DRAFT: Why we do NOT risk a world war from: Ukraine, the Middle East, China, North Korea, or anywhere else in the world - next to impossible - and long term are headed for a future without war
MID-EDIT
Early draft. For final version see:
For a first overview look at the graphics, read the bullet points summary, and read the section titles in the contents list - then dive into more detail in any section of interest. If you are on the laptop you can also navigate to any section by clicking on the column of horizontal dashes you see to the left of this page.
My aim here is to help scared people undestand how safe we are from a world war and nuclear war, not only now, but in the future also. We will find that the days of world war and nuclear war are long gone now.
We will see that we have a realistic possiblity long term of a future even completely without wars, perhaps before the end of this century. That’s when we will become a fully civilized species
Summary in bulletpoints
Nobody however ruthless is ever going to use nukes.
no country will ever intentionally start a nuclear war as they can all see they can only lose, and never gain - they can all see as a clear and self evident truth that a nuclear war can never be won and so must never be fought
the only risk was a mistake, even in the Cold war during the Cuban missile crisis
we have many precautions today to prevent such a mistake ever happening in the future
Putin is risk averse and his bluffs are just attempts at intimidation - his motivation to invade Ukraine was to take over Ukraine in a quick conventional victory in 10 days similarly to Crimea, he will never use nukes.
right now is a time of clickbait and sensationalist exaggerations, and false claims of a risk of world war for political and military objectives but
in reality we are far safer than in the Cold War with no real risk of a world war.
Nobody is interested in a world war any more
Only the US, France and UK have the bases around the world and naval fleets capable of global force projection, so only they can fight globally, but though they do sometimes invade countries, these are only local conflicts
US, France, and UK are not interested in military world domination - rather they want to slowly withdraw their military globally to reduce the expense
Even Putin is just trying to regain the Russian Federation of the time of the Soviet Union not world domination. He won't succeed, it's impossible. But he is not trying to take over the world and doesn’t have the capability either.
China is only interested in Taiwan and the South China sea - it already has control of nearly all its former empire and it only sends warships further away to protect shipping - with only one port outside of China in Djibouti on the Red Sea
Iran is only interested in the Middle East
North Korea is only interested in the Korean peninusla which it hopes to unify by peaceful means with many in South Korea sharing that long term aim
Wars in the Middle East stay there and are very localized even when they involve soldiers from many countries fighting on the ground
Locally:
NATO has surely stopped MANY smaller wars in Europe. if we were at any risk of a world war would have helped. But we are not.
North America from Mexico upwards is not at risk of large-scale war any more (despite Trump’s bluffs and intimidation)
Large areas of the world are now at peace in the same way with no conflict since WW2 and no potential for future conflict
Hans Blix is a former nuclear weapons inspector, former head of the IAEA and chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.
He says that despite blips like Gaza Strip and the Ukraine war that
the world is moving in the direction of less conflict.
He foresees an end to all wars
As a species we are surely only fully civilized once war ends, replaced by non lethal competition such as the Olympics. We will find promising signs that this may even happen this century.
This century may end with us eventually:
scrapping not just most nukes but nearly all missiles.
Video for this post
This is a first draft. I just did it while out for a walk and it gets cut off at the end and that’s also why I’m not talking to camera. Will do another video when I get time.
Nuclear war was only ever possible through a mistake and we have many precautions to stop this - governments know this - or they would tell us how to protect ourselves from nuclear radiation in fallout
During the cold war a nuclear war seemed possible because the world was very different. There was little communication between NATO and the Soviet Union.
But in actuality the Soviet Union was the same as NATO, it was never going to start a nuclear war.
QUOTE STARTS
Moreover, the Soviet Union never seriously considered any sort of direct military aggression against the United States or Western Europe.
… the historian Vojtech Mastny concluded that the strategy of nuclear deterrence was “irrelevant to deterring a major war that the enemy did not wish to launch in the first place.” He added: “All Warsaw Pact scenarios presumed a war started by NATO.”
… Given Russia’s calamitous experience with two world wars, a third was the last thing Soviet policymakers wanted, so nuclear deterrence was largely irrelevant to postwar stability.
Nor has anyone ever come up with a compelling or even plausible rationale for using such weapons in conflicts short of total war — because there simply aren’t many targets that can’t be attacked as effectively with conventional weapons.
The only reason we had the Cuban missile crisis is because we didn't have the precautions in place that we have today to prevent mistakes and misunderstandings. But we do now, so it can never happen.
We can look at what our governments tell us as an easy way to see we can’t really be at significant risk of a world war today. It’s not about looking at their political bluffs or the messaging to seem tough to other politicians. We need to look at what our governments advise their own citizens to do.
When I was a child every house in the UK got a booklet through the post "Protect and Survive" on how to survive a nuclear war. A booklet like this potentially can save millions of lives if we ever really did risk a nuclear war.
If there was a real risk we would all know this advice. However, only older citizens know what to do. Because there IS NO REAL WORLD WAR RISK.
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
You do NOT see these instructions on the news because there IS NO REAL WORLD WAR RISK
We were ALL sent this in the cold war.
NOBODY is sent it today.
Our governments do NOT assess ANY risk of a world war.
These instructions would save millions of lives in a nuclear war.
If you are outside the epicenter and stay away from the heavy dust that falls from the sky you don't get radiation sickness.
Radioactivity is mostly gone in 2 days, most of what's left in weeks.
When I was a child we all read this and knew what to do.
Now almost nobody knows except older people because we DON'T NEED TO KNOW.
Because there is NO LONGER ANY REAL RISK OF A NUCLEAR WAR.
It's bluffs, clickbait, sensationalism and exaggerations.
Graphic from: Protect and survive : this booklet tells you how to make your home and your family as safe as possible under nuclear attack
We didn’t panic in the Cold War. We knew there was a risk and we knew what to do. So our governments are not keeping it secret to prevent panic. There is no reason to suppose people would panic today either.
The simple instructions in books like that would save millions of lives if there ever was a world war.
So why don’t we get them? Because there is no risk. It’s also clear that the journalists with their click bait articles and the generals, world leaders etc are not serious either when they talk about a world war or nukes. Or they also would tell us how to protect ourselves as top priority.
How to protect yourself - just get out of the heavy dust falling from the sky - fallout
You don’t need a bunker. You just need the nearest shelter: the metro, shops, your house, anything like that. It’s easy to protect against fallout since you can see it. The fallout dust is actually the mushroom clouds themselves falling out of the sky, a heavy dust that falls much like rain does in a thundestorm.
Only the places where this dust falls to the ground get radioactive. Any lighter radioactive material in the clouds is just blown around in the wind high above in the sky and eventually adds to the very small background radioactivity that is there anyway.
The bunkers are just for military bases that need to survive a direct hit by a nuclear explosion.
Your shelter does NOT need to be airtight either just keep out the easily visible heavy dust which you can also brush off your clothes if you didn’t get to shetler in time.
If you survive the initial blast, you need to get indoors before the fallout falls from the sky.
The radioactivity outside then gets rapidly less intense. After a couple of days it is safe to leave your shelter for somewhere safer. Almost all the radioactivity left is gone in months.
If you do this and follow some other simple basic instructions, you can eliminate just about all the risk of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. Back then they didn’t know what to do and just ran around in the streets covered in the highly radioactive dust.
And our civilization WOULD continue. Indeed almost all the world’s nearly 8 billion people would NOT be affected. Almost the entire southern hemisphere is a nuclear free zone, and any exchange would soon be over with citizens calling on their governments to stop right away -and would not involve all the nuclear powers either. The rest of the world would come to the rescue.
Everyone would know this if there was a real risk - they aren’t told this - so our governments and journalists don’t really believe there is a risk
If there was a real risk right now, everyone would know how to protect themselves.
It would feature prominently in all the news sites.
We’d have alerts interrupting the news, and alerts on our mobile phones telling us what to do.
We’d get booklets through the door also as in the cold war,
and so on.
We’d get all this well in advance too, giving us
advice on how to prepare simple ad-hoc shelters in our homes, and make contingency plans.
drills in how to respond much like earthquake drills in earthquake-prone places.
For details about the effects of nukes and how we can protect ourselves from fallout if we know what to do, see my:
BLOG: Most people don’t know: fallout is HEAVY dust - NOT fog - falls to the ground after 15 mins - and fallout gets MUCH less radioactive in hours - so you CAN protect yourself - if authorities thought there was a real risk we’d be told these things
BLOG: Debunked: Nuclear Winter and Radioactive Fallout myths - Nuclear winter is out of date science - and most radioactivity is gone in hours to days - and most of what is left is very localized
Our governments can't believe we are at any significant / realistic risk of a world ar or they would be telling us those things.
It is the same for TV presenters, some generals etc, all these people CAN'T be serious or it would be like in the cold war. If we were seriously at risk their top priority wouldn’t be to make some point about military budgets or the latest statement by politicians. It would be to make sure we all know what to do to protect against fallout.
Military generals assure us Russia will not attack NATO because it would lose quickly
Our militaries do prepare to defend our countries with military exercises. All countries with militaries always have done that. That is their job, but the point in those preparations in a NATO country is to ensure that nobody ever attacks NATO.
This is something we are also told by our most careful communicators amongst our military leaders. These include:
General Patreus, retired US four star general and former director of the CIA who also led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and is in close contact with his counterparts in Ukraine frequently visiting them, and
Admiral Radakin, who is in command of the UK armed forces and regularly visits Ukraine.
Admiral Radakin:
First, let me scotch some of the more sensationalist headlines of late.
We are not on the cusp of war with Russia.
We are not about to be invaded.
…
Britain is safe.
We are safe because we are part of NATO, the world’s largest and strongest alliance and also because we are a responsible nuclear power.
…
Putin doesn’t want a conflict with Nato because Russia will lose. And lose quickly
Chief of the Defence Chatham House Security and Defence Conference 2024 keynote speech
General Petraeus:
He [Putin] is certainly not going to attack a NATO country and force NATO to invoke the article 5, an attack on one is an attack on all, clause. He doesn't want a fight with NATO.
. Ukrainecast - Could the West cross Putin's new red line? - BBC Sounds
And then it is simply because it would NEVER make sense for ANY country to start a world war deliberately. Including Russia.
See:
Sky News' military analyst, Sean Bell to young kids: “we are NOT on the verge of World War 3” and “we are NOT about to have a nuclear confrontation” - shortened version
I hope this helps some of the scared people we help,
Situation is very different from the world of WW1 or WW2 - because any modern country that tried to fight a world war knows it will lose - and if you take a longer term prespective - we are well on our way to becoming a fully civilized species without wars
As we’ll see there is no way to win a war with nukes. No country has ever had first strike capability.
This is very different from the situation in World War I and World War II. Back then a country could fight a world war with some hope of winning. Now, it is impossible for any country that fights globally to have any hope of winning, it is just a matter of how much they will lose.
As we’ll see in this blog post, there are numerous changes since the end of WW2 that make a third world war impossible.
Back at the time of WWII it was rational for a country to think it can win a world war if it is powerful enough and fights hard enough
Now,
no country could ever think it could win a world war
all any country could do in such a war is lose.
So they are very careful to avoid any risk of accidental warfare between the great powers. They also have many mechanisms in place to de-escalate after any incidents.
The world is also far more connected than it was at the time of WW2, and there is far more communication. There’s also a greatly reduced tendency for the great powers to engage with each other in any form of combat.
We have also learnt we have to work together globally to solve global problems, whether it’s the ozone layer, the silent spring of DDT air pollution, trade in endangered animals, action on climate change and working to protect biodiversity globally/
We also have the Geneva conventions. Even when they are breached, modern warfare has nothing near the horrors of the firestorms and carpet bombing of WW2, the Korean war or the Vietnam war.
Then most striking of all, there’s the way we pulled together globally during the COVID pandemic to protect weaker economies, food, and the global financial system.
See:
The renewables revolution will mean that countries no longer depend on transport of fuel for their cars or power stations. Water simply isn't valuable enough to spark more than very minor local conflicts and almost always these are resolved through negotiation and treaties instead. Transport of water over large distances costs more than desalination at the destination port.
We are also moving in a direction of plenty, of growth in everything we value. Health for all. Zero hunger. Access to education for all. Resources in plenty. Nature services protected on the sustainable development path.
Also our birth rate has already reached peak child and by the end of the century our population will level off too. So there won't be the reasons for refugees and most of the reasons for wars we have today.
We as a civilization tend to focus on things that are not working well, ways that we failed and give ourselves a hard time for those. But we have moved far more in the direction of a civilized species than we were a century ago.
Most of us are living in a time of great peace and even in most of Ukraine the personal risk for civilians is less than for traffic accidents - and almost zero for Russian civilians because Ukraine respects the international law of armed conduct
We will look at this in more detail at the end of this post but let’s touch on it briefly now.
Even with Gaza Strip and the Ukraine war, most of us are living in a time of great peace, greater than our world has ever seen to date. The number of people actually experiencing bombing in Ukraine is of the order of 40 million or so and for most of those millions the bombs are a lower risk than for traffic accidents.
This is not to downplay the war which is awful for those caught up in it, just to explain it is localized even in Ukraine in terms of injuries most of the harm is along the front lines in Ukraine. With a greatly lower risk similar to traffic or less everywhere else. About a tenth of the risk of injury from traffic and a lower risk for deaths than traffic.
Look for instance at November 2024. While Russia was losing 1,500 soldiers a day according to the Ukrainian estimate, the total number of deaths from civilians is 165, and 887 injured. It says "at least" but this would surely include everyone outside of the war zone. It's hard to count civilians who stay behind in the war zone and won't evacuate.
QUOTE At least 165 civilians were killed and 887 injured in Ukraine in November. Eight of the killed and 57 of the injured were children.
. UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine: Ukraine November 2024 update
Compare traffic accidents. Using the official statistics from Ukraine, the totals up to end of November 2024 are: 2886 died and 29484 injured. Up to end of October: 2541 died and 26959 injured.
So in November 2024, 345 died and 2525 were injured. These totals include traffic accidents in the temporarily occupied regions of Ukraine.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
165+ civilians died and 887+ injured in military action total 1052+
345 civilians died and 2525 injured in traffic accidents total 2870.
45,720 Russian soldiers killed or injured according to Ukraine
(Ukrainian losses not available)Even with Russia targeting civilians, the deaths from civilians are low in Ukraine
Our modern wars have far fewer civilian deaths than earlier wars with the exception of Mariupol and Gaza Strip.
Graphic shows the frontspiece for:. UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine: Ukraine November 2024 update
For Ukrainian civilians it is more about being cold because their electricity is cut off. Or the inconvenience and worry about going to the Metro or other shelters when the air raid sirens sound or being woken up with disturbed nights because of the sirens.
But it isn't really so much a risk of injury or dying. You are far more likely to have a friend who was injured in a traffic accident than in a missile strike.
In Russia the risk to civilians is almost zero as Ukraine is careful to only hit military targets.
In Gaza Strip the risk to civilians remains severe. But hopefully that will end soon.
