack. “You want to go as little up the escalation ladder as you can get away with doing and still have a profound and relevant effect,” Perry says. But if Putin responds by using another nuclear weapon, “you take off the gloves the second time around” and perhaps destroy Russia’s military forces in Ukraine, which the United States could readily do with conventional weapons. Perry realizes that these escalations would be approaching the kind of Dr. Strangelove scenarios that Herman Kahn wrote about. But if we end up fighting a war with Russia, that would be Putin’s choice, not ours.

Perry has been warning for many years that the nuclear danger is growing. The invasion of Ukraine has unfortunately confirmed his prediction. He believes that the odds of a full-scale nuclear war were much higher during the Cuban missile crisis, but that the odds of a nuclear weapon being used are higher now. Perry doesn’t expect that Russia will destroy a Ukrainian air base with a tactical weapon. But he wouldn’t be surprised. And he hopes the United States will not be self-deterred by nuclear blackmail. That would encourage other countries to get nuclear weapons and threaten their neighbors.

As I listened to the recording of my conversation with Bill Perry, it was filled with the incongruous sounds of wind chimes and birds singing. Vladimir Putin can determine if, when, and where a nuclear attack occurs in Ukraine. But he cannot control what happens after that. The consequences of that choice, the series of events that would soon unfold, are unknowable. According to The New York Times, the Biden administration has formed a Tiger Team of national-security officials to run war games on what to do if Russia uses a nuclear weapon. One thing is clear, after all my discussions with experts in the field: We must be ready for hard decisions, with uncertain outcomes, that nobody should ever have to make.

This article has been modified to reflect a clarification by Sam Nunn regarding his views on America’s possible nuclear response to Russian use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Eric Schlosser is a former contributing editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety and Fast Food Nation.

MARIUS:  I honestly never expected to leave comments on a conflict that at worst could become a world war on European soil.

This, in itself, should already be a warning to reflect on, an epochal failure for what today we could define a United Europe and its parliamentary leaders, who seem to hang completely from the American system.

The need for a counterattack by President Vladimir Putin after the continuous provocations suffered in recent months, also considering the sabotage of the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines and the latest attack on the Crimean bridge, is practically taken for granted. It seems obvious to me that with every attack there is a counterattack!

The United States of America has also done a lot to do nothing sensible! I should say that for all that has happened in the past 10 years, American governance rather than operating in the common good has undone! By now the cards are on the table and the international political world knows the assumptions of America, which using NATO, has planned and instigated the beginning of a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, enable Europe to enter into a sneaky and destructive game. The only thing he could really do to not make things worse would be to remain within its native territories and stop meddling in those overseas, but unfortunately its circumstances do not provide for it … because remaining helpless would be to suppose the end of the American empire. And the whole situation starts from this uncomfortable assumption. So yes the question is legitimate: not what should the United States of America do, but what could the United States of America still do?

I believe that, at present, the fundamental problem does not reside in the probable certainty / uncertainty of the use of low frequency nuclear weapons by the Russian government against the Ukrainian opponent. First of all, you need to be specific when we talk about conflicts. In this case, even if for many years the Ukrainian masses have been induced to hatred through of a great russophobic propaganda, it is not the populations to be at war with each other; rather it is a war of governments in which the masses are involuntarily subjected!

Having said that, knowing in depth by now what are the main and probable objectives of both opposing factions, the question lies only in considering the correct American answer, not only in the eventuality of the use of nuclear weapons, but in the entire continuity of the conflict. Almost eighty years after the explosion of the first and only atomic bombs dropped by human being during a conflict between states, the possible detonation of a new nuclear device, beyond the possible catastrophic scenario, will mark an unprecedented epochal change in world society, as it would radically change the ideology of common thought in the face of the emblematic figure of war, till now considered a decadent stereotypical image on the end of the world which in some way could assume an influenceable collective vision more present and at the same time, even if unavoidable, of enormous emotional susceptibility. Until yesterday in the Western world our vision of war was only a semblance of style, pure “entertainment” as it would be defined by the Americans, while today war makes even skeptics fearful!

