@MentORPHEUS

Not for nothing, but in addition to having spent years working with nukes, my masters thesis was on the subject of Strategic Nuclear Deterrence. I know what I’m on about, and I’m not particularly worried about large numbers of nuclear weapons flying across what used to be known as the Iron Curtain.

It’s possible - but unlikely - that some crazy bastard might set off a small tactical nuke or two, but nobody wants a major exchange and everyone is terrified of escalation. Putin may be a rat bastard, but he’s no fool.

As for Russian arms: although they have some notable strengths in specialized areas, they’re really not very good, and a competent enemy with interdiction assets could force operational culmination fairly quickly. European NATO troops aren’t much better, and the simple fact is that the only country that has a large standing force capable of performing LSCO (Large Scale Combat Operations) with competence is the United States. In a conventional fight, a US joint force would be farming Russia for XP.

For a variety of reasons, that conventional fight will almost certainly never happen.

That’s why our adversaries spend so much time, money, and effort on developing asymmetric capabilities. The Russians certainly have, but their “magic bullets” aren’t as effective as they hoped (even against a less-than-stellar country like Ukraine), and they don’t have that many of them left. Add in the technical assistance we’ve been giving to Ukraine and the BDA we’ve been watching like hawks for a couple of years now… let’s just say that we have a pretty good idea about what they’re asymmetric capabilities are and how to mitigate them. (It turns out that we have asymmetric capabilities, too.)

Not that I envision US troops fighting Russian troops anyway, even if some Western European countries make the mistake of putting frontline forces into Ukraine and start to take heavy losses (which they would). The only way the US might get entangled is if whoever controls Biden sees war with Russia as a way to keep President Trump out of office. A lot of people on the left still hang onto the Russia Collusion Hoax even though we know the Clinton campaign colluded with Russian assets to engineer the whole thing. The narrative was so successful that there’s a level of Russophobia we haven’t seen since the height of the Cold War. The difference is that this time it’s coming from the anti-American left rather than the anticommunist right.

Nobody benefits from a large-scale nuclear exchange, so no such exchange will occur. It IS possible that both sides could view a very limited exchange as beneficial, though. If it was “worked out” in advance so that everyone knew that it wouldn’t get out of hand… anything is possible. Both Biden’s puppet masters and Putin are desperate to keep Donald Trump on the sidelines, and a kabuki dance involving a couple of tac nukes in southern Europe might be enough reason to cancel an election the left can’t win without the cheating being too obvious to ignore (like last time).

@lurkerhasarisen

Everybody knows that the Russkies aren’t going to start lobbing nukes

Tick Tock, the Nuclear Armageddon clock gets another second closer to midnight. The Poles and French are saber rattling and chest puffing about sending troops into Ukraine, presumably because they expect NATO to have their back if they go in unilaterally and start getting their asses kicked.

The thing about that is, now Putin's fears that NATO is determined to attack Russia now become validated, and things like air bases and command and control centers in those countries become legitimate military targets. If these countries attack targets within Russia, its nuclear protocol gets invoked.

"The West" has gotten just about everything wrong about Russia's ability to mobilize and maintain an army and survive under sanctions. Not just a little wrong, but extremely fucking wrong. We'd take a casual "They'd never use nukes" attitude at our (and all of life on Earth's) peril.

@Typo-MAGAshiv

People suck…

Apropos to the subject… Acting Presidential Figurehead “China Joe” Biden has spoken out about the deep significance of today: this 31st day of March in this, the Year of Our Lord 2024.

Most of us know it as Easter: the most important holiday on the Christian calendar. One would think that a guy who claims to be a devout Christian (albeit of the Roman Catholic persuasion) would celebrate the - checks notes - Redemption of mankind by Christ that Easter signifies.

His only reference to Easter is that the White House will continue the tradition of having an Easter Egg roll (what that has to do with redemption is unclear) that dates back to the 1880s. As part of that auspicious celebration, the theme this year is not… you know… Easter, but rather it’s “National Guard families,” wherein children are invited to create egg-themed artwork about their lives. The small number of prohibited topics includes, of course, any mention of Easter as a religious holiday, and indeed anything related to religion at all.

First “Lady” Jill will preside over some sort of festivities having to do with “EGG-ucation” because she is (in case you forgot or you’ve been in a coma for the past five decades), a lifelong “educator” with a doctorate in Advanced Babysitting. Apparently there will be snacks.

Oh… while Joe also made a point of reminding everyone that today is most certainly NOT a religious holiday (literally “Holy Day”); he released a statement celebrating that it IS, however, the International Transgender Day of Visibility. In that statement he warns us of “extremists” who are lurking in libraries searching for books to burn, seeking to ban the enlightened practice of child genital mutilation, and rampaging through the streets searching for Transgender Women of Color to assault.

I wish I could say that I’m making any of that up, but the White House’s own press statements spell it all out.