In the rest of the world there are other places with wars going on. But compared to the past this is a time of great peace and the direction is still towards even more peace and I think eventually an end to war.
Arguably we won’t be fully civilized until we have found a better way forward to deal with our differences than killing each other in wars. However some think we may see an end to war too, in the not to distant future.
Foreseeable vison of a future without wars
I don’t know if I’ll see it in my lifetime, as I’m 70, but if not, I think it’s well possible that some of my younger readers may see a fully civilized world that has ended all warfare by the time you are my age. I end this blog post by looking at Hans Blix’s “Farewell to War” with that as his main thesis.
Meanwhile we have several small confined wars going on. They do have wider political and economic significance. But not military.
For sure we will still have healthy competition. But in the form of sports, like the Olympic games. Or artistic competitions like the Turner prize or gardening competitions like the UK Gardens of the Year competition.
We may eventually have olympic games and artistic and garden competitions on the Moon who knows. But I think a future of no more war.
There won't be much that Russia can dispute after the Ukraine war. It can't attack NATO. There is Georgia. No way it can take over Transinistria.
If you take the longer view then Hans Blix says we are headed for a future where there are fewer and fewer territorial disputes with them all finally resolved amicably and eventually wars themselves stop. Not only removing nukes, maybe a small number kept for the remote chance of a second Hitler.
He and others say we are headed for a future where eventually weapons themselves are no longer needed, especially the vast numbers of conventional missiles we have today - and the hundreds of US foreign bases. At some point in the future that those also will be reduced too.
Some people at this point will say FALSELY “Ah but Putin is a madman who would attack out of pure madness”
So we need to look at this and see why Putin did what he did - and to understand that he is NOT MAD.
Putin and Kim Jong Un are VERY RISK AVERSE
Many people seem to think Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are like James Bond villains, or video game characters, just mad. These can do anything because they are fictional and will do whatever the author needs them to do to advance the plot.
But this is real life, not a movie. Though Putin, and Kim Jong Un are ruthless and seem not to care much about the lives of their own soldiers, they are very risk-averse themselves.
This is to help you understand that they are real people and not fictional villains which should help you be less scared.
This is how the Institute for the Study of War puts it:
TWEET “Putin is a very risk averse individual. He is extremely calculated, and he oftentimes really prefers not to make urgent, rash political decisions that would specifically impact the health of his regime,” said ISW’s Russia deputy team lead @ KatStepanenko
You can see it in his concern for personal health too, for instance during the pandemic. There was an element of political showmanship here, but also he was concerned about his own health.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Putin is VERY RISK AVERSE.
- this may be an example
- during the COVID pandemic he used extreme distancing with some world leaders
- at the time the recommendation was 2 meters
Although Putin often orders his soldiers to take great risks
he takes an extraordinary level of care over his own
safety and those he cares about.
When Putin ordered the invsion of Ukraine he believed FALSELY he had a risk free way to take over Kyiv in 3 days and all of Ukraine in 2 weeks.
Background graphic: Putin and Macron meeting on February 7, 2022
See Vladmir Putin’s meeting table - Wikipedia
Also Putin has grandchildren and a girlfriend. He wouldn't want his children and grandchildren to grow up in a devastated world.
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Putin wants a good future for himself, his children and grandchildren
Putin's generals want a good future too. Nobody wants a world war.
Putin wouldn't want his children and grandchildren to grow up in a devastated world.
For more on this see my:
So given that Putin is so risk averse - why did he attack Ukraine? Because he thought it was ZERO RISK.
He was so sure of his plan he never told his generals about it in advance.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Putin is "A VERY RISK AVERSE INDIVIDUAL" (ISW).
So why did he invade Ukraine? He thought it was ZERO RISK.
Exercises in March 2021 were part of the preparations for invasion.
He planned to
- take Hostomel airport on day 1.
- land tanks and take over Kyiv government next day.
- take over Ukraine in 10 days.Then this happened.
Debris from unexpectedly destroyed Russian helicopters
Putin was so sure the risk was zero he had no plan B.Putin was so sure of this plan devised by spied he kept it secret even from most of his generals (Gerasimov knew).
“no evidence in the Russian planning that anyone had asked what would occur if any of its key assumptions were wrong.” — RUSI
There is NO WAY Putin could think using nukes is zero risk.
Photo of the damaged airport from: Occupiers fail to secure their foothold in the attack on Kyiv
Map: Antonov International Airport (GML) to Kyiv
RUSI quote from (Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022 : page 12)
See:
“Putin is a very risk averse individual” - ISW - So why did he invade Ukraine? - supreme confidence in plan A from his spies - take over Kyiv government in 2 days - and Ukraine in 10 days - no plan B
I am writing this right now because many people are worrying that Putin will attack NATO if the US and UK give Zelensky permission to use the ATACMS and Stormshadow missiles (which they already have) to hit targets in Russia (which they are already hitting with other US and UK missiles).
There is NO WAY that Putin could think that using a nuke would be risk free. It doesn’t matter what the spies might tell him he is not going to believe that.
So he won’t do it.
He is never going to do it because he is the very opposite of a mad comic book villain.
Indeed he would have to lose his ability to reason to use nukes against NATO.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Is this is my general?
Is this a flowerpot?
This is how insane Putin would have to be to actually use nukes.
His generals would need to be deluded in the same way, not able to reason coherently or distinguish imagination from reality.
Putin knows what nukes are.
Flowerpot from: "Meillandine" Rose in clay pot
General Valery Gerasimov from: Valery Gerasimov official photo
See:
Kim Jong Un is also very risk averse.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Kim Jong UN is also very risk averse
- though not afraid of flying like his father
- he prefers to travel everywhere in his armoured train
- at 50 miles an hour
- 20 hours to travel 1,180 km 733 miles) to reach his summit with Truimp in Vietnam in 2019
We can be SURE that Kim Jong UN’s bluffs are also JUST POLITICS
Kim Jong Un arriving in Russia to meet Putin in 2023 in the same bullet-proof train
Background images: frame from video: Kim Jong-un leaves North Korea for Vietnam by train and frame from video: Kim Jong-un arrives in Russia to meet Putin as US threatens sanctions
So also is Ayatollah Komeini supreme leader of Iran. Also Xi Jing Ping.
None of these are risk taking madmen
They are all people who are capable of coherent rational thought and who understand that nobody can win in a nuclear war.
They have nukes as a deterrent
How nuclear deterrents work. One of Queen Elizabeth’s bodyguards. His job was to keep her safe. NOT to go around starting fights with people around her, which would make her very unsafe A nuclear deterrent is like a bodyguard He kept her safe by just standing there and doing nothing, alert to any trouble
Photo by Irish321 on Wikimedia commons. I can’t find the original photo as the url doesn’t seem to work but they are credited here: How The Queen left a Head of State lost for words as By Irish321 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, User talk:MisterProper - Wikimedia CommonsArrows added by Business Insider Professional bodyguards reveal how to stay safe while traveling
. How nuclear deterrents work - like a bodyguard - their job is to prevent fights
As for NATO leaders, then to use a nuke in peace time goes against the law of armed conduct and would be a major war crime. A US general who received such an order from the president would be required to refuse the order and have no hesitation in doing so.
Putin does have things he cares about - he cares about Faberge eggs, Russian culture, and for his own regime to continue
First Putin cares about his own regime. He isn’t mad or suicidal.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Michael Gove, UK secretary of state for Levelling up, housing and communities:
“I don’t think it’s helpful to think of Putin as mad. I think what we do need to think of him as, and indeed we do need to recognise, is someone whose ruthlessness takes them into a moral sphere that the rest of us would find almost impossible to conceive of.”
The photo is his official portrait Official portrait of Rt Hon Michael Gove MP
He also cares about Russia. It’s not so much individual Russians as the Russian culture and heritage.
Putin cares about Russia - Russian culture and buildings and artefacts and "Russianness".
He is like a modern day Tsar
If he uses nukes, Russia will be harmed
Saint Basil#s Cathederal and part of the Red Square, Moscow
Putin cares about the imperial Faberge eggs of former Tsars - rosebud egg, one of nine eggs, total price $100 million bought for Russia by an oligarch friend Viktor Vekselberg and displayed in Faberge Museum, in Saint Petersburg
For more on this see my:
Politicians use bluff and hyperbole to try to get people to act in various ways - Putin, Zelensky, NATO countries all claiming an impossible world war for different reasons
So why is there so much talk about nukes and world war? It is just bluff, hyperbole, sensationalism, and clickbait.
First we get a fair bit of bluff and hyperbole from politicians. This is about why they bluff:
Pinocchio
Children’s story - his nose grew longer when he liedIllustration of Pinocchio by Enrico Mazzanti (1852-1910) - the first illustrator (1883) of Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino - colored by Daniel DONNA Pinocchio
Why people lie about nukes
Activists advocate Believe if they exaggerate effects countries wil give up nukes
Governments deter: Governments exaggerate effects to discourage attacks
Putin bluffs makes threat to NATO seem larger to try to prevent NATO member countries from sending weapons to support Ukraine
NATO countries motivate: to get support for sending the weapons to Ukraine by making the threat to NATO seem larger
Ukraine seeks help: to get support from NATO countries
Leaders promote Leaders exaggerating risk to seem more effective to their own people
Media does click bait: just for clicks and views, which gets them to the top of search results and increases their revenue
Video posters try to go viral - and say crazy things to stand out
Trolls wind people up - just for amusement, may not fully understand consequences for others.
Scared people panic - and believe the lies and share them because they think they are true
& truth gets forgotten
[and many other reasons - not a complete list]
For more on this see:
Media then adds to all that with clickbait to get your attention
We get two things here, clickbait and senationalist stories.
Clickbait stories. The title is false, the story is true. Many people only read the title and never read the story. That includes those who share stories on social media without reading them or who are in a panic and are scared to read it, or people who are autistic and may find it far easier to parse a title than the story itself.
Sensationalist stories. Both the title AND the story are FALSE.
I don’t recommend scared people to search for this phrase. But if you search for the term “World War III” then as of writing this, on most days ALL the stories in the first page of search results are either clickbait or sensationalist.
Seeing through clickbait news - BBC example - ambiguity in title can give a false impression to naive readers that UK could be attacked by Iran - and tips to see less clickbait and sensationalism
Even the best mainstream media such as the BBC often does clickbait stories. I don’t mean to criticise the BBC especially. All the mainstream news do this but the BBC is especially impactful on the scared people I help from the UK, because it is respected by many. So here is an example, and I’ll talk through what this title can look like to a scared person.
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Text added to help scared people
CLICKBAIT - TITLE FALSE - often due to double meanings
Title: Why war in Middle East involves UK more than you might think
Correction: Israel's battles NEVER involved the UK except to shoot down drones headed for Israel.
"What happens in the Middle East never stays in the Middle East."
Correction: ALL wars in the Middle East STAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
broader effects only economics and political.
Really about:
- oil prices
- evacuating Brits
- defending Israel from drones and cruise missiles
- that UK will never attack Iran
Annotations of the BBC article:
. Why war in Middle East involves UK, BBC's Laura Kuenssberg writes
To people worried about a world war the BBC’s title suggests FALSELY that there is a risk that the UK will be attacked with bombs from the Middle East.
The title doesn’t say that but it vaguely hints at it for scared people as that is what they will interpret “war in Middle East involves UK” as about.
But if you click through and read the article it’s about
evacuating Brits from Lebanon
the impact on costs of oil if Israel hits Iran's oil terminals
the UK shooting down Iranian drones and cruise missiles headed for Israel in April and it was ready to do it again but coudn’t do anything as Iran only fired ballistic missiles this time which fly through outer space to reach Israel
That UK will never attack Iran.
We have had numerous wars in the Middle East as I cover later in this post: the Iraq war, the war against Iraq in Kuwait (gulf wars), war in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria.
Nobody in the Middle East ever tries to fight the US or UK on our own home countries and nobody there ever could. They couldn’t even get to the US or UK to fight them.
Also, Russia is NOT going to fight the US or Israel and China’s only real interest is in oil exports from the Middle East. So the idea of a world war starting in the Middle East is preposterous.
WW3 in Middle East - Nobody in the area has ICBMs or nukes except Israel. Russia and China do not support Hamas BULLS**T
For more on this, see my blog post.
BLOG: WW3 in Middle East? BULLS**T
We’ll go through this in more detail later in this post.
The preinstalled browser on Windows shows clickbait and sensationalist news every time you open a new tab
We are exposed to so much news today. As an example, on Windows laptops the preinstalled Microsoft browser (Microsoft Edge) shows a news page when you start up the browser and also every time you go to a new tab.
This page is usually full of clickbait headlines. But it doesn’t just have clickbait titles, often its sensationalist with seriously misleading articles too.
Some of the UK sensationalist press such as the red top tabloids FALSELY claim alien invasions, colliding asteroids, and world war 3 most weeks - they are like the US supermarket tabloids mixed up with serious news.
This is a typical sensationalist Daily Express story
See:
BLOG: About the Daily Express
The Microsoft Start Page often has stories from the Daily Express and other red top tabloids with nothing on the page to indicate that they are red top tabloids or what a red top tabloid is for those who aren’t familiar with them.
Some of these red top tabloids FALSELY claim alien invasions, colliding asteroids, and World War 3 several times a week - they are like the US supermarket tabloids except that they mix up the sensationalistm with serious news.
For UK users, which is where I’m writing this from, it almost never has stories from the BBC which is one of the most respected news sites in the UK.
Also many people don’t know how to switch this behaviour off. They don’t want to check the news every time they go to a new tab but don’t realize this is an optional feature of the browser.
How to switch this sensationalist news filling behaviour off in Windows laptops - easy to do but it’s tucked away in an unintuitive check box
It is easy to switch off, and if you are one of those affected, this simple tip can hugely reduce your exposure to CLICKBAIT FALSE HEADLINES every day.
What you do is go to a new tab and:
click on the cog settings icon.
scroll down to switch called "Show feed"
(an unintuitive label as it doesn’t mention the word “news”)switch it to "off".
Immediately you will see a new tab page much like most other browsers without any news stories on it.
Here is how to switch off the news feed on Edge on Windows PCs / laptops. You have to scroll down past other settings to see this check box:
If you do need to use it, you can configure it to decide what you want to see.
First, you can block individual publishers from the … settings menu at the top right of each item, like this
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: How to block Daily Express [sensationlist, this is nothing new]
block_daily_mail.png
You can also choose topics that interest you and select the publishers you want to follow. To get to this page click on Personalise at top right of your feed.
For more on this see:
How to switch off the Microsoft Start news feed on every new tab on a Windows computer
MSN is often very clickbait - title LIES It also shares many out and out sensationalist stories - story also LIES
Why do titles of so many articles hint at false things - because title authors optimize to get as many people to click through as possible - may not even know why it gets more clicks
So why do journalists and mainstream news do this, why do the titles of so many articles say such false things to us like this?
It’s best not to call them lies because as we’ll see the author of the title (who is often different from the author of the article) may not necessarily know about how we read it. Their attention is on clicks not on the meaning of the title.
It is just to get clicks on the title. They do it automatically.