Until now, Russia has never considered the launch of an atomic missile as the only possible response to the Western threat, focused on the government of Volodymyr Zelens’kyj. President Putin has explicitly declared that it would only be a defense weapon if he were forced by a direct threat against his country. I think this statement of yours is rather directed towards those Western countries hostile to the Russian Federation which, having nuclear technology at their disposal, can become a serious threat to their safety.

We must also consider that Ukraine has been strongly Americanized in the last ten years, I would emphasize in a negative way, and somehow exploited by the Atlanticist governance in order to make it, deliberately, a living and possibly threatening weapon towards the Russian populations and of those peoples of Eastern Europe close to Russia.

According to my personal consideration of the possible scenarios listed, I do not believe that President Putin can cause a detonation on the Black Sea with the sole intent of frightening the West, as the latter is already aware of his actions and his military decisions; just as it should be equally unlikely that he could suddenly destroy a Ukrainian city, causing a huge massacre of civilians. I think rather that, in a destructive scenario, he could go as far as detonating an extended military area trying to limit human damage as a further warning for a possible aggravation of the conflict situation, even if the will to carry out a sudden attack against the Ukrainian leadership, seeking to attempt the life of President Volodymyr Zelenskyj or, at least, dethrone him from his hegemonic position of command in order to restore a more stable position within the Ukrainian government, may prove to be the most feasible, although it may cost not scant Russian human lives, before reaching the so-called extreme position.

In this case, my question arises spontaneous: why would President Vladimir Putin throw an atomic bomb on Ukrainian soil, given the fact that were the Americans who made Ukraine what appears to the world today, led by President Joe Biden, driven by personal acrimony towards his Russian antagonist and by a deep conviction that the United States of America must absolutely be the architects of absolute world power, rather than throwing an atomic bomb directly on American soil, in consideration of the fact that the Russian government has always claimed to be the main target of American governance since the time of the Cold War, always in consideration of the fact that it will never leave Russia alone until one of the two will have definitively defeated the other. The statements of the Kremlin adviser, the political philosopher Aleksandr Gelʹevič Dugin, a friend of the president, are now evident in the eyes of the intellectual and political world, for which he himself has lost his daughter.

Even if the Ukrainian conflict were to end soon, but I do not think it can happen in the shortest possible time, as a president of a nation, a population coeval with Russian governance itself, would progress by neglecting a salient aspect of the near future with a nefarious flavor, after all hostile to their own safety.

From the years of the cold war, for all the wars protracted until today, through which the two great world powers have often found themselves in collision, accusing each other of being architects of death and destruction, sooner or later the truth will emerge because there are secret documents and people who pass on unpublished stories over the generations in order for it to become a spirit of revenge. At that point the clash would be inevitable!

So the question is not how, but when! Theories have been built and fierce debates have been addressed to formulate a roadmap on how to deal with a nuclear war. “The scale of intensifications” ideated by Herman Kahn himself, a skilled strategist and futurologist, is a fleeting example of how man tries to represent his own survival by crossing the threshold of the probable by addressing futuristic issues in view of the fateful great restoration, the so called The Great Reset, which in the early 1960s it was only a possible political utopia. “The scale of intensifications”, or better known as “The escalation scale”, in its far-sightedness represents the emblem of the ad interim programming of American governance and how it takes into consideration the emblematic development of its own supremacy, an act of due survival. In the meantime, from the 1960s to today, the world has continued its progression and military technology has trampled on unusual paths, arousing astonishment and concern, which is why if in the periods of the Cold War the 44 steps of the Kahn ladder represented the right temporal overlap of the deadly diatribe of a nuclear war, today on the threshold of the new millennium, almost a quarter of a new century, the examination of its passage from one step to another, in collusion with the present times, borders on a whirlwind time reduction of singles that from years it could become months, and from several months even a few weeks, precisely in view of the sudden development of technology that drastically reduces its outcome.

