“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
MAR 17, 2024
LLAW’s CONCERNS & COMMENTS, Sunday, (03/17/2024)
The following article is a summary of an interview of Tom Shanker’s opinion concerning the Director of National Intelligence’s Threat Assessment of nuclear war threats. My thoughts are that Putin, who is a dictator who has indiscriminate power over his country, is an old man who believes if he can’t take his power and idealism with him, no one else can either, including his own people. That means he will do what he decides to do, because as Shanker says, he doesn’t care about public opinion and unless he is assassinated or he dies suddenly, he will due whatever he has a mind to.
But then, too, regardless of what Putin may decide to do, there are “Threats” coming from every nuclear armed country on the planet, so who knows who, when, and why one of them will push the nuclear button that would most likely mark the end for us all, and all other living creatures as well . . . ~llaw
GWU’s Thom Shanker: DNI’s Annual Threat Assessment; Take the Russian Nuclear Threat Seriously
Posted By Tim Hains
On Date March 15, 2024
On Thursday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics radio show (Monday through Friday at 6:00 p.m. EST on Sirius XM’s P.O.T.U.S. Channel 124) Andrew Walworth speaks with Thom Shanker, a former New York Times Pentagon correspondent and former Moscow correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.
Shanker is currently the director of the Project for Media and National Security at George Washington University.
They discuss what the Annual Threat Assessment from the Director of National Intelligence has to say about Russia and the threat of nuclear war, China’s continuing interest in Taiwan, and other threats from North Korea, Gaza, and Iran.
THOM SHANKER: Russia remains one of our most significant threats. It is a nuclear power and has been for a long time, so that has not changed. But this newly belligerent, hostile Putin is taking aim at the United States.
People always ask me if there is a new cold war with Russia. My answer is we’re already at war with Russia, or at least Putin is at war with us. The Director of National Intelligence predicts that Putin will absolutely accelerate his malign attempts to influence our election this year using all sorts of cyber, AI, and all that in ways far greater and perhaps more damaging than last time around. So that is their biggest concern, and that is putting aside Putin’s illegal invasion of the sovereign Ukraine.
ANDREW WALWORTH, REALCLEARPOLITICS: Putin gave an interview yesterday where he talked about nuclear weapons again. He said, “We are ready to use any weapons when talking about the existence of the Russian state, damaging our sovereignty or independence.” That’s being interpreted as saying he might deploy nuclear weapons in Europe. How seriously should we take that?
THOM SHANKER: Very seriously, at our risk do we not believe what Putin says out loud. In 2007, he said he might invade Georgia. That happened in 2008. He talked about Ukraine being a natural part of Russia, he invaded twice in 2014 and 2022. So when Putin talks about the possibility of tactical nuclear weapons, we better listen carefully. That said, there are strong reasons why he says that, not just for battlefield purposes. He wants to scare the American people and all of the NATO citizenry into not supporting Ukraine for fear of a nuclear weapon being dropped in Europe. We should take it seriously, nuclear weapons have always been part of Russia’s warfighting plans, but there is a strategic communications aspect to this as well. Most analysts think Putin would not resort to tactical nukes in Ukraine except as an, “I’m about to lose” scenario. And right now, things on the ground are going relatively well for Russia, so why should he do that?
ANDREW WALWORTH: How much of this do you think is for domestic consumption in Russia? He’s got to keep his people in line and scared, I guess.
THOM SHANKER: Yes and no, which is not a helpful answer. There is a Russian domestic part of this. He goes on television, people are watching, but Putin doesn’t care about Russian public opinion. Russia has lost more men in the battle for Ukraine. It is the highest number since World War Two and Putin is still conscripting, sending men off to fight and die. So he doesn’t really care about public opinion, he is going to win the election. He’s very stable in power right now. So I think he tips his hat to the Russian psyche, saying, “We are strong, we have nukes.” But this is not about him courting some constituency in his population that he thinks he might lose. That is not happening.
The headline here: Putin doesn’t care about you. Putin to Russian people: drop dead.
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[The DNI’s] assessment of China is very sophisticated. With Putin, Putin is likely to meddle in our election because he has a favorite candidate. He says he doesn’t but it is true. One of the two candidates, buy threatening NATO, by saying we shouldn’t fund Ukraine, serves Russia’s interests more than the other candidates.
China is interesting. They don’t really have a preferred presidential candidate, because on this at least, Trump and Biden are fairly aligned in wanting to stand firm to the rise of China. To me, as the DNI’s report says, China’s interest in election meddling is just to mess with our heads and mess with our domestic politics, to make things even messier. To which I say, “Why bother? It’s already happening, we’re doing it on our own.”