First you do need a good title to interest a reader in your article.
stark, witty or intriguing ones can draw the reader's eye to a story.
Nobody has any objections to that, it leads to clearer more concise writing.
But clickbait is when you focus so much on optimizing the title that it becomes misleading and doesn’t match the story.
… the name is used pejoratively to describe headlines which are sensationalised, turn out to be adverts or are simply misleading.
Publishers increasingly use it for simple economics; the more clicks you get, the more people on your site, the more you can charge for advertising.
So, they are not trying to scare people. They have figures for how many people clicked on each title in the news for that day. They write these titles just to get more people to click through to the article
What you can do to reduce exposure - find other things to do with your day
The main thing is to reduce your exposure to it. You can try checking the news less often also.
Most people find it much easier to positively focus on things than to try to stop thinking about things. So, instead of trying to stop yourself checking the news many times a day - to find other things that interest you online or in real life.
Also doing things to help keep healthy in body and mind and to find worthwhile or engaging or fun or enjoyable etc things to do. Not as a distraction but as your focus, doing them because you want to do them.
See also my:
BLOG: Seven tips for dealing with doomsday fears
If you are bothered by what the social media algorithms show you, see my:
BLOG: How to train your social media algorithm dragon to fetch whatever you want online
For more on this see my expanded article here:
The only countries with the ability to fight globally are all by chance in NATO
It should be clear already that nobody is going to start a world war. However people still worry. So I need to go into more detail, country by country, into why this can’t happen.
Let’s start with a short summary of some of the main points in the rest of this blog post.
We will see that only a few countries have the ability to fight a war across the other side of an ocean and in distant countries, what we can call “Force projection”. These are mainly
US
UK
France.
Surprisingly, tiny UK does have global force projection. This is because it used to be the head of a global empire, the British Empire, at its height in 1919.
The UK has
ships that sail around the world including two aircraft carriers
military bases throughout the world.
Not many countries are like that. Russia has:
only one foreign sea port in the Med.
no remaining aircraft carriers.
In this map I compare Russia with just France and UK, both members of NATO.
I’ve left out US bases. Those are almost everywhere in the world globally. As you can see Russia used to have only one sea port outside Russia, or the Black Sea or Caspian sea, Tartus, in the Mediterranean in Syria. It has now lost it, after HTS overthrew Assad’s regime in Syria.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Russia can't fight globally (US, France and UK can)
Putin would likek to get back the former Soviet Union states
- but knows it is impossible
- many former Soviet states and Warsaw pact countries are now in NATO
Russia like China covers a large land area with a huge border to defend.
It has NEVER had any interest in an overseas empire.
Russia is so weak it LOST its only foreign sea port outside the former Soviet Union
- Tartus (5) on the Mediterranean
- so it now has no warm-water (ice free) port with easy access to the Mediterranean until the war ends and the Black Sea opensGraphic shows:
Russia and Belarus (light red)
NATO (yellow)
Other close allies of the UK (Australia and New Zealand) (purple)
French foreign bases (purple)
UK foreign bases (dark blue)
Russian foreign bases (dark red)
Graphic combines Russian foreign bases: List of Russian military bases abroad - Wikipedia
UK foreign bases: Overseas military bases of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
French foreign bases Overseas military bases of France - Wikipedia
For the roughly 750 US military bases see: Infographic: History of US interventions in the past 70 years
Also, coloured in by hand (floodfill) the member states of NATO Member states of NATO - Wikipedia
And in pale purple: Australia and New Zealand which are very close allies of the UK though of course not in NATO as they are in the southern hemisphere far from the North Atlantic.
These three countries, UK, France and the US all happen to be part of NATO, though NATO itself is a defensive alliance.
These three countries often invaded foreign countries (alongside other partners), or fought on one side in a foreign war far from their home territories. Examples include:
Vietnam
Libya
Iraq (twice, Gulf war and the Iraq war)
Afghanistan
None of the countries they invaded has ever been able to attack them back in their home country.
The Soviet Union was far more capable militarily than Russia. However most of the wars involving the Soviet Union were with neighbour or near neighbour countries
Though the Soviet Union did have fleets with aircraft carriers, it wasn’t like the US fighting a war an ocean away. The closest they got were small wars in Africa and their support of Cuba.
Iran, North Korea, Russia and China only invaded neighbours and near neighbours - which can’t be a world war
Then looking at the four countries Iran, North Korea, Russia and China, they all only invaded neighbours or near neighbours.
Iran has proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza Strip, and to some extent in Iraq, but hasn't directly invaded anyone.
North Korea has never even had significant combat experience since the Korean war which ended in 1953
Russia has only invaded nearby countries in Eastern Europe
China hasn't invaded any country for decades.
Then we can look at foreign ports. If you can only access another country by air or by commercial shipping you can’t really invade it, and you need nearby friendly ports for your warships to approach and invade a country.
China has one foreign port in Djibouti on the Red Sea
Russia has one foreign port in Tartus in Syria on the Mediterranean
Iran has no foreign ports but has proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and to some extent Iraq.
North Korea has no foreign ports or foreign proxies
China, North Korea, Russia and Iran can’t form a NATO-like alliance because they don’t have enough shared interests
You sometimes hear that China, North Korea, Russia and Iran are forming a new axis.
No it’s just exchange type relationships (“transactional relationships”) - where each country can offer something the other country wants and wants something it has in exchange. Not an alliance like NATO.
NATO countries all have a shared interest in deterring Russia and they formed an alliance to protect all their territories against any invader.
But it’s not likely that those four countries form any such an alliance as they have so little by way of common interests. Of those four
Only Russia cares about what happens to Ukraine
Only China cares about Taiwan and the South China sea
Only Iran cares about Israel
Only North Korea cares about South Korea
So they can’t fight for a common purpose because they don’t have one.
The North Korean troops are now in Kursk oblast are not there because NK cares about what happens to Ukraine. It is just to get combat experience and presumably various other benefits from Russia. The North Korean soldiers will loyal to Kim Jong Un not Putin. They will care about North and South Korea not Ukraine or Russia.
So now looking at particular wars.
The Ukraine war is a geographically small war limited to an incursion into Russia in Kursk oblast and Ukraine in Donbas and the Azov sea coast and Crimea
Russia is over extended and there is no way it can expand this to a larger war
Indeed Russia is vastly overmatched by NATO in technology. The ATACMS that Putin makes such a fuss about are 1980s technology. NATO has far more powerful systems that it hasn’t even considered offering to Ukraine because it thinks they would give Ukraine too much of an advantage against Russia. that includes the Tomahawk cruise missiles and the F-35 fighter jets as we’ll see.
So there is no way that Russia will attack NATO.
North Korea doesn’t have any ambition to try to invade South Korea. It’s been a stalemate since the end of the Korea war.
Kim Jong Un only has his nukes for protection, he knows very well he can’t win a war. As for setting off on some expedition to try o take over the US, that would be absurd.
There is no way that China can really invade Taiwan as we’ll see and it certainly wouldn’t use nukes against Taiwan.
It is militarily feasible for China to blockade Taiwan or to take over small islands near to China
- but it would be economically, socially and politically fraught and impossible really.
See:
The US and China are of course much further apart and there is no realistic prospect of China doing the week long cruise across the Pacific to invade the US with warships.
They have very different views on Israel with only Iran actively involved
Putin's Russia
was very pro Israel, a shift from the previous Soviet Union anti-Israel approach. This is due to Putin having many close personal ties with Jews in Moscow, the million Russian speaking Jews in Israel and because Putin benefits from ties with Israel
However this shifted during the Ukraine war with Putin calling Zelensky (who is a Jew) a Nazi. Israel naturally objected to that and to Russia relying on Iran for missiles to attack Ukraine.
So, Russia and Israel are reevaluating their relationship but Russia still has very close ties with both Israel and Iran. It sees itself as neutral in the conflict.
Details see: What is Russia's role in the Israel-Gaza crisis?
China
supports a two state solution and wants to see Jerusalem split into East and West Jerusalem with East Jerusalem belonging to the Palestinian state.
Details see: Understanding China’s Position on the Israel-Palestine Conflict
North Korea
doesn't recognize Israel, wants Palestinians to be in control of all of Israel, and is strongly in support of Hamas
However North Korea is not going to fight against Israel. Its support is limited to votes in the UN and to sending arms illegally to Hamas, Iran and other Islamic militant groups. Their aim for these sales also doesn’t seem political but just to get funding for their own weapons programs.
Details see: . The DPRK-Hamas Relationship
Iran of course does oppose Israel militarily. But it is simply incapable of fighting the US or UK In any scenario. It only has three small frigates which would take a long time to reach the UK and couldn’t realistically become an expeditionary force with any real chance of attacking any other foreign country.
Even if impossibly China, Iran, NK and Russia combined together they only have two foreign ports in all of those countries together, in Djibouti and Syria. There is no way they can do force projection globally.
So let’s look at this in more detail.
Russia doesn’t even have any aircraft carriers while the USA typically has 4 in service at any time and has 7 more in repairs or getting ready to deploy
We can see this discrepancy between Russia and NATO in force projection from the aircraft carriers. A modern fighter jet can’t fly that far without refueling. So aircraft carriers are important for force projection if a country wants to use its air combat capabilities in a foreign country. Air power is of course of supreme importance in a modern war.
We often hear of US carriers sent to one or other location in the world.
The US has 11 nuclear powered aircraft carriers. Generally at any time some are in service, some are getting ready to deploy and some are being repaired. Half way through their 50 year lifetime they need a full overhaul and repair which takes years.
For background see: A look at where the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers are now (it is out of date but explains the basics).
Typically four will be in action at any time. You can use their “Fleet Tracker” page to check where they are at any time (it’s not secret, you can’t hide a nuclear powered aircraft carrier fleet :) )
This shows the four currently in service as of writing this Each is the center of a strike force. The ones marked ARG are Amphibious Ready Groups.
For the latest positions see Fleet Tracker page
UK has two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers (conventionally powered)
. France has one nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle.
China has three aircraft carriers.
India has two aircraft carriers, one bought from the Soviet Union and one that they built themselves, recently commissioned.
So what about Russia’s aircraft carriers? Where are they? Well Russia has NONE. None that actually work. One that has been out of service since 2018 and not likely to be ready for action any time soon.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Of the 4 earlier Soviet era aircraft carriers, 1 was scrapped, 2 were sold to theme parks in China and one was sold to the Indian navy
Russia's only aircraft carrier, "that cursed bucket of bolts" the Admiral Kuznetsov.
Out of service since 2018. Russia seems to have given up on it for now.
Russia sent its crew to fight in Ukraine leaving it uncrewed.
The Soviet Union had four Kiev class aircraft carriers, all made in Ukraine and gone now.
Admiral Gorshkov - sold to India which upgraded it and made it into its INS Vikramaditya carrier.
Kiev, sold to China where it is part of a theme park and developed into a luxury hotel
Minsk - sold to South Korea for scrap which then sold it to China which made it the main feature of the Minsk World theme park
Novorossiysk - sold to South Korea for scrap.
Russia never developed a nuclear powered aircraft carrier - it tried but then the Soviet Union broke apart and that ended those plans.
As Brent Eastwood put it:
Russia has been more of a land power than a sea power throughout its modern history, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union ended ambitions to build more carriers to accompany the lone carrier Russia fields now, that cursed bucket of bolts, the Admiral Kuznetsov.
. Russia's Aircraft Carrier Dreams Turned Into a Never Ending Nightmare
Russia’s only aircraft carrier has been out of operation since 2018 and Russia seems to have given up on it for now as they sent its crew to fight on the front line in Ukraine. See; Russian aircraft carrier crew sent to frontline in Ukraine
US has by far the largest global reach of any country by way of force projection - 750 bases throughout the world
The US is the country with the largest global presence in the world by far, 750 bases in at least 80 countries. Here is a graphic summarizing the US overseas military bases
From: Al Jazeera
Then we have the French and UK bases - as well as some others from other NATO countries. Just to copy this map over again from before.n in Syria. It has now lost it, after HTS overthrew Assad’s regime in Syria.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Russia can't fight globally (US, France and UK can)
Putin would likek to get back the former Soviet Union states
- but knows it is impossible
- many former Soviet states and Warsaw pact countries are now in NATO
Russia like China covers a large land area with a huge border to defend.
It has NEVER had any interest in an overseas empire.
Russia is so weak it LOST its only foreign sea port outside the former Soviet Union
- Tartus (5) on the Mediterranean
- so it now has no warm-water (ice free) port with easy access to the Mediterranean until the war ends and the Black Sea opensGraphic shows:
Russia and Belarus (light red)
NATO (yellow)
Other close allies of the UK (Australia and New Zealand) (purple)
French foreign bases (purple)
UK foreign bases (dark blue)
Russian foreign bases (dark red)
Graphic combines Russian foreign bases: List of Russian military bases abroad - Wikipedia
UK foreign bases: Overseas military bases of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
French foreign bases Overseas military bases of France - Wikipedia
For the roughly 750 US military bases see: Infographic: History of US interventions in the past 70 years
Also, coloured in by hand (floodfill) the member states of NATO Member states of NATO - Wikipedia
And in pale purple: Australia and New Zealand which are very close allies of the UK though of course not in NATO as they are in the southern hemisphere far from the North Atlantic.
None of the four countries that the US sees as its potential opponents have ANY significant force projection overseas
So now let’s look at those four countries, Iran, China, NK and Russia in more detail.
None of these countries are actually enemies of the USA. They are just potential opponents. The USA is not at war with any of them and the US military has even worked with them in the past, for instance
With Iran: Iran led an intervention against ISIS in Syria at the same time that the US was attacking ISIS in their intervention so they were on the same side in that war if not exactly allies War_against_the_Islamic_State
With China: US practiced humanitarian assistance (non combat) scenarios with China up to 2017
With Russia: US, Norway and Russia took part in a joint exercise called Northern Eagle every two years through to 2013, but stopped after the invasion of Crimea.
Though it’s hard to see Russia and the USA doing a joint naval exercise today - it may be possible once the Ukraine war is over depending how it ends.
The US and Russia are NOT at war as in a hot conflict. Only Russia and Ukraine are.
So now let’s look at the four areas of conflict
Iran can’t start any kind of a world war - no force projection beyond the Middle East
First Iran and the Middle East.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Wars in the Middle East always STAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Example: 1991: Gulf war to liberate Kuwait after invasion by Iraq.
UK’s biggest foreign war since WW2. ALL THESE COUNTRIES fought Iraq - NEVER COULD BE A WORLD WAR.
Russia and China neutral.
Most fighting here: (arrow to Kuwait).
UK sent 35,000 soldiers and 13,000 vehicles.
Numbers of soldiers and vehicles from here: Gulf War | National Army Museum
Map of combatants from here: File:Coalition of the Gulf War vs Iraq.svg - Wikimedia Commons
Map of Iraq and Kuwait from here: Gulf War | National Army Museum
Background oil painting: British infantry vehicles advancing, Iraq, 1991 Oil on board by Captain Jonathan Wade, Royal Highland Fusiliers, 1992.