Ultimately this is precisely what I mean, the “whirlwind of intensifications”, or “vortex of escalation”, for its progressive and complex visualization of a potential conflict between the two nuclear states, in line with the various domains of modern warfare represented from current technology – space, information technology, robotics, cyber and nuclear – would reduce the temporal effects of the scale, producing an absolute increase of the catastrophic levels of a permanent corporate destruction. And I underline that the risk of a nuclear war in our time is greater than any other moment in the history of modern man, since the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is currently the only global instrument on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, whose five nations authorized to possess nuclear weapons – China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States of America – have deliberately sanctioned an agreement as a precautionary and preventive measure against a possible nuclear confrontation, to which they added the joint declaration, in wanting to absolutely avoid a war fought and never won, in January 2022. As regards propaganda information which revolves around the nuclear power between east and west, I argue that both sides have used the nuclear term as a preemptive threat. We must not forget that Volodymyr Zelens’kyj recently asked US President Joe Biden to nuclear bomb Russia, even before President Vladimir Putin used the atomic bomb first. The treaty establishes the impossibility for new states to take possession of nuclear weapons (non-proliferation) and definitively dismantle existing arsenals (disarmament), while guaranteeing the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (peaceful use).

As such, Vladimir Putin did not violate the rules of the NPT by using his invasion troops at the start of his anti-Nazi operation on Ukrainian territory, in the desire to help the oppressed DonBass populations. Regardless of his motives, he invaded a country guilty of violating a treaty established in 2014, the Minsk Protocol, composed of the representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR), treaty that the United States of America deliberately neglected, as it neglected the agreements with NATO in wanting to discuss the initial shipment of heavy weapons to Ukraine, long before the Russian invasion, aware that only one dissent in the vote would be enough to avoid strategic sending. Ultimately, Ukraine and the US have underestimated the Minsk Protocol and the NATO agreements themselves, while Russia has not violated, at least not yet, the NPT agreements. President Vladimir Putin simply attacked a country, which had renounced nuclear weapons, but did not bomb it with atomic bombs; his is a threat of response to the Western threatment following pressures in which the word “nuclear” has already been used in a threatening manner, to which he himself has responded with equally threatening terms.

As far as nuclear terrorism is concerned, there is a different propaganda between what is spread between east and west of Europe, and consequently in the rest of the world. From the Russian embassy in Italy there are reports in which the bombings of the nuclear complexes of Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya were not claimed by the Russian army, rather they were classified as a Western terrorist action, using non-nuclear Western tactical ballistic missiles, by the Ukrainian state.

The President of the Senate Armed Forces Commission, Sam Nunn, who certainly knows the American military strategies of the Biden administration more than Westerners in east of the Atlantic, following his multiple collaborations with various presidential administrations, can certainly define “ambiguous” the position of President Joe Biden regarding Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon. His hope, that may exist a sort of back channel diplomacy in support of a possible immediate pacification between the two great powers, is a hope that the whole world anxiously awaits.

What he describes as longstanding violations of the rules by Russia, we could define at the same time as longstanding violations by the United States of America itself, the Turkey / Cuba case could be a valid example of how the rules are evaded, and in this epochal diatribe between America and Russia we could emphasize “Putin’s nuclear madness” in the same way as “Biden’s nuclear madness”, because both countries hold huge quantities of nuclear warheads and both could use them according to the needs of the respective countries. What I cannot understand in American diplomatic attitudes is the profound security, which on more than one occasion becomes an uncomfortable presumption towards diplomacy itself, in wanting to consider oneself inevitably more daring than their respective adversaries, even knowing that they have a numerical inferiority compared to the geopolitical position of the continents, a smaller amount of nuclear technological weapons, a conventional armed structure on par! The use of conventional weapons, as an American response to the probable atomic detonation on Ukrainian soil by the Russian government, would be only one way to prevent America from being bombed with nuclear weapons. When Sam Nunn affirms that a possible American response to the launch of Russian nuclear missiles would be to have to sink ships or stationings of origin, he underestimates with extreme superficiality the antagonistic response that would lead to sinking or destroying a ship against another ship, a placement against another placement, a plane against another plane, thus triggering a series of belligerent events on both sides that would surely undermine that awaited hope of peace, which the world currently needs. As indeed, setting a no fly-zone over Ukraine would be like triggering a series of not indifferent air combat that would certainly involve more than one country between NATO and CSTO / BRICS. I imagine that this prerogative has already been taken into consideration by the President of the Senate Armed Forces Commission.