ANDREW WALWORTH: The DNI report did talk about China first, and I think spent more time on that than on Russia. When you look at China right now, what’s your major concern and how worried are you about what they’re doing in the South China Sea, when it comes to Taiwan?
THOM SHANKER: That to me is the real threat. The election meddling came first with China because they’re better at it, and more sophisticated. They have more tools. And because Russia has a clear incentive whereas China is more subtle.
I am deeply worried about potential Chinese aggression against Taiwan. China has interests in a stable global economy, their growth is dependent on it and they’re facing challenges at home. At the same time, China is almost neuralgic about reuniting with Taiwan and making it formally part of China. It is a real challenge for what U.S. policy is. Most of our military platforms are simply outdated. Aircraft carriers can’t operate closely because of Chinese air defenses. There’s a lot of exciting work being done in drone research, where we could flood the Taiwan straits with thousands of cheap drones, some with intelligent gathering abilities, some with weapons, to make China wonder. The whole point of how we deal with Chian is deterrence. We don’t want to get into a shooting war with China. We want to suppress fires, not get to them. We want to have the kinds of new technologies that make China wonder, if we launched an attack on China today, might we not succeed? It’s all about advanced warnings, intelligence, and cheap attritable weapons systems. Not these super expensive big top carriers which are so vulnerable.
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What I look at is an aggressive China and Russia, that we talked about. Look at North Korea continuing with weapons development, Iran, the situation in Gaza which will upset the entire Mideast for a generation, and the Houthis threatening shipping in the Red Sea. I’m deeply concerned that we’re going to look back on these months and say, we didn’t know it then, but that is when World War Three started.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (03/17/2024):
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
Nuclear Fatalism in ‘Oppenheimer’ Is a Dead End
Foreign Policy
Digital magazines, including the new Winter 2024 issue all about elections … Oppenheimer is many things: a … every nuclear power modernizes its …
Nuclear Weapons and Our Future – Daily Kos
Daily Kos
… award for best actor. In addition to all the praise, Director Chris Nolan’s movie certainly opened a dialog about nuclear weapons in our country…
GWU’s Thom Shanker: DNI’s Annual Threat Assessment; Take the Russian Nuclear Threat Seriously
RealClearPolitics
… all sorts of cyber, AI, and all that in ways far greater and perhaps more damaging than last time around. So that is their biggest concern, and that …
Nuclear Power
NEWS
Russia spreading fake news of Ukraine’s “strike” on nuclear power plant – StratCom
Ukrinform
Kremlin propaganda is spinning a fake story about an alleged attack by the Ukrainian forces on one of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s …
Japan completes 4th round of Fukushima treated water discharge – Kyodo News
Kyodo News
The release of the fourth batch of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea concluded Sunday …
Fourth discharge of treated Fukushima water completed – The Japan Times
The Japan Times
1 nuclear power plant into the sea concluded Sunday, with the next round possibly starting next month, the plant’s operator said. Tokyo Electric Power …
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Russia spreading fake news of Ukraine’s “strike” on nuclear power plant – StratCom
Ukrinform
In fact, it was the Russian troops who repeatedly created emergency situations there. The invaders are unable to operate and fully maintain the …
Nuclear War
NEW
Putin’s Nuclear Weapons, explained | WION Wideangle – YouTube
YouTube
Russia goes to polls on March 17 What 6 years more means for Putin’s military capabilities Putin has warned the west of the risk of a nuclear war.
Did PM Modi help avert Russia’s nuclear attack on Ukraine? Here’s what Jaishankar has to say
Business Today
In 2022, during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, US officials were preparing for a potential nuclear strike by Moscow on Kyiv, according to a CNN …
Is There a Way Out of Nuclear Stalemate? – IDN-InDepthNews
IDN-InDepthNews
While this is a significant decline from the approximately 70,000 warheads owned by the nuclear-armed states during the Cold War, nuclear arsenals are …
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
The Observer view on Russia’s election: insecure, weak Putin craves the popular vote, but …
The Guardian
… nuclear weapons to attack Britain … It will be remembered for the accompanying threats to unleash a humanity-obliterating nuclear war upon the world.
Kallas: Putin is afraid of war with NATO countries
censor.net
… nuclear war in words. View news … According to the Estonian prime minister, although Putin is good at “spreading fear”, his threats should also be …
Putin could launch war with West within next two years, chilling new German intelligence warns
The US Sun
He declared weapons “exist in order to use them” in his most chilling World War Three threat yet. … Putin’s nuclear threats. BELOW is a timeline of …