Imperial war museum IWM Non-Commercial Licence
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Iran doesn't have ICBM capabilities- it can put satellites into orbit
- but has not mastered ICBM re-entry
Iran hasn't even tried.
- Ballistic missiles are hypersonic.
- ICBMs enter at Mach 17+.
This is vastly more challenging to design for.
Iran's main aim is a CEASEFIRE
Russia is NOT an ally of Iran and will stay out of any fight with Israel.
Iranian militants have killed opponents with car bombs globally but it DOES NOT do ISIS / Al Qaeda type terrorism - it FOUGHT ISIS in Syria.
There is simply NO WAY that Iran can bring a war to UK or US or anywhere outside the Middle East.
Iran does NOT have nukes and nukes CAN'T WIN WARS.
Israel is still out of range for 1/3 of Iran
Iran has only 3 frigates and they would take 6 days to reach UK at maximum speed - NO CHANCE OF ATTACKING THE UK OR USA
Iran and its proxies can't start a world war even if they wanted to which they don't. Iran's longer range missiles have only a bit more range than is needed to get from the closest place in Iran to Israel (which is nearly 1000 km) - indeed even their very longest distance missile with a range of 2000 km can't reach Israel from the far side of Iran from Israel.
Iran doesn’t have nuclear subs and its longest range force projection is with 3 frigates with a range of 9000 km at 28 km / h - would take over 6 days to get to the USA at their faster speed needing more refueling - obviously can’t attack the UK or US
They also don't have nuclear subs, their diesel subs would need to be refueled many times to get to e.g. the UK <and are not silent. They only have patrol boats and frigates not destroyers. Their biggest ships are three frigates with a range of 9000 km at 28 km / h and can reach a speed of up to 72 km/h if using gas turbines
They used to have four until the US sunk one of them. The US could surely sink the rest if it wanted to.
. Alvand-class frigate - Wikipedia
The sea distance is : 6858 nautical miles or around 12,000 km from London to Bandar Abbas on the strait of Hormuz.
. Port of London, United Kingdom to Bandar Abbas, Iran sea route and distance
This means they couldn't get to the UK without refueling and at a sea distance of about 12,000 km it would take them. (12,000/78)/24 or over 6 days to get from Iran to UK at their fastest speed with frequent refueling.
It is very obvious that Iran can't invade anywhere in Europe. And it can't invade overland either. And it can't send missiles to the US or UK.
Russia is neutral on Iran / Israel. Israel is neutral on Russia / Ukraine - it just supplies the missiles for financial reasons, it is a miltiary trade partner not an ally.
Also Iran wouldn't do anything like 9/11 and its proxies are militant organizations - they are only loosely connected with Hamas which they did support with military supplies but Hamas are sunni and Iran is Shia.
In more detail.
Iran and its proxies don't do attacks on ordinary civilians in other countries like 9/11. They only focus on Israel. Iran joined the coalition fighting against ISIS in Syria.
Hezbollah don't deliberately target civilians or take hostages or use torture either - they are more of a militant group but are classified as a terrorist group mainly because of a couple of high profile car bombings. They are accused of bomb plots to assassinate opponents in many other countries but not of anything like 9/11. Iran itself sees its militant groups as liberation groups to liberate from Israeli oppression.
So it is very different from ISIS, or Al Qaeda which deliberately sponsored international terror.
. Iran and state-sponsored terrorism - Wikipedia
Hamas' attacks on civilians in Israel were done without Iranian approval or knowledge. Iranian leaders were surprised by them.
QUOTE STARTS
The U.S. has intelligence indicating senior Iranian officials were surprised by the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel, according to multiple American officials familiar with the matter, preliminarily suggesting Tehran was not directly involved the launch of the deadly Oct. 7 assault.
While analysis and collection are continuing and additional information may arise to contradict the initial assessments, officials briefed on the intelligence say key Iranian officials who would normally be aware of operations in the region appeared to be unaware the attacks were taking place.
. U.S. intelligence indicates Iranian officials surprised by Hamas attack on Israel
Iran called for a ceasefire early on. Iran was one of the countries in the UN voting on 27th October 2023 for an immediate humanitarian pause leading to a ceasefire.
They continue to call for a ceasefire today. They support Hezbollah but Hezbollah has constantly also called for a ceasefire in Gaza strip.
Their attacks on Israel were to respond to show themselves as strong after Israel assassinated many leaders of Iranian sponsored militant groups but Iran doesn't want a war with Israel and is still continuously calling for a ceasefire in Gaza Strip.
And anyway it is impossible to have something like 9/11 again because of heightened air security.
Also 9/11 didn't start a world war, it couldn't. It did lead to the US invoking NATO article 5 but that is very much misunderstood. It is purely defensive, NATO does whatever it needs to do to defend itself. It does NOT mention nukes and it does not commit NATO to any particular type of response.
In this case it led to the NATO countries joining together to protect NATO from terrrosim and to hunt down the originators of 9/11.
I have a section about how article 5 is defensive only in my blog post here:
Then after Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, Lebanon elected a new president, Lebanese Armed Forces chief Joseph Aoun
“A new phase in the history of Lebanon begins today,” he told the chamber, adding that he would call for “quick parliamentary consultations” on naming a new prime minister.
Aoun also vowed to ensure that the state would have “a monopoly” on the right to carry arms, referring to the Hezbollah terror group’s extensive arsenal, which he had not commented on publicly as commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
. Lebanon army chief elected president, drawing Israeli hopes for postwar stability
So it looks as though Lebanon is going to disarm Hezbollah. Their prime minister has started the process.
In his statement Friday, Mikati said: “We are in a new phase — in this new phase, we will start with south Lebanon and south Litani specifically in order to pull weapons so that the state can be present across Lebanese territory.”
. Lebanon’s PM vows to disarm country’s south after new president threatens Hezbollah
So Iran no longer has Hezbollah as an effective fighting force and it may be eliminated altogether. It’s also lost Syria since HTS liberated the Assad regime which was supported by Iran and Russia.
So Iran now only has the Houthis as their main proxy. Iran and its proxies were never able to start a world war even if they wanted to which they don't, as their missiles have only a bit more range than is needed to get from Iran to Israel indeed their longest distance missile can't even reach Israel from the far side of Iran from Israel.
. Absolutely no possibility of the USA or the UK hit by missiles from ANYTHING in the Middle East
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Why there is absolutely no possibility of the US being hit as a result of ANYTHING that goes on in the Middle East.
Israel has invaded Lebanon several times including in 2006. The US is not likely to get involved except shooting incoming missiles.i
Nobody in the Middle East opposed to the US or Israel is even able to fire weapons to another continent. The longest range of the Iranian missiles is 2000 km. They need most of that range just to reach Israel from Iran.
An intercontinental missile is 5,500 km. The shortest distance from Iran to the US is far more even than that.
Why there is NO RISK EVER of a world war from yet one more conflict in the Middle East of many (basic geography few seem to know on social media).
Shortest distance from Iran to USA 8,400+ km.
Maximum range for Iran's missiles:2000 km.
Iran is NOT able to attack the US.
The US has been involved in many conflicts in the Middle East including its invasion of Iraq and the Gulf war.
These do NOT lead to world wars and CAN’T.
Russia: neutral to Israel and Hezbollah / Hamas
China: no interest in Israel just oil from Middle East
Israel: neutral to Russia and Ukraine.
This time the US is NOT involved except to protect Israel from incoming missiles.
Israel and Iran do NOT want to fight each other either - both trying to give an appearance of strength without provoking an increase in conflict.
The UK is quite closely involved because the UK actually was in charge of Palestine before it split into Israel and Palestine.
It handed it over to the international community when things got too difficult for them to manage.
The US then got historically involved.
So both countries have a strong historical connection and a level of commitment.
The UK doesn't have the close connection the US has not any more.
But it does support Israel.
It sends some military supplies and it is involved in shooting down missiles headed for Israel.
It is very much on Israel's side. Mind you not many are on Iran's side. The Arab countries in the area are on Israel's side if anything. E.g. Jordan also shot down missiles headed for Israel.
Jordan doesn't want to take sides but it shot them down because they flew over their own territory. And if forced to decide it will go with Israel.
So, here “Involves the UK” does NOT mean that Iran can hit the UK. It can’t, the UK is well out of range of Iran.
The Falklands war involved the UK so did the Iraq war. In both cases there was NO RISK of bombs falling in the UK or missiles or shells fired at the UK.
Iran is not even able to hit the UK.
China has only one foreign base, in Djibouti on the Red Sea - it is not especially interested in force projection across oceans
China has only 1 foreign military base in Djibouti, a small African country that also has bases for many other countries and China has far fewer soldiers in Djibouti (1,000) than soldiers there from the other four countries US, France, Japan, Italy (5,530)
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
China has NEVER AIMED FOR AN OVERSEAS EMPIRE
- its global aim is economic and political
It:
- invaded nowhere this century
- has no historical overseas bases
NOT a country that can fight a global war.
- has only one overseas military base today
China's population is already well over a billion
- longest land border of any country
- has separatist groups internally
Looking for
- partners and soft power
- not more countries to try to rule
China occupies almost all its historical empire.
Main territorial interests South China sea and Taiwan.
Can't really invade Taiwan
(like 10 D-days)
No combat experience in a war with 21st century weapons.
Djibouti - China's only overseas base
1,000 Chinese soldiers in Djibouti
5,530 other soldiers (US, France, Japan, Italy)
China can't fight major wars globally.
Background just google map satellite view with marker for its Dijbouti base. 11°35'14.9"N 43°03'39.0"E · 11.587472, 43.060833
Coords from here People's Liberation Army Support Base in Djibouti - Wikipedia
China_force_projection.png
UK, France and US have so many overseas bases as a legacy from their past global colonial empires
The reason the UK, France, US etc have all those overseas bases is because of their past global colonial empires. Which Russia and China never had.
This shows the British empire in 1919. The smaller islands aren’t very obvious.
That was the moment of their maximum extent just after WW1. See The size of the British Empire
This is why they have so many foreign bases
Zoom in on the Middle East section, so you can see the separate bases here:
. Overseas military bases of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
Then the UK has six overseas territories with their own locally raised security and defence units.
Bermuda (1) the Cayman Islands (2), Falkland Islands (3), Gibraltar (4), Montserrat (5) and Turks and Cacao Islands (6).
. Overseas military bases of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
Russia had a large land empire in Eurasia and didn’t seek to expand overseas - it had plenty of expansion opportunities on land
However China and Russia never tried to conquer large overseas territories. The reason is they were both large empires in Eurasia, more than enough to govern at home.
This was Russia at the height of its empire
:
File:The Russian Empire-en.svg - Wikimedia Commons
Alaska was bought by the United States removing its link with the Americas. After that Russia had no significant overseas presence and no reason to have military bases overseas.
Russia only had the one base Tartus in the Mediterranean. All the rest are essentially neighbouring countries like Kazakhstan and Belarus. Plus Transinistria in Moldova for historical reasons, now separated from Russia by ex Soviet countries.
Here is a zoom in on their former bases in Syria, the Tartus port and the Khmeimim Air Base.
See: List of Russian military bases abroad - Wikipedia
But Russia has now lost both of those.
With Tartus it lost one of its very few warm water ports.
A warm water port just means one that doesn't freeze over in winter.
The issue is that at times in winter Russia’s ships can't dock in a cold water port, or ships in the ports can't leave.
Other nation have many warm water ports -. but Russia doesn’t because the only warm water along Russia’s very long coastline is in the Caspian Sea, Black Sea and the Pacific.
This makes Russia's navy weaker if its ships can't sail in the depths of winter.
Russia has one warm water port in the Pacific, Vladivostok
Then it has the Black Sea naval ports, but they can't access the Mediterranean until the war ends.
The Caspian sea is land-locked, an internal sea with no connection to any other seas.
So when it lost Tartus after HTS liberated Syria, it now has no warm-water port with easy access to the Mediterranean.
This shows how weak Russia is that it lost a port that is so important to it.
For the duration of the war whenever the winter ice blocksk Russia's bases in the Kola peninsula, its military ships can only sail from Vladivostock or Kaliningrad - with a few countries with friendly ports where they can call in for refueling but don't have a proper base e..g for overhaul / servicing.
The only other warm water ports are several ports in the Black Sea which are no use for accessing the Mediterranean until the war is over.
Kaliningrad is the only Russian sea port on the Baltic Sea that is ice-free year round. baltic-sea-far-nato-lake-alliance-must-strengthen-its-defences It’s a long sail from there to the Mediterranean
For it's Black Sea ports, it has Sevastopol in Crimea which is no longer much use as long as the Ukraine war lasts because Ukraine will sink any ships it keeps there.
It has the Port Port of Novorossiysk - Wikipedia to the north east of the Black Sea,
Then, Russia is building a new naval base Ochamchire in the Abkhazia breakaway region they took over from Georgia on the Black Sea. See:
Russia does have small groups of soldiers in Africa, its "Africa corps" derived from Wagner. This has supported local military leaders in several small sub-Saharan African countries with very weak economies. These countries are very weak.
The reason Russia is there now is that it is essentially taking advantage of a gap and of frustration with the US in some African countries.
QUOTE Russia offers security assistance without interfering in politics, making it an appealing partner in places like Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, all ruled by military juntas that seized power in recent years. In return, Moscow seeks access to minerals and other contracts.
That barely counts as an overseas presence in terms of force projection, it couldn’t fight with NATO countries.
The Soviet Union had almost no military involvement in Africa: Africa - Soviet Union relations.
China also traditionally expanded overland instead of overseas
As for China, historically, it never held any territories across the sea apart from small Taiwan. This shows it in 1820. There’s some dispute about which areas should count as part of China (e.g. the Tibetan government in exile dispute that they were part of China) and indeed which areas should count as tribute territories (Korea disputes that they were)
But I don’t want to explore that here, the main thing to notice is that there are no overseas territories
.
. File:Qing Empire circa 1820 EN.svg - Wikimedia Commons
Why is that? Well China had the capability for sure. In the fifteenth century just before the Portuguese rounded South Africa and got to the Pacific, China traded throughout the Pacific.
They were not interested in colonization only in trade. Zheng He was a famous Chinese mariner and he did many long journeys with huge ships full of treasure. But they weren’t there to sell it, or to buy treasure but just to display the treasure at various ports to impress their trade partners with their wealth and prosperity.
It’s intriguing to speculate what would have happened if these voyages had continued for just a few more decades and the Portuguese mariners had encountered a huge fleet of vast Chinese ships in the Pacific. But no - by the time they got there China had lost interest in this and retreated and settled back to normal trade relations with its neighbours. Traders traded across the Pacific but the Chinese military didn’t go anywhere outside of China
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: China had the capability of force projection in the fifteenth century but never built a world-spanning empire - it didn’t need to as its goods were in demand everywhere.
The first Portuguese mariners rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Pacific shortly after Zheng-He’s last voyage
Not voyages of conquest - just voyages to display the wealth of China to the world.