What I would like to define is that an American response to the Ukrainian conflict would not leave the Russian government helpless! On the contrary, in my opinion, any American or European intervention on Ukrainian soil, during the war involvement between the two warring countries, would be absolutely a wrong behavior. NATO and especially the United States of America should remain unmoved in order to preserve world peace. On the other hand, the sending of weapons to Ukraine turns out to be yet another Western mistake since it exploits the outcome.

It is difficult to say whether Russia’s nuclear threats since the invasion have simply been intended to discourage the United States and its NATO allies from providing military supplies for Ukraine, at least from my point of view. 

On the one hand, I think that the approximation of nuclear power is one of the reasons that prompted the Russian president to question the atomic bomb. We are aware to receive only part of the information propagated by the Western media, while exists another information attesting that the Americans have also been no less, and I repeat that just recently the same Ukrainian president has asked America to use nuclear power against the Russian territories.

We are faced with two great military powers that have numerous nuclear warheads and that have no problem letting the world know, with the knowledge that they can use them in case of need. The same story tells us that the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on two unarmed Japanese cities, completely razing them to the ground without asking for permission or giving an early warning to guarantee their evacuation. No one can say for sure that the American president cannot behave the same way a second time! Many people think this in the West, and therefore I imagine even more to the east of Europe!

On the other hand, I assume that when a president of a powerful nation decides to question the use of atomic weapons, it is necessary to deeply understand why he has come to this point, considering that one would never dream of hatching such dramatic arguments, in an ordinary context, if the prerequisites for doing so did not exist.

In my impartiality I think that both the two great presidents of the two great nations have reached the point of no return, each in their own convictions and strategy … Yes, because here we are talking about strategies that question geopolitics, mineral resources, financial economic power, temporal power now classified as political power and finally civil safety. Instead, it is necessary to consider which of the two intends, detonation or non-detonation, to cross the threshold … but not in the use of nuclear power, rather of the iteration of the event horizon where it is not possible to influence a return to normality in any way. This is the question that grips the mind or sleep of about 8 billion people, more and less, in the world.

In responding to remarks by journalist Fred Kaplan and Colin Kahn, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and Avril Haines, Deputy National Security Advisor, both of them members of the US National Security Team, if there is no direct attack against the US or NATO members without a reason motivated by previous heinous actions, 

I argue that a consequential belligerent action would not be the right way to go, it would certainly not be a lack of determination or American credibility that would weaken the NATO alliance, already in fact feeble in itself, nor a relentless with a nuclear attack on Belarus, as the National Security Committee (NSC) suggests, would be a considerable strategic move as it would favor the introduction of members of the Collective Security Treaty organization OTSC / CSTO into warfare, in defense of the allied nation, which in a certain sense would favor the introduction into the war also of the members of BRICS, as close allies of Russia, which apparently appears to be an economic organization, as well as it could evade military-type membership, apparently hides, but which in fact collects more and more international acclaim. I think that a response with conventional weapons is the easiest move to take to ensure that the war can have a prolonged sequel with an escalation of greater war entity, but I do not think it can address the world public opinion with a positive impact, because effectively beyond what the media say, the thought of the collective society is absolutely opposed to war. And I don’t think that a T-shirt as a slogan, beyond the ironic taste, can result an immediate answer to the problem of conflict.

Essentially, the central message of the 1983 WarGames film is absolutely valid: “The only winning move is not to play”. And it exactly matches the message I transcribed above.

I sincerely disagree with the considerations of former NATO Deputy Secretary General, Rose Gottemoeller, regarding the strong opposition from China, despite its tacit support for the invasion of Ukraine, on Vladimir Putin’s use of nuclear power and, if it were employed, to support the sanctions against Russia by the United Nations Security Council.

Although China has long supported with negative nuclear assurances a sensitive campaign against the systematic use or the unconditional threat of the use of nuclear power in the resolution of conflicts against states without nuclear weapons or in nuclear-weapon-free zones, I am convinced that the Russian president has already discussed extensively with his international allies on the remote possibility of using nuclear force as a defense expedient for the safety of his country, as I imagine the same countries members of his strategic alliances would do if they sensed an external threat from powerful nations like the United States of America and some NATO member nations. On the contrary, I believe that they have already formulated a precise agreement of tacit effective consent to the use of the atomic bomb, as a last resort of course, in view of that collective fear that as uncomfortable antagonists they could become the next target once the great Russian military power is exhausted. This is the greatest fear felt by all the antagonistic world powers of NATO, a Western organization that belongs exclusively to America, nations that would not want to submit to the American aegis in its despotic intention of wanting to control globally the world. Without considering the same nations today allies of NATO that could shortly, inevitably, leave the organization to go elsewhere precisely because of that form of dissent to the American neoliberal globalist programs which aim to neutralize the national and monetary sovereignty of the associated states.

Rose Gottemoeller, rightly must suppose possible counter-offensive in response to a possible tactical move by Russia, but as often happens for the Americans, emeritus of their military and technological greatness, even if this in the technological case, underline “a muscular diplomatic response” to the Russian nuclear attack against Ukraine through the initiation of a Cyber ​​attack combined with both nuclear and conventional military actions, thus triggering the beginning of a hybrid war, could not be very relevant considering the hybrid counteroffensive of the Russians, who would surely be ready to defend themselves from every possible attack. What American governance should fundamentally understand is that it would not be a war fought with extreme ease, it would not be a war of power or prestige, as the two opposing factions hold equal war power. It would become a fierce, distorted war, fought on all fronts in an unconventional way and because the same methods of attack, defense and survival would be employed. What Rose Gottemoeller did not say is that America could be subjected to the same kind of hybrid warfare by Russia in the same ways she mentioned, as it could even suffer a crippling cyber attack on the command and control systems of strategic points of the nuclear at the same time that the Russian governance decided to launch an atomic order to obtain an unconditional surrender of Ukraine, and shortly thereafter attack to invade the United States of America. In view of two equal world powers, it is not possible to make exact predictions about the outcomes of a conflict. 

The substantial difference between the two nations is transparent. Russia has always claimed to be a troublesome target to be eliminated by the United States of America because its military strength, today also technological and financial, has always been considered a living threat to American survival and global control of the planet, at the moment, more shaky than ever; America, in compensation, has never felt like an effective target until now sure of being able to count on full military efficiency, a strong ally of technology and finance. Therefore, the main objective of the American president is to preserve national safety first of all, preserving the bicentennial certainty of never having been invaded or attacked militarily, an unusual event that would considerably collapse the supranational hegemony that for over 200 years has imposed on financial, military and economic markets of the rest of the world.

I agree with the words of Scott Sagan, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, at Stanford University, when he defines a Russian atomic attack on Ukrainian soil as a potentially harmful and nefarious action for the territories he would like to annex definitively, reason for which would rather be predisposed to strike the territories to the north of the country rather than to the south, legitimizing a nuclear explosion only in the eventuality to get out loser, following the continuous strategic, structural and military aid of NATO. Absolutely the subsequent American conventional response would involve an immediate Russian counter-response and … clashes between Russian and American armed forces on Ukrainian soil, sinking of Russian ships and American ships in the Black Sea, bombing of military targets inside Russian soil and bombing of American military targets on European soil. The consequences would be devastating for Europe, but this nefarious alternative does not seem to interest American governance, rather committed to devising an effective system to be able to attack Russia, with the excuse of defending the Ukrainian territory that they themselves have armed to the teeth , without considering the belligerent repercussions on European soil … probably an element considered fortuitous and fortunate for the new American recession.