Map from: Voyages of Zheng He.png - Wikimedia Commons
Zheng-Zhe's_voyages.png
For details see:
. Why Did Ming China End the Treasure Fleet Voyages?
China’s only overseas base today in Djibouti on the Red Sea with 1,000 soldiers - alongside over 5,530 soldiers in nearby bases from countries that happen to be in NATO
China has no overseas colonies but it does have ONE oversees base in Djibouti, on the horn of Africa adjacent to the Red Sea with 1,000 personnel. There it joins the United States (4,000), France (1,450), Japan (180), and Italy (80), and two temporary bases for Germany (30 - 80), Spain (50) as part of EU military operations. Then Saudi Arabia has a base planned for the future. Meanwhile Russia and India also have expressed an interest in a base there.
The numbers I quoted are from the table on page 9.
. Competition of Foreign Military Bases and the Survival Strategies of Djibouti
So Djibouti hosts 5 permanent military bases with one more on its way, and one of those bases is from China and is China's only foreign military base.
This means China has only 1,000 soldiers in any foreign base overseas 🙂. You can't engage in a world war with 1,000 soldiers in Dijbouti. Alongside 5,530 soldiers from NATO countries. Even in Dijbouti they are way outnumbered.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
China’s only overseas base
1,000 Chinese soldiers
In the same country:
4,000 US soldiers
1,450 Franch soldiers
300+ soldiers from Japan, Italy, Germany and SpainMap from Bing maps
Coords from the Wikipedia page: People's Liberation Army Support Base in Djibouti
Djibouti.png
France is the only country to have had a base there before this century, its base goes back to 1883.
QUOTE STARTS
China has one base on the African continent which opened in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in 2017. The overt goals of this installation are anti-piracy and freedom of navigation, part of a strategy aimed at securing trade corridors alongside developing alternatives such as the longer but less-contested Mozambique-South Africa route.
This base has over the years matured from a ‘resupply facility’ to a logistics facility, supported by up to two brigades of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
...
Houthi militants’ current attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and a renewed attack by pirates on shipping in the waters off Somalia have once again validated the strategic value of Djibouti and ensuring adjacent sea lines of communication such as the Bab al Mandab Strait remain navigable.
The PLA navy counterpiracy presence in the Gulf of Aden has been there since 2008. Its 46th escort task force recently completed its deployment. Furthermore, in the 2011 Libya crisis, China had to protect some 35,000 citizens with very few resources on the ground; a failing that ostensibly justified an African base.
However, Djibouti is also an exceptional case in terms of the number of foreign bases that it hosts, and its strategic geographic value to so many international partners. Indeed, Japan and Saudi Arabia also have bases there and nowhere else on the continent. In many respects, China’s Djibouti base tells us little about China’s strategic considerations over expanding its military footprint in the region.
. china-eyeing-second-military-base-africa-us-struggles-maintain-one-niger
It goes on to say that military bases can be a liability both for the foreign government in times of crisis in the host country and for the host country too as nowadays they may be seen as undermining the host country's sovereignty by their own population.
More about Djibouti military bases:
QUOTE STARTS
Until 2002, when the United States (US) set up a military base in Djibouti to fight the war on terror, France, a former colonial power, had been the only foreign military presence in the country.
From the late 2000s until the late 2010s, Japan, Italy, and China also opened bases in the country in order to combat piracy (at least ostensibly). During this period, Djibouti’s geopolitical value skyrocketed, which it saw as an opportunity to negotiate with large powers while earning a stable income from their bases.
... India and Russia have also expressed their interest in establishing bases in the country.
In a region such as this, where competition around military bases and commercial port development is active, Djibouti is the only country that hosts five foreign military bases. After the establishment of a Chinese military base in 2017, it became a place where the world's superpowers’ rivalry spark fire, competing for better conditions for their military in Djibouti.
Iran only has its proxies in nearby Middle East countries and North Korea has nothing outside NK and is not really a military ally with Russia.
Iran has militant groups only in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza Strip and Yemen - it cna’t do force projection even with terrorists and it doesn’t attempt international terrorism at least nothing like the scale of the Taliban and ISIS. So Iran doesn’t have force projection.
North Korea has no foreign military bases overseas or on land
North Korea has no foreign military bases anywhere
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Why North Korea can't fight a global war
Almost no combat experience since 1953.
Its navy can only sail in rivers and coastal waters in calm seas.
Its boats are not built for the open sea and will do this route rarely or never.
North Korea's small navy
- can't even sail around South Korea from the port of Haeju Hang to the port of Wŏnsan
- has no foreign ports outside NK
This is NOT a country that even could fight a world war.
North Korea's nukes
- are only self protection
- can't win wars (as with all nukes)
Russia is
- not going to extend a nuclear umbrella over NK
- has no interest in NK's primitive and inefficient nukes or its ICBMs that likely barely work.
No country would ever fight a world war in the modern world as you can only lose (unlike the situation for WW2).
North Korea has never fought any country since its war with South Korea in 1950-3
Today, it is far weaker militarily than its neighbour South Korea.
There is no way North Korea ever deliberately starts a war with any other country.
Kim Jong Un’s posturing and threats are all for self defence like a small animal threatened puffing up its body and its spines.
Graphic from: File:The Puffer Fish.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
NATO’s vast superiority over Russia - F-35 fighter jets with radar cross-section of a supersonic potato - high altitude stealth Gray Eagle drone able to drop ATACMS and Tomahawk cruise missiles with range of 2,400 km - Ukraine gets none of these
Imagine how hard it would be to defend against supersonic potatoes? That is what the Russians would see in their radars if they were fighting a NATO country with F-35s
.
When you look for one of these F-35s on radar …
This is what you see: [large potato]
Russian radar operator (imagined): “What is that on the radar? A supersonic potato?”
Billie Flyn, F-35 test pilot on what it would do in Ukraine.
It would go in and kill every surface-to-air missile threat that was out there, and neutralize all the threats on the ground, and achieve air dominance because it would kill all the air-to-air assets also. Remember: we see them, they don’t see us. It’s like playing football, when one team’s invisible, and the other team is not….
Background photos: rightmost potato from: Potato var. Linda HC1 and F-35 at Edwards
This is Billie Flynn an F-35 test pilot interviewed by Aviation Today in April. He talks about how if F-35s were used in Ukraine, in a parallel world (not going to happen in this one) they would completely destroy all the Russian ground to air and air assets because they see the Russian assets before Russia can see their planes. They would quickly give Ukraine air dominance so it can attack Russia at will from the air with no opposition. That would end the war instantly, Russia would have no choice but to leave Ukraine.
F-35 would see all the enemy air-to-air threats and kill them all, plus completely neutralizing the surface-to-air missile threat to achieve air dominance. From that point, the forces can conduct their air-to-ground war. That’s what the F-35 was meant to do. So, in a parallel world, because we do not want to be dragged into the Ukraine, the F-35 would completely destroy the Russian forces
…
The F-35 is exceptionally capable at executing the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses mission set. It would go in and kill every surface-to-air missile threat that was out there, and neutralize all the threats on the ground, and achieve air dominance because it would kill all the air-to-air assets also. Remember: we see them, they don’t see us.
It’s like playing football, when one team’s invisible, and the other team is not with a gross advantage on behalf of the F-35. F-35 would see all the enemy air-to-air threats and kill them all, plus completely neutralizing the surface-to-air missile threat to achieve air dominance. From that point, the forces can conduct their air-to-ground war. That’s what the F-35 was meant to do. So, in a parallel world, because we do not want to be dragged into the Ukraine, the F-35 would completely destroy the Russian forces.. F-35: Capabilities, Missions, Kinematics, Role In Ukrainian Crisis And Beyond. Interview With Billie Flynn
The 4th generation F-35 has a radar cross section of 0.005 square meters or about 7 cm by 7 cm, 2.8 inches by 2.8 inches similar to a large potato. It's like trying to detect supersonic potatoes in flight. The Mig-29 has a cross section of 3 square meters so about the size of a normal door. The F-16c is between the two, 1.2, smaller than a door.
Figures from here: Radar Cross Section (RCS)
See also
Since 2022, Ukraine has been asking for the high altitude stealth Gray Eagle drone which can fly behind the front line and then deliver its “Hellfire” missiles from far too high for Russia to detect them.
But the US won’t send them. Again NATO would have those
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Ukraine has asked for the high altitude stealth Grey Eagle drone since 2022.
this could drop small precise missiles from an undetectable high alitude of 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) and fly for up to 36 hours, range of 370 km.
Any NATO country has these available from day 1.
Photo: MQ-1C Warrior (2005-08-11)
Details from: General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle
.jpg){kind=link}
Similarly they are not likely to send the veteran 1980s technology Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of over 2,400 kilometers and a payload like the ATACMS.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Range of the US tomahawk cruise missile with a half ton payload like the ATACMS, travels at nearly 1000 km / hour, range 2,400 km.
Proven ability to get through Russia's S-400 system
With the current state of Russian air defences, teh US could sink the entire Russian Black Sea fleet in a few hours but doesn't give this capability to ukraine.
Details of the missile here: Tomahawk (missile) - Wikipedia
Circle drawn with this free online map circle drawing tool Radius Around a Point on a Map
Russia seems unable even to stop modified microlight hobbyist aircraft loaded with explosives! This is about how Ukraine is using modified ultralights as long range attack drones. Ukraine appears to deploy modified A-22 ultralights as suicide UAVs
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: Russia's air defences are so degraded that Ukraine is able to fly ultralights through them without getting shot down.
Replace pilot by explosives and remote control, and you have a drone that can evade the Russian air defences and bomb a Russian oil refinery 1000s of kilometres from Ukraine.
Yet Russia claims FALSELY it can "escalate" and win a war against not just Ukraine but NATO as well. Just bluffs and bulls**t.
Graphic shows the File:Huntair.pathfinder.arp.jpg
Replace pilot and passenger by explosives and remote control and you have a drone that can evade the Russian air defences and head off and bomb a refinery deep in Russia.
Video showing some of the drones attacking oil refineries Ukraine’s AI-enabled drones are trying to disrupt Russia’s energy industry. So far, it’s working | CNN Business Bear in mind that to do this it has flown slowly at about the speed of a fast car over Russia for many hours and not been shot down by air defences or even fighter jets.
If Ukraine had the Tomahawk, given how vulnerable the Russian warships have been since it sunk the Moskkva, Ukraine could sink the Russian ships anywhere in the Black Sea.
Russia would no longer have a Black Sea fleet the day after Ukraine got the missiles. But the US would be too worried about giving Ukraine that capability.
But even more so none of its airfields or command centers or munitions depots or fuel depots or munitions factories would be safe from Ukarine right up to 2,400 km from the front line.
Zelensky in his victory plan asked the US to give them Tomahawk cruise missiles, which NATO countries have vast numbers of, not to use during the war but as a threat to Putin to bring him to the negotiation table. The US has refused this request because they are too powerful.
QUOTE STARTS
According to Zelensky, Ukraine requested the missiles on the condition that it would deploy them only if Russia refused to end its war and de-escalate.
"I said that this is a preventive method. I was told that it is an escalation," Zelensky said.
. Zelensky calls out White House over Tomahawk missiles leak — 'it was confidential'
So Ukraine won’t get these missiles. But if Russia was ever to fight against a NATO country, they will have to face vast numbers of Tomahawks, and so on from day 1, or as soon as they can get there. There would be no deliberation about whether or not they can be permitted to use them against Russians in Russian territory to prevent the invasion if Russia was attackign a a NATO country.
The Ukrainian war wOuld never have started. There’s a reason why Russia invaded Ukraine and not the far weaker Lithuania, LafTia or Estonia Because all of those are in NATO.
For more about NATO’s vast technological advantage over Russia see my:
This is why Admiral Radakin said that there is no way that Russia attacks NATO.
Admiral Radakin’s main point is that Russia is
more dangerous
but less effective
than they realized before the war started. By preparing in a strong way, they make it impossible for Putin to attack NATO.
See also my quote from General Radakin her
e
Text: The biggest reason that Putin doesn’t want a conflict with NATO is because Russia will lose. And lose quickly.
[Plus bullet points below]
These are some of his points from the speech - just reformatted as bullet-points and slightly rewritten to make it clearer, e.g. repeated the word NATO for clarity.
Any Russian assault or incursion against NATO would prompt an overwhelming response.
NATO can draw on 3.5 million uniformed personnel across the Alliance for reinforcement.
NATO’s combat air forces outnumber Russia’s 3 to 1 –
NATO would quickly establish air superiority.
NATO’s maritime forces would bottle up the Russian Navy in the Barents and the Baltic,
NATO has four times as many ships and three times as many submarines as Russia.
NATO has a
collective GDP twenty times greater than Russia.
total defence budget three-and-a-half times more than Russia AND China combined.
The biggest reason that Putin doesn’t want a conflict with NATO is because Russia will lose. And lose quickly
Putin expected to take between 3 days and 3 weeks.
to subjugate Ukraine’s population.
to take about two thirds of Ukraine’s territory.
to stop Ukraine joining NATO and the EU.
Putin failed in ALL these strategic objectives.
Its Air Force has failed to gain control of the air.
Its Navy has seen 25% of its vessels in the Black Sea sunk or damaged by a country without a Navy and Ukraine’s maritime trade is reaching back to pre-war levels.
Russia’s Army lost nearly 3,000 tanks, nearly 1500 artillery pieces and over 5,000 armoured fighting vehicles.
To pose a realistic threat to NATO’s Eastern flank within the next 2-5 years, Russia will need to
reconstitute her tanks and armoured vehicles,
rebuild her stocks of long-range missiles and artillery munitions and
extract itself from a protracted and difficult war in Ukraine.
[This doesn't mean Russia would attack. This is after the war is over and NATO would always be far stronger than Russia. He means back to how it was in 2022.]
I am not saying that Russia is not dangerous
But at the same time it is also significantly less capable than we anticipated following its disastrous illegal invasion into Ukraine.
And it faces an even stronger straitjacket with the introduction of Finland and Sweden into NATO.
Recent talk of a Britain that is undefended, and an Armed Forces chronically imperilled, is way off the mark.
There are always challenges in running a large organisation that conducts worldwide operations and is as sophisticated as our modern military.
These kinds of challenges apply to militaries everywhere. But
we have the finest people and some of the best equipment.
For longer extracts from his speech:
SHORT DEBUNK: Nothing even remotely resembling a world war situation in Ukraine now or in the future (under World War in the left panel if it doesn’t open to it)
The speech itself is here Chief of the Defence Chatham House Security and Defence Conference 2024 keynote speech
This is a graphic I did comparing Putin to a midget trying to attack a mammoth with soap bubbles:
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
NASA, huge and powerful but very timid
Russia knows it can't use nukes in reality
Russia tiny and weak, bluffs as meaningless as soap bubbles
Even the Soviet Union had no way to win a war with nukes
Imagine if your team was invisible - how easily you could win a game of football.
That is how much better NATO's F-35 jets are than anything Russia has.
300+ F-35s (USA), 100+ F-35s (Europe).
Russia's 5th generation fighter jet is not ready for war and may never be (expensive technology to develop).