The words of William J. Perry, former Defense Secretary, seem proverbial, imagining that in his 94 years of life his military presence had a substantial weight for America, firm remaining that he was witness of the most terrible war phenomenon that humanity has ever witnessed, World War II and the nuclear war against Japan. Since the end of the Second World War, Europe has suffered other painful and bloody micro wars, but for almost eighty years global peace had never been seriously compromised until 24 February.

He argues that: “If the invasion of Russia is successful, we should expect to see more invasions.”

On the contrary, I ask the opposite question: “Why should President Vladimir Putin feel compelled to initiate more invasions? Why should he invade other sovereign nations?”, whose sovereignty today is highly questionable. Furthermore, “Why should the Russian president nourish the need to clean up an extreme and dangerous Nazism who is trying to radicalise Europe negatively?”.

Perhaps this is what lies behind the claims of the former Defense Secretary! The fear that Vladimir Putin could continue his military mystical invasion to free Europe from the specific spiritual weight of a Nazi organization that wants to gain systematic control of the European masses. And that might bother someone or something.

He also claims that Vladimir Putin has engaged in a blackmail of rivalry by threatening the use of nuclear weapons for offensive purposes, not defensive, in the hope of dissuading the United States of America and NATO from supplying conventional heavy weapons to the Ukrainian state.

We get to talk of blackmail, of offensive and non-defensive purposes, of dissuasive intentions in supplying weapons. My question comes spontaneously: “But was it not the American governance of President Joe Biden that provided the prerequisites for blackmail by entering the Ukrainian territories in violation of international treaties, to instigate offensive non-defensive purposes by fomenting Russophobia, to dangerously arm the Ukrainian army with conventional weapons without even consulting with NATO members? ”… These are not just assumptions, but already well-known information.

Finally, he claims to fear that yielding to the outrageous threat of Russia will lead to a new confrontation in the near future!

And on this statement, I theorize another supposition: “Does the current American governance think of having to face Russian governance again? Could or should new clashes evolve in view of future war scenarios in pursuing planned planning? How does the American government administration see the future of the world and how does Russia fit into its global development plan?”… Ultimately, “How should this conflict be considered? Should it set the field for an even more threatening confrontation for world safety? “ … “What to do to avoid the worst?”, unless there is an intention to avoid it!

When I hear Americans in power disserting, despite are excellent speakers, mostly Democrats, I think about the considerations of their global neoliberal programming of which they are very proud of, and I don’t find a fully liberal position without considering their biased view. They do nothing but point the finger without remark the real motivations for good or evil, highlighting the hostile or devious actions of possible adversaries by misleading their own, as if America were constantly a victim of circumstances, and therefore forced to respond or to intervene. Even if most of the time the reality is quite different. And then the case of Turkey Cuba in the 60s is reiterated as the case of Ukraine Donbass at the present time.

William J. Perry, like other colleagues at the direct or indirect service of the White House, often sin on a subtle loquacious presumption in wanting to simplify any military action or to propagandize information in order to make it a tool of advantage. Even an eventual confrontation with Russia seems to them no more dangerous than a tedious walk in the middle of a winter storm. Usually the presumption of feeling invariably stronger ends up becoming a weakness in the form that decrees a negative exit from the scene. And even in this case he assumes conventional military actions relegated to a sort of Americanized dramatic parody where the Russian army seems to represent the role of extra in a scene already contextualized regardless.