NATO's technology is vastly superior (one of many ways)
NATO: Population 967 million
[it's 631 million leaving out USA]
Russia: Population 144 million
NATO: 3.5 million soldiers
Russia: 1.32 million soldiers
Ukraine: 900,000 soldiers
US defence spending $883.7 billion, 3% of GDP
NATO European allies $380 billion, 2% of GDP
Russia: $112 billion, 6% of GDP.
Ukraine: $43.23 billion, 22.1% of GDP
Based on this image created by Dall-E via Bing Chat Generated by Microsoft Copilot
American football photo from: US Navy 090608-N-3283P-018 The Yokosuka Seahawks face off against the Yokohama Harbors during the U.S. Forces Japan-American Football league at Yokosuka Field - Wikimedia Commons
Putin head from this graphic flipped Vladimir Putin (2017-01-17)
Details for the figures on the graphic, see: For Russia to attack NATO is like a midget attacking a mammoth with soap bubbles - it can't do it
Or it’s like an ant fighting a mammoth
NOT right to call a world war UNLIKELY - it is more accurate to call it BALONEY and IMPOSSIBLE
Countries that are strong don't go around the world trying to start a world war - that would be BONKERS.
This whole world war idea today is basically media stories, social media, bluffs, reasons for generals to ask for more money, never something any country would want to happen and many precautions to prevent mistakes.
That is why our regular debunkers keep saying over and over that it can't happen.
I don't think it is right myself to call it unlikely. Because that doesn't convey the true situation - where it is basically impossible because nobody wants it and there are so many precautions to prevent it.
It is like saying it is unlikely that if you throw a pack of cards into a gale and the cards fly all over the place that just by chance they would end up stacked as a perfect deck in new deck order On top of Nelson's hat 🙂 in Trafalgar square say.
It is not strictly speaking impossible, but it is so unlikely that you might as well call it impossible.
Because nobody wants it. Countries are veyr experienced at de-escalating. There is a lot of communication nowadays, and numerous precautions to prevent a mistake.
For all that to go wrong would be like that deck of cards reassembling in new deck order on the top of Nelson's hat.
And Putin definitely does NOT want a world war or any kind of war or minor scuffle even with NATO.
It is like when the US and UK were involved in invading Iraq. There was NO RISK TO THE UK OR THE US from that attack.
It is ALWAYS like that in the Middle East because there isn't any country there that could do anything to us. They simply don't have the capability.
We don't risk a world war AT ALL from ANYONE.
China doesn't have the ability to fight a world war, or Russia only NATO and NATO won't do it. This explains historically why China doesn't have bases around the world, or Russia, only NATO countries because of our previous empires of the UK, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain
So even if nobody had nukes as a deterrent and we only had conventional weapons, China couldn't fight a world war. Because it can't do force projection.
The Soviet Union could because it controlled so much of Europe even though it didn't have any global empire either, just small places like Cuba and some influence in Africa and the MIddle East. But Russia has lost that and it can no longer do force projection.
Nobody else can.
But NATO can.
The UK and US can, and to some extent France and to a lesser extent Spain and Portugal - NATO as whole certainly can.
Only NATO could fight a conventional world war like Germany did in WW2 and expect to win - but in the modern world NOBODY will really do this, because of the nukes
From that it is clear only NATO even could fight a world war conventionally.
The idea of Russia or China invading the UK or US makes utterly no sense.
There is no way that Russia or China could fight a world war like Germany did for WW2 and expect to win.
That is even without nukes, and nukes are only useful for defence to deter someone from attacking you.
The US, plus UK alone so vastly outmatch China or Russia in global reach.
We find in our Facebook group that it’s mainly the younger people get scared.
There was a genuine risk of a nuclear war. Hopefully it was very low but enough of a risk that we all felt we needed to know what to do in case it happened.
That is NOT the situation today as I hope by now my readers can see.
In the cold war, we prepared for how to survive a nuclear war because nukes are not nearly as powerful as most think
Those of around my age and older (aged 70) have already lived through the cold war - when we had those booklets telling us what to do if nukes fall on our city. We were all prepared and knew what to do if it happened.
That is so different from anything today.
I find that many scared people I talk to wonder why we prepared. They say “what’s the point, we’d all die anyway”. But that is NONSENSE.
Nukes are not nearly as powerful as many assume. Even in an attacked country, most of it would NOT be affected, there would still be hospitals, doctors, electricity, internet and so on. Local people would be first on the scene as first responders as soon as the radiation levels fall far enough to start rescue operations.
This shows what it would be like if IMPOSSIBLY Russia fired all its nukes at the USA. Note these are NOT likely targets. Rather it’s just an attempt by a researcher to show the maximum possible effect on the US civilian population if ALL Russia’s available nukes were dropped on the USA.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
No way Russia does this.
If Russia launched ALL its nukes it could make the areas on orange radioactive for a couple fo days, some lingering for weeks, worst over in hours.
Focus of largest humanitarian operation ever
Anyone indoors will be much safer and can leave their house after 2 days.
There is no fallout outside the orange areas - fallout is just heavy dust.
It’s impossible for Russia to win a war by using nukes like this.
So YES we would all be told if there was a real risk of nukes. Because those instructions could save millions of lives. But we are not, as I said in the intro, because the risk just isn’t there to need to prepare for it.
Our situation is vastly different from the Cold War when there was a potential for a nuclear war, especially with the Cuba crisis - with the Soviet Union having the ability for force projection overseas as far as Cuba right next to the USA
For others born even earlier, they lived through the Cuba crisis. This was a very scary time when the Soviet Union was planning to position nuclear missiles in Cuba right next to the USA. The USA discovered this plan and blockaded the fleet that was on its way to Cuba and the situation was very tense.
What the US didn’t know was that the Soviet Union had already positioned 158 nukes for short range missiles nd cruise missiles nukes in Cuba. If the US had gone ahead with their plan to invade Cuba, the Soviet Union would likely have used those, against the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo and at amphibious forces storming the Cuban beaches, and then the US would likely have responded with nukes, and that might have led to a wider nuclear conflict.
Here is a short summary of it:
Fifty years ago the world held its breath for a few weeks as the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war in response to the Soviet deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba.
The United States imposed a military blockade around Cuba to keep more Soviet weapons out and prepared to invade the island if necessary. As nuclear-armed warships sparred to enforce and challenge the blockade, a few good men made momentous efforts and decisions that prevented use of nuclear weapons and eventually defused the crisis.
What the Kennedy administration did not know, however, was that the Soviet Union had 158 nuclear warheads of five types already in Cuba by the time of the blockade. This included nearly 100 warheads for short-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. If the invasion had been launched, as the military recommended but the White House fortunately decided against, it would most likely have triggered Soviet use of those short-range nuclear weapons against the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo and at amphibious forces storming the Cuban beaches. That, in turn, would have triggered wider use of nuclear forces.
…
The Cuban Missile Crisis order of battle of useable weapons represented only a small portion of the total inventories of nuclear warheads the United States and Russia possessed at the time. Illustrating its enormous numerical nuclear superiority, the U.S. nuclear stockpile in 1962 included more than 25,500 warheads (mostly for battlefield weapons). The Soviet Union had about 3,350.
. Cuban Missile Crisis: Nuclear Order of Battle - Federation of American Scientists
The world had few ICBMs back then, the Soviet Union had 42 and the US had 182, most of the exchanges would have been nukes dropped from bombers and short or medium ranged missiles fired in Europe, if it had escalated (page 89 of this report)
. Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations
A nuke war could only happen by mistake - how one man may have prevented the Soviet sub launching a nuke by mistake in the Cuban missile crisis
Later we found out that it was actually even more tense than the Americans realized at the time. The Soviet Union had subs amongst the fleet approaching Cuba. In what seemed a minor incident at the time, the Americans stopped one of the Soviet submarines when it surfaced. What they didn’t know is that the nuclear sub was armed with one nuclear torpedo.
The Americans flew over just 20 to 30 meters above the sub, also used powerful searchlights blinding the captain so he couldn’t see easily what happened, they dropped depth charges around the submarine, and they fired 300 shells from automatic cannons - all of this just to get its attention to tell it to stop traveling to Cuba.
But the aggressive way they stopped the sub led its its captain, Valentin Savitsky to think it was under attack and that a war had started.
Savitsky was on his way down to order his crew to dive urgently and then fire its nuclear torpedo but was delayed because of the signaling officer and his equipment got in the way. Meanwhile Vasily Arkhipov spotted that the Americans were signalling to them and he was able to stop the dive and nuclear torpedo launch
.
At least that is the story according to what may be the closest we may get to a true account of what happened. That’s based on this report of previously unpublished material released from the National Security Archive in 2022.
QUOTE STARTS
Sixty years ago, on October 1, 1962, four Soviet Foxtrot-class diesel submarines, each of which carried one nuclear-armed torpedo, left their base in the Kola Bay, part of the massive Soviet deployment to Cuba that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis. An incident occurred on one of the submarines, B-59, when its captain, Valentin Savitsky, came close to using his nuclear torpedo. Although the Americans weren’t even aware of it at the time, it happened on the most dangerous day of the crisis, October 27.
The episode has since become a focus of public debate about the dangers of nuclear weapons and has inspired many sensationalist accounts.
According to Arkhipov’s report, when the submarine surfaced on the night of October 27 to charge its batteries, the commander, Savitsky, who went up to the conning tower with Arkhipov, was shocked and blinded by the unexpected actions of U.S. antisubmarine warfare ships and planes (described by Arkhipov as “overflights by planes just 20-30 meters above the submarine’s conning tower, use of powerful searchlights, fire from automatic cannons (over 300 shells), dropping depth charges, cutting in front of the submarine by destroyers at a dangerously [small] distance, targeting guns at the submarine, yelling from loudspeakers to stop engines.")
..
In an interview with Svetlana Savranskaya on July 12, 2012, Ketov said that Savitsky did indeed think that they were under attack and that the war with the United States had already started. Caught off guard by the aggressive U.S. actions, Savitsky panicked, calling for an “urgent dive” and the preparation of torpedo #1 (with the nuclear warhead), but he was unable to quickly descend the narrow stairway of the conning tower, which was temporarily blocked by the signaling officer and his equipment.
Arkhipov, who was still on the tower and saw that the Americans were actually signaling, not attacking, called the commander back and calmed him down. Savitsky’s command was never transmitted to the officer in charge of the torpedo, and the Soviet submarine signaled back to the Americans to cease all provocative actions. The situation was defused, and the next day, the B-59, with fully charged batteries, was able to submerge without warning and evade its pursuers.
If you search for details you are likely to come across those more sensationalist accounts that they mention. One is that the submarine was submerged and the Americans forced it to surface using depth charges (a rather unlikely scenario since the subs were impossible to detect at sea until they surfaced).
In this account, the three officers, beneath the sea and with no way to communicate with the Americans, decide between them whether to fire the nuclear torpedo or not with only Arkhipov voting against. The Wikipedia articles haven’t yet been updated to include this new information released in 2022, see: Soviet submarine B-59 - Wikipedia and Vasily Arkhipov - Wikipedia
It was a small ten kiloton torpedo which would have sunk one or several ships. I don’t think we can say it would definitely have led to an exchange as the Americans would have known exactly how and why it happened and likely immediately got on the phone to Kurshov and explained what happened. But it’s the closest we got to a nuclear exchange, and similarly if the US had invaded Cuba then there was a significant risk of a nuclear exchange.
Since those days in the 1962 we have had Glasnost and huge improvements in communication - there is no way such a mistake could happen today
Things are so different today - we have done a huge amount to improve dialogue and get to a safer world where things like that can’t happen any more.
We now have the Moscow Washington hotline, actually a secure computer system nowadays for the leaders to talk to each other in a crisis.
. Moscow–Washington hotline - Wikipedia
It dates back to the Cuban missile crisis.
We got Glasnost and the meetings between Reagen and Gobarchov. Gorbachov and Reagen had great chemistry and got on well together as you can see from the video here:
This led in to the agreements leading to a huge reduction in nuclear stockpiles and the end of the cold war
.
Then there was the breakup of the Soviet Union with many former Soviet Union countries becoming part of NATO itself and Russia a much diminished military power.
Also, we continue to establish deconfliction lines such as
A US Russia deconfliction line for the Ukraine war specifically set up soon after the war started US, Russia Agree to Deconfliction Hotline As Putin’s Attack On Ukraine Escalates similarly to their Syrian war deconfliction line.
We also have FAR MORE COMMUNICATION than back at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.
Gorbachov’s and Reagen’s joint statement in 1985 that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought - not an agreement - just countries stating the obvious as they have on many times since then
Gorbachov and Reagen in their joint statement from 1985 were first to say that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
The sides, having discussed key security issues, and conscious of the special responsibility of the USSR and the U.S. for maintaining peace, have agreed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Recognizing that any conflict between the USSR and the U.S. could have catastrophic consequences, they emphasized the importance of preventing any war between them, whether nuclear or conventional. They will not seek to achieve military superiority.
. Joint Soviet-United States Statement on the Summit Meeting in Geneva
That has been reaffirmed many times since then. This is not a treaty or mutual agreement or promise. It is simply countries stating the obvious that nobody can win a nuclear war. So they must never fight it.
It is just leaders showing that they are sane and not insane that’s all.
Try talking to your older relatives and friends who lived through the Cuban missile crisis - or through the cold war - if WW3 didn’t start then it won’t start now
Here is one of our group members talks about what his Grandad said, whose 83 and was alive during the formation of NATO and was a young boy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Here is his post shared with his permission:
Guys!
I spoke to my Grandad today about the threat of having a WW3 happening, he said not it will NEVER HAPPEN! He was alive during the formation of NATO, he was a young boy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and he says NOTHING happening today in the Middle East and Ukraine compare to what he lived through! He also mentioned so many wars he witnessed on the news in his 83 years of living that are much worse!
If WW3 hasn't started then, it won't start now, NATO is doing it's job, being a defensive organisation, and live your life as normal!
So - if you are scared of a world war - try talking to any of your relatives or friends who may be of my generation or his generation and you may get a better perspective on it all.
We aren't in the situation of WW2 and our nukes mean nobody can win a war
Neither the Soviet Union or NATO ever had first strike capability. And so nukes are only used as a deterrent and can't win wars.
It's just quite strange to see NATO so timid of Russia given how vastly more powerful it is.
NATO should be the ones bluffing about nukes and Putin the one who is too timid to do anything if it was based on their actual strength
Rather than just psychology games.
[by lose quickly, Admiral Radakin means pushed right out of NATO territory, and any missile systems firing at NATO destroyed - NATO wouldn't try to defeat Russia as it is purely defensive]
Russia is never going to use as much as a single tactical nuke in Ukraine. Nukes are far less destructive than most people realize, especially tactical nukes.
A small sub kiloton tactical nuke COULD hit only a military target with minimal or no effects on civilians.
Drop it at one end of a military runway and civilians would survive at the other end if they know what to do if fallout goes their way.