Over the past hundred years the US government has become adept at throwing the stone and hiding the arm, in knowing how to climb and descend the steps of Herman Kahn’s escalation ladder, as if the fate of a world conflict depend on the tactical comings and goings of a scheme predisposed in the last century. America wants to strike on the surface to avoid being hit in its depth always confining its blows of the sword to distant territories, in this case Ukraine, pouring the responsibilities on the antagonists leaving their own, without considering that in such clashes people perish every day, considered by themselves as calculated victims foreseen by the protocol, but still human beings anyway. What if Vladimir Putin were to drop a second low-yield atomic bomb? According to William J. Perry, it would do nothing more than take off the gloves a second time and do more harm than expected, while for the civilians involved the sacrifice would be enshrined in the charter of the new constitution. What if Vladimir Putin were to drop more atomic bombs than expected and not on Ukrainian soil? How many times would America take off its gloves before realizing to have not more its fingers? What if it was not as easy to beat up the Russian president as the members of the National Council of the United States would have you believe?

Finally, William J. Perry argues that if we end up fighting a war with Russia that would be a choice of the Russian president. I bite back to saying that if, instead, we end up fighting a war against Russia not by President Vladimir Putin’s choice, but rather by President Joe Biden’s choice?

The fate of Europe hangs in the balance between the continuous Russophobic appeals of President Volodymyr Zelens’kyj, between President Joe Biden’s complaints about sanctions with the continuing ambiguous behavior of NATO, and finally between the considerations of President Vladimir Putin.

On February 24, the Russian army crossed the border of Ukrainian soil; it was rumored that soon the Ukrainian president would have to go and sign dangerous agreements with the West in Brussels. My predictions were correct, Vladimir Putin would attack Ukraine to vanquish the start of World War III by starting PHASE 1, “Ukrainian anti-Nazi military operation on Ukrainian soil”, as a safeguard for the victims of the southern territories.

The intensification of misunderstandings, with the extension of economic sanctions and the continuous dispatch of weapons to oppose a sudden peace, amidst provocations, offenses and murders, already in mid-May made me foresee that at the beginning of the autumn we would pass into the PHASE 2, “Western anti-Nazi military operation on Ukrainian soil”, in which the NATO countries most exposed in the developments of the Ukrainian project started some years ago would be compromised. Phase 2 will focus on a series of clashes over the vast territories of Ukraine under the eyes of its inhabitants now exhausted by a war that is effective for eight years.

It would be wise to end it here! This conflict involves a total escalation of 4 phases, at the moment we are at the beginning of the second phase. I cannot yet give a concrete forecast on the possible start of PHASE 3, “Western anti-Nazi military operation on European soil”, which would involve a series of clashes on military placements, and possibly also civilians, between the various European nations, even in Russia, including the use of low-yield atomic bombs, without excluding that it could also compromise American soil.

PHASE 4 would be the last phase, that finally the high-yield nuclear one, in which the various strategic alliances of the warring parties would first come into conflict, with a series of hostile actions extended to the whole planet between bombings, air sea and land clashes, then to converge in the launch of atomic warheads. I do not exclude that America may be the first to launch the atomic bomb in view of multiple betrayals within NATO. The scenario would be apocalyptic!

The nuclear danger has never been evident until this precise moment in our time. The Ukrainian invasion has only decreed the evidence, but it cannot treat a prediction as the Ukrainian epilogue had already been largely prepared. It was just a matter of time. It is only a matter of time in which to decide whether to end a conflict in the short term possible or whether to direct our world adrift in the search for a great restoration, the Great Reset, that would result a step forward in the epochal sphere but a quantum leap backwards of over two hundred years of history.

For a long time I have been fascinated by the neoliberal ideologies of wanting to revolutionize the world collectivity in the desire to create a single planetary agglomeration, peaceful and scientific, the cradle of new technology, the era of cutting-edge medical science, projected into a cosmopolitan global vision lived in full harmony with all its freely associated parts of the planet, but I never expected that it could instill new wars for territorial dominance, new dictatorial health governments, demographic controls for blind survival and cruel death from the atomic bomb. My global vision has always been for a peaceful coexistence among the peoples of the world.

by Marius Creati