However Putin will NEVER do this because
China and India would immediately have to condemn it
NATO likely sinks his Black Sea fleet with precise conventional cruise missiles (told Putin what they'd do)
Then longer term Russia
may even lose UN security council seat which rather humiliatingly for Russia would likely be transferred to Ukraine - Ukraine is the obvious inheritor of the Soviet Union seat if Russia loses it due to no longer upholding UN values
many other consequences
Summary graphic
:
A small sub kiloton tactical nuke COULD hit only a military target with minimal or no effects on civilians.
Drop it at one end of a military runway and civilians would survive at the other end if they know what to do if fallout goes their way.
However Putin will NEVER do this because
- China and India would immediately have to condemn it
- NATO likely sinks his Black Sea fleet (told Putin what they'd do)
- may even lose UN Security Council seat
- many other consequences
- he can achieve the same effects with multiple conventional bombs fired at the same target as with advances in Donbas.
Main issue: a small tactical nuke that doesn’t harm any civilians still breaks the partial test ban treaty.
No world war
What a tactical nuke would look like from the height of a passenger jet (simulates a 1 kiloton nuke detonated in Hostomel airport near Kyiv)
View from 12 km - it rises to above the tops of cumulus clouds but below the middle level altocumulus
Can survive in the open at the other end of the runway here
- with not much radiation sickness so long as you avoid the fallout dust.
Depending on wind direction, some fallout could reach Kyiv along a narrow plume - people who stay indoors would be safe
Why Putin will NOT do this
Putin loses remaining support from China and India
NATO likely uses conventional cruise missiles to sink the Black Sea fleet (Putin knows what they would do, details secret)
Background image: 3D model of one kiloton mushroom cloud generated with nuke-map here: NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein and then superimposed on Google Earth
(nuke_hostomel2.png)
See also
BLOG: No way Russia uses even a very small tactical nuke against Ukraine and no risk of it attacking NATO
Also he would achieve nothing of value
he can achieve the same effects with multiple conventional bombs fired at the same target as with advances in Donbas.
a nuke would freak out Russian soldiers who are not trained to protect themselves from fallout and freak out the Russian public too.
Even Putin never considered carpet bombing in the Ukraine war as with Dresden in WW2
The world no longer has the carpet bombing and indiscriminate killing of civilians of e.g. the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of the Korean war, and some missions in the Vietnam war. This changed after the Vietnam war, with Protocol I of the Geneva convention from 1977 making carpet bombing a war crime.
In the US it is just impossible because it would be a major war crime.
There is some discussion amongst lawyers about whether it is legal to respond with nukes that target cities if your cities have been targeted first.
It is definitely illegal to target a city if yours haven’t been. The International Red Cross outlines three scenarios where it might be legal to use nukes under International Humanitarian law.
Note, all three are violations of the partial test ban treaty, which all the nuclear poers have signed, which only permits nuclear tests underground. It doesn’t distinguish between tests and use in warfare.
a submarine in deep sea. The sea has a fair bit of background harmless natural radioactivity and deep sea tests were legal before the partial test ban treaty, so it is likely legal under international humanitarian law to use a nuke to target a sub.
a large concentration of soldiers in a desert or otherwise far from civilians - this may be legal but compared to the alternative of conventional attacks then nukes add radiation sickness, and increasing cancer risk for the rest of their life so it is gray area and may not be legal.
as reprisal in response to a previous breach of humanitarian law targeting your own cities. On this they say “it is a huge challenge to envisage circumstances where use of nuclear weapons against civilians could hope to meet the stringent requirements of a lawful reprisal in practice.”
For details see:
. Nuclear Weapons Under International Law: An Overview
We see though the US retains “strategic ambiguity” about whether it would use nukes first, in reality it’s almost inconceivable to think of a situation where it would make sense to do so. It could use one in that submarine scenario except that it would be breaking the partial test ban treaty with rather limited effects compared to the major political consequences of breaking the treaty.
This of course applies to Russia too. Putin does carry out war crimes, most agree. But to use a nuke against a city would be a major war crime that it would be impossible to hide from the Russian people.
The world has moved beyond the fire bombings of cities such as Dresden in WW2 and other such events in Japan and in North Korea in the Korean war and in Vietnam. Early in the Ukrainian war Kharkiv was one of the key cities for Russia. If they could have captured it, then they would have been in control of all the railway lines and transport to the rest of Kharkiv oblast and beyond.
Putin also early on had the ability to fly bombers over Kharkiv city. He could have conducted a second Dresden against Kharkiv and started a firestorm. He did not. He never did that for Mariupol, Izium or Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka or any of the small cities he took over. So there are limits to what he sees as acceptable. Again the Russian people in the modern world would have been outraged and it would have been an impossible to deny war crime.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
This isn't the aftermath of a nuclear attack
This is the aftermath of the firebombing on Dresden by the allies in WW2.
International humanitarian law has moved on since then.
To do a fire bombing like that in the modern world is illegal.
Though Putin conducted many war crimes in Ukraine he never did anything resembling this.
He could have destroyed Kharkiv city, Mariupol, Izium, Severodonetsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka etc in a few hours in this way.
But that would be a war crime he couldn't hide from the Russian people. Whether his personal ethics would permit it or not, for sure he is not going to do this.
He won't use a nuke against cities for the same reason.
Photo: The ruins of Dresden in 1945. Facing south from the town hall (“Rathaus”) tower. Statue „Güte“ (“Good” or “Kindness”) by August Schreitmüller, 1908–1910.
- a very famous photograph of the ruins of Dresden
I thought Boris Johnson when he was prime minister of the UK put it rather well when he explained why Putin is NOT going to use a nuke in Ukraine, despite his many bluffs:
Text on graphic: Q. Asked if Putin would use a tactical nuke.
Boris Johnson’s view: Not a realistic possibility of nukesBoris Johnson says that if Putin uses a nuke:
- “He would immediately tender Russia's resignation from the club of civilized Nations."
- "It would be a total disaster for his country."
- "Russia would be put into a kind of cryogenic economic freeze"
- "There's a lot of of willingness to give Putin the benefit of the doubt. That will go the minute he does anything like that [if he uses a nuke]."
- "And above all in his own country I think he would trigger an absolutely hysterical reaction".
"So I don't think that is a realistic possibility [for Putin to use nukes]."Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of UK during first few months of Ukraine invasion
Screenshot from: .Exclusive with Boris Johnson on the Ukraine conflict (4:51)
See:
Russia would immediately become a rogue nation if it so much as tested one nuke in an airburst in some remote part of Russia
The real situation is if Russia so much as tested a single nuke in an air burst in some remote part of Russia it would
Break the partial test ban treaty
Make Russia more of a rogue nation than North Korea which at least tested all its nukes underground and has not broken the partial test ban treaty.
Encourage other countries like North Korea to do air burst nuclear tests too which surely Russia doesn't want.
China and India would HAVE to immediately condemn Russia for doing this and likely impose sanctions and break off most of their relations with Russia since they are very opposed to nuclear weapon proliferation.
Surely Russia's position on the UN Security Council would be questioned,
Humiliatingly for Russia, the only real alternative to Russia as the inherit for of the Soviet Union title as permanent member of the council is Ukraine. There would be likely a lot of pressure to replace Russia by Ukraine as a permanent member. If China and India agreed there is a procedure by which it can be done against Russia's objections.
Allies surely immediately give Ukraine everything it wants and the permissions it needs to defend itself
There is no way a nuke could be hidden from the Russian population so they would all know what Russia did.
If Russia used even a small tactical nuke in Ukraine the US would respond - probably by using conventional missiles to sink the Black Sea Fleet - whatever the response, Putin already knows as he US told him what it would do secretly
The US WILL respond. Jack Sullivan said this in 2022, they have communicated directly privately to Putin. This would be effective and non-nuclear and cause far more damage to Putin's army / navy than any tactical nuke could do.
In more detail on the last point: for a short time in the fall of 2022 the CIA assessed that there might be a risk of Putin using a small tactical nuke in Ukraine. Biden then instructed Bill Burns, director of the CIA to talk to one of his counterparts in the Kremlin, Sergei Nerishki and tell him exactly what would happen if Russia used a tactical nuke.
The CIA presumably concluded that there was no longer a risk after that since
Bill Burns just said
"There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of tactical nuclear weapons". "A moment" suggests they resolved it and there is no longer a risk.
So whatever they said they'd do they assessed that this would stop Putin from using a nuke.
We can get some idea of what Bill Burns said to Sergei Nerishki from retired General Petraeus, former US general, but not privy to the conversations.
General Petraeus suggested that Biden likely told Putin (through these spies) that
if he uses just one tactical nuke in Ukraine,
the US would hit targets in occupied Ukraine and the Black Sea [with conventional missiles]
He didn't give an example but with its Tomahawk cruise missiles the US can likely sink the entire Black Sea fleet from as far away as fired from a sub in the Med.
We know Russia has almost zero air defences now for its Black Sea fleet. The US supplied ATACMS and the UK / France supplied stormshadows go straight through the Russian air defences.
Ukraine is only supplied with 300 km range missiles and only has permission to hit Crimea, but the Russian Black Sea fleet as a result are no longer able to stay around Crimea.
The US Tomahawk cruise missiles can be fired from subs or fighter jets. With a range of 2,400 km they can reach anywhere in the Black Sea if fired from e.g. a submarine in the Mediterranean.
Given how vulnerable Russia’s fleet is to the missiles Ukraine already has, the whole of the Black Sea would become unviable for them, the very day the US does this, or perhaps alternatively gives the tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.
For more details on all this see my:
A US president can’t start a nuclear war in peacetime - a president only orders a general - and as it is against all four of the main principles of the law of armed conduct - a general would HAVE to refuse the order
So far we looked mainly at potential enemies of NATO. But what about NATO itself, could it start a nuclear war?
As before, anyone who deliberately started a nuclear war has lost their capability for coherent rational thought. But - what happens if a president does start hallucinating, or otherwise loses their ability for coherent thought?
A president has no literal button. He or she has to order a general. The general will be very well versed in the law of armed conduct and what's more will have a team of lawyers to assist him.
Trump is not a hawk anyway - he uses bluffing words but he didn't start any wars. And Harris isn’t a hawk either. The Biden administration has been accused of being too timid if anything and though the decisions were by Biden, Harris has shown no hawk-like tendencies either during his first term.
Let’s look at what would happen if a future president gave this order, NOT TRUMP OR HARRIS. Here is a simplified version of such a conversation.
President: Drop a nuke on Russia
General: What is your justification
President: Just because I told you to do it.
General: Sorry this is not one of the scenarios worked out for legality according to the law of armed conduct. Please let me consult with my lawyer
Lawyer: No this is not legal.
General: Sorry I am advised that this is not a legal order under the law of armed conduct. I can’t follow this order. Please check with your lawyers.
That then is kicked down to Congress if the president insisted, and nobody would vote for it and that would be the end of the story - and most likely the president is quickly impeached as not suitable to run the country.
Retired general Kehler testified to the Senate about how a general always has access to military legal advisors who would listen in on important conversations with the president to advise him on the legality of anything the president ordered him to do.
A general who got that order would be obligated to remind the president of the 4 Basic Principles of the Law of Armed Conflict, on the remote chance he or she receives such an order.
Video: Online training in the law of armed conduct
It is against all four principles of the law of armed conduct (which summarizes the complex international law).
(1) Distinction – to distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and direct operations only against military objectives.”
(2) Proportionality – Loss of life and damage to property incidental to attacks must not be excessive in relation to the military advantage
(3) Military Necessity – “…[E]very injury done to the enemy, even though permitted by the rules, is excusable only so far as it is absolutely necessary; everything beyond that is criminal.”
(4) Unnecessary Suffering – “It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and materials and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”
. Online training on the Law of Armed Conflict for non-State actors
(slightly shortened the first two)
For details see:
Also he couldn't replace generals by others that would agree to the order. He actually gives the order to a command center not a single general. They all listen in.
QUOTE The order given, probably by phone, from the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) in the basement of the White House or any other location would reach the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon (National Military Command Center, NMCC)22 or, failing that, the National Airborne Operations Center, an E-4B aircraft that functions as an alternate NMCC
I cover the process in:
BLOG: Trump or any other president can’t launch a nuke even if he were to go mad
Also, some worry that a president could choose someone to be a general who would just ignore the law of armed conduct. But the president doesn't get to select who becomes a general. He can select which of the already existing generals he chooses as a four star general - which then has to be approved by the Senate.
It is NOT possible for a president select an unqualified person not chosen by the military as a general and appoint him as a general.
Any fully qualified general who gets to that point will be very well versed in the law of armed conduct. He would have legal advisors too - any general does - and absolutely would refuse such an order.
A military officer’s oath isn't to Trump. They don't take a new oath with each president that's inaugurated. Their oath is to defend and protect the US Constitution.
QUOTE "I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
As general Milley put it
QUOTE STARTS
We don't take an oath to a country. We don't take an oath to a tribe. We don't take an oath to a religion. We don't take an oath to a King or a Queen or to a tyrant or a dictator and we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don't take an oath to an individual.
We take an oath to the constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America and we're willing to die to protect it.
Every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, guardsmen and coastguardsmen, each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price. And we are not easily intimidated.
Speech starts at 1:21:00 here, the quote starts at 1:35:20 [ U.S. Constitution at Center of Military Transfer of Responsibility Ceremony]
That is not just the generals. Every officer, every soldier. When they signed up as a soldier then they took this oath to protect the US constitution and they are willing to die to protect it.
For the actual process including the nuclear football etc see:
BLOG: Trump or any other president can’t launch a nuke even if he were to go mad
NOT in the world of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)
Then the US has likely moved beyond even response to nukes with nukes. This is a change it made under Trump which continued under Biden.
We are NOT in the world of Mutual Assured Destruction. Never were if that means destroying each other’s ability to fight a conventional war. Also never in anything remotely like the movie version of M.A..D of a world without civilization and without emergency responders. As with any disaster there would be emergency responders show up in minutes to hours and they would be able to do alot immediately in areas not within the radiation plumes and go into the plumes within a hours to a day or two
If Putin used nukes against NATO, he has nothing like enough nukes to stop NATO from fighting back. Never had in the Cold War either when NATO and the Soviet Union were near equals in technology. But Russia is a much weaker economy than the Soviet Union and it also has the problems of corruption siphoning a fair bit of its defence funding away into the pockets of Putin’s oligarch friends.
We found from the Ukraine war to most people’s surprise that NATO’s technology from the 1980s is still vastly superior to what Russia has. If Russia had anything like NATO’s capability it wouldn’t be stuck moving one mile a week in Eastern Donbas but would have got control of the entire Ukrainian air space on day 1 of the war.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Geneva Protocol II from 1977
Must NOT target
- civilian populations
- civilian objects
- cultural objects
Ratified by all NATO countries except USA
USA in practice complies without ratifying.
US had Soviet cities as targets in 1956
- long before Geneva Protocol II
Never any possibility of toal destruction just of large numbers of casualties
- nukes can't destroy a country
- neither NATO nor the Soviet Union ever had anything like enough nukes to destroy the other side to the extent they can't fight.
This is IMPORTANT as it means PUTIN CAN'T DEFEAT NATO WITH NUKES No country ever had first strike capability.
The conventional NATO military would remain and be far superior to Russia after any exchange of nukes.
Putin would LOSE if he used nukes.
Nukes ONLY WORK AS A DETERRENT to prevent another country invading by threatening to use nukes if they do.
Under Trump and Biden, the US no longer will respond to nukes with nukes.
It more sensibly responds by using sleeper agents, conventional weapons, hacking, special ops etc to stop Russia firing more nukes.
USA and Russia do NOT have a M.A.D. doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction)
Likely NEVER had such a doctrine though te 1950s doctrine had some similarities.
Today the USA would more rationally act to prevent Putin launching more nukes and Russia would LOSE, he couldn't stop NATO taking over Russian airspace.
Back in 1956 the target list for the US did include major Soviet cities.
But it still couldn’t have destroyed the capabilities of the Soviet Union to fight back.
Nukes are not nearly as powerful as most people think and there was NEVER any possibility even at the height of the cold war of the USA destroying the Soviet Union or the Soviet Uniondestroying the USA to the extent that conventional fighting would stop.
The USA was far more evenly matched with the Soviet Union. But now with the huge technological gap between Russia and NATO - no matter what happened in a nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia, the USA conventional forces would remain vastly superior to the Russian conventional forces and would quickly take over Russian air space.
Indeed under Trump's first term and under Biden, the previous policy was changed to one that is far more flexible with the focus now on non nuclear responses to a nuke.
More sensibly and rationally the USA would respond to a Russian nuke by making sure Russia can't fire any more nukes at the USA. This is US policy but presumably NATO policy is similar.
Although the details are top secret, I very much doubt their ICBM silos are protected much against conventional missiles now. And the F-35 fighter jet is so stealthy that the Iranians simply didn't see them with their Russian S-300 systems. In that Israeli raid the F-35s destroyed ALL three of Iran's S-300s with the greatest of ease.
Never saw them coming.
From Ukraine’s successes in targeting the S-500 in Ukraine, it's pretty clear that even the Russian S-500 couldn't see them either. It is a big challenge to spot a supersonic baked potato and figure out that it is an F-35 fighter jet and then try to hit it.
Russia's Su-57 is nowhere near as stealthy.
This is a change that started under Trump and continued under Biden. It makes it less likely for the US to need to resort to nukes itself. Because it would respond with its very precise conventional missiles and non conventional non nuclear methods like sabotage, hacking etc instead.
This is about Biden's nuclear posture review:
QUOTE STARTS
Although the integration of nuclear and conventional capabilities into strategic deterrence planning has been underway for years, the NPR seeks to deepen it further. It “underscores the linkage between the conventional and nuclear elements of collective deterrence and defense” and adopts “an integrated deterrence approach that works to leverage nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities to tailor deterrence under specific circumstances.”
This is not only intended to make deterrence more flexible and less nuclear focused when possible, but it also continues the strategy outlined in the 2010 NPR and 2013 Nuclear Employment Guidance to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons by relying more on new conventional capabilities.
Beyond force structure issues, this effort also appears to be a way to “raise the nuclear threshold” by reducing reliance on nuclear weapons but still endure in regional scenarios where an adversary escalates to limited nuclear use. In contrast, the 2018 NPR sought low-yield non-strategic “nuclear supplements” for such a scenario, and specifically named a Russian so-called “escalate-to-deescalate” scenario as a potentially possibility for nuclear use.
As to when it happened, Hans Kristensen did a "freedom of information request" and he got information that this was a change in the US operational plans that happened in 2019 under Trump.
This change is designed to reduce the risk of nuclear war by giving the USA more flexible options if they are attacked.
If the USA is attacked even with a small nuclear weapon then they won't retaliate with a massive attack of nukes on Russia. Instead they will disperse their bombers and submarines so they retain the capability to retaliate and they will use other methods to stop Russia's attacks - to absorb any first strike and ride it out and to use other methods to disrupt Russian attacks
These include using their long-range conventional missiles. The title sadly is clickbait [gives false impression of what the article is about] but the article is good. I won’t give the title here to avoid triggering scared people.
The addition of credible "strategic shooters" that are conventional rather than nuclear, Kristensen says, "is the most single dramatic development since the Gulf War" in 1991.
The premier conventional strike weapon in this category is the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, which can stealthily travel over 700 miles (or in its "extreme" range model, up to 1,200 miles) and can destroy almost any unhardened target.
Hans Kristensen retweeted this article so, though News Week is not always the most reliable of sources, he clearly agrees with what News Week reported him as saying:
There is a new nuclear war plan, previously unknown. For the first time, the war plan fully incorporates non-nuclear weapons as an equal player.
A former STRATCOM planner told Newsweek that this involves
"more credible interception of Russian bombers and missiles, destruction or negation of Russian satellites, electronic warfare against Russian navigation systems, disruption of Russian command circuits and electrical power, even special operations to kill or capture Russian civilian and military leaders ”
There is a distinction here between tactical nukes and strategic nukes. We’ll come to that later in this blog post. A tactical nuke is one that is used in a battle against the military. A strategic one is one used as a deterrent never to be used.
This unnamed strategic planner goes on to say that though he doesn’t want to go back to M.A.D. that he has concerns about whether a conventional response is enough of a deterrent for Russia to deter a small-scale attack with tactical nukes, which is the reason for the clickbait title. He wants the plans to be reviewed to see if they need any tweaking to deal with those concerns.
For more on that see the section on tactical nukes below.
The US is the main provider of the nuclear deterrent for NATO. The UK also contributes as does France though France's nukes are to some extent independent of NATO. .
Though NATO as a whole hasn't made a statement as far as I know, the same calculations would apply - that it no longer makes sense in the modern world to respond to a nuke with nukes when there are so many other precise ways to respond - the rational objective and response to a nuclear strike is to stop Russia from launching any more nukes not retaliation.
NATO still has its nukes including the nukes on subs as a deterrent to be used if the conventional response isn't enough to stop the Russians. But it is pretty obvious it would be in the case of Russia.
So, in short, if Russia attacked the US, the US would more rationally have the objective to stop Russia firing any more nukes at the US rather than to attack Russian cities in return to try to stop them that way. It would use conventional and non conventional non nuclear methods to prevent any more attacks. These could include hacking, special operations on the ground, and sleeper agents (Russians that obey orders normally but can be activated with a command from the USA to act against Russia). As for the precision strikes, as we’ll see later, then the Russian air space would be open to US radar invisible figher jets and long range precision missiles with little it could do so the US could do a lot to prevent Russia launching nukes with precision strikes alone.
The USA was far more evenly matched with the Soviet Union. But now with the huge technological gap between Russia and NATO - no matter what happened in a nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia, the USA conventional forces would remain vastly superior to the Russian conventional forces and would quickly take over Russian air space.
This is far less scary for easily scared people. Because you can see that Putin would just LOSE if he initiated a nuclear war. What's more it would be one -sided. Putin would fire some nukes and wouldn't be able to hide it from his people - and then the Russian air space would be taken over by NATO most likely. Of course I have no idea of what the secret plans are. But with the stealth F-35s NATO does have the capability to take over Russian air space and I'd be surprised if that doesn't happen early on in their plans.
Russia’s nukes are a deterrent for as long as it does NOT use them. If it does use them then they are no longer a deterrent. It then becomes the objective of other countries including all NATO countries to make sure it doesn’t use them ever again. So that is another incentive for Putin to never use nukes.
Not only NATO. Also China and India would both also HAVE to stop supporting Russia if it used nukes. It wouldn’t just become a rogue nation shunned by everyone. It would be the objective of almost the entire world to find a way to prevent Russia from ever using nukes again. So it would lose its deterrent.
China and India both warned Russia in no uncertain terms that it shouldn’t use nukes. And China and Russia reaffirmed their rational conclusion that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought (see below).
Some of the measures taken to prevent a world war 3 - UN is new, the Geneva conventions, deconfliction lines, International Court of Justice …
Many get the impression MISTAKENLY that the longer you have without a world war the more likely it gets. The opposite. If all the information you have is the number of years without a world war, the more years you have without one, the less likely.
But it is far more safe than that because we have given a huge amount of attention to it.
There are numerous measures taken to prevent a world war. At the time of WW2 we didn't even have the United Nations. The UN was SET UP TO PREVENT A WORLD WAR
QUOTE As World War II was about to end in 1945, nations were in ruins, and the world wanted peace. Representatives of 50 countries gathered at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, California from 25 April to 26 June 1945. For the next two months, they proceeded to draft and then sign the UN Charter, which created a new international organization, the United Nations, which, it was hoped, would prevent another world war like the one they had just lived through. . History of the United Nations | United Nations
There was an earlier attempt between WW1 and WW2, the League of Nations the first attempt at something like this, but the US never joined it and several countries left it.
We have
Then there are
treaties
deconfliction lines.
Many people think nukes themselves prevented a world war by functioning as a deterrent.
The many measures to make sure that humans are in the loop at all times for nukes, to prevent any possibility of an accidental use.
There's NATO. That was created in 1949 and it provided collective security, which Europe never had before.
. Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations
All these many meetings we have, different groups, the UN Security council, the NATO countries working together what to do etc. None of that existed before WW2.
Then countries are far more dependent on each other than back then. Just the disruption of the grain exports through the Black Sea caused problems globally even though we never had any shortage of grain globally.
We are far more secure. People are healthier, live longer. We have much more communication globally than anyone could even have imagined was possible back then. What we are doing now, typing into computers and someone the far side of the world reads it almost instantly - that would have seemed a fantasy back then. That helps us be much more aware of what is going on in the world.
There is no need to EVER have another war.
Only US, France and the UK even have global force projection to fight any country globally as we’ll see. China and Russia don’t have that capability. The former Soviet Union did, but not Russia.
But nobody could think it could win such a war.
Moving in the opposite direction of world war and indeed of warfare altogether
Indeed the movement is in the opposite direction. Here are some charges from OurWorldInData.
Far more countries are in peaceful relationships with each other and far fewer are in hostile relations than during the Cold War from the 1950s to the 1980s.
1 in 5 of all pairs of countries enjoy a warm peace with each other with war unthinkable. Only a few percent of pairs of countries experience rivalry.
For the graphic on “Our World in Data” see: Relationships between countries have become more peaceful
Hans Blix - "A farewell to wars" - headed not only to a world without world wars, but a world without wars at all as we get more civilized
Hans Blix is a former nuclear weapons inspector, former head of the IAEA and chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. He says we are headed to a world without wars. This is written after the Ukraine war.
. How Hans Blix fits Gaza and Ukraine into 'A Farewell to Wars'
The introduction of his book puts it more simply:
QUOTE Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 may well prove to be the last-ever war for territorial gain. This book discusses uses of force between states since the end of World War II and suggests – and the title of the book asserts – that ‘wars’ in the traditional sense comprising the seizing of land and the changing of borders by force are on the way out. It further argues that there is a trend to shroud, downplay or eliminate the element of physical force in interventions that are still undertaken. Hard-ball competition between states is increasingly played through economic and financial pressures rather than through kinetic force.
Blix, Hans. A Farewell to Wars: The Growing Restraints on the Interstate Use of Force (p. 1). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
QUOTE STARTS
A Farewell to Wars
The net result of the many factors discussed is a reduction of the risk for interstate uses of force. It seems justified to conclude that – rare cases excepted – the states of the international community have said farewell to direct interstate wars and are in the process of taking farewell to the use of force in interventions. In their continued competition they are turning to other means of exerting pressure and influence.
It ends talking about the role of the public mind - which previously ended the slave trade - to eventually end war altogether.
QUOTE STARTS
Role of the Public Mind to Strengthen the Restraints on the Interstate Use of Force?
This study has sought to establish what is the role and what are the trends of interstate use of force in today’s world – not to look for ways of increasing restraints through reforms of the UN or otherwise, a subject on which there is a vast amount of knowledgeable analysis and proposals.
Nevertheless, after the speculations about the future action of governments, it needs to be said that the public mind will continue to be of the greatest importance for what forms of competition between states will be accepted and practiced by the international community. It has been behind the positive changes in state conduct for nearly two hundred years.
It helped to abolish the slave trade, and it waged successful public campaigns against particularly cruel and indiscriminate weapons and in favour of arbitration and other peaceful means of settling disputes. It was the force that after WWI stood behind President Wilson’s introduction in the League Covenant of the first legal ban on the use of force between states.
That public mind, globally better connected than ever before, can and should now assert itself to demand diplomacy, disarmament and détente and the use of released resources to help defend and preserve an environment and develop an order that will sustain human civilization.
There are many Russians who have been against the war since it started. There isn't much we can do as individuals to end the war. But we can build bridges and prepare for the future and support each other.
At some point this war will end in some form of a peace treaty - and it's not yet clear how it ends but it is not too soon to start building bridges towards that future.
Things we can do to help build bridges
We can share stories on such topics as
Progress of peace negotiations or humanitarian corridors
Mutual appreciation of Russian and Ukrainian culture
Russians who are protesting inside and outside Russia
Stories of kindness on both sides
Support those who have lost people close to them on either side in this war
Share Russian and Ukrainian culture
Russian and Ukrainian art, music, fiction, poetry etc
Our own art, music, fiction, poetry etc in spirit of reconciliation
Kind and peaceful moments in the war
Humanitarian operations related to the war e.g. by the WHO.
Things that may not be so helpful for bridge building
minute details of the progress of the war, which villages or cities have been captured, which munitions dumps or military targets destroyed
glorification of war, talk about the bravery of soldiers on either side
for war crimes, anything more than the process of bringing war criminals to justice, in judicial systems suspects are treated as innocent until proven guilty, and even when the crimes may be very well attested beyond doubt, still they need their day in court
Some Russians want to change their national flag to a new flag, the Flag of the Wonderful Russia of the Futur
“White color symbolizes peace, purity, prudence, and azure (blue) is for truth and justice.”
…
QUOTE
Why do we need a new flag?
The white-blue-red flag that is currently used by the government of the Russian Federation has become a symbol of blood, war and aggression. We, the citizens of Russia, who do not support the authoritarian regime and the military, cannot use it. We need a symbol that unites Russians who are against political repression, censorship, war and the violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.
We stand under the flag of a peaceful and free Russia in order to express our anti-war position and show up under a common banner. We also support Russians within our country who cannot participate in protests without risking income, peace, freedom, health and life.
Why exactly white-blue-white (white-azure-white)?
Despite everything, we are Russians who cannot give up self-identification. The flag of free Russia is similar to the current Russian flag, but it does not have red, a symbol of war and blood. We have replaced the bloody stripe with a white one, because we stand for peace with Ukraine and demand respect for human rights in our country. Russians who come out to protest under the flag of free Russia are refusing military expansion and rejecting claims on the territory of foreign states. In the Russia of the future, there is no place for autocracy, militarism, or the cult of violence and blood. We are opening a new page in the history of Russia, Russia that respects human rights and freedom of speech.
Often, not only the red stripe on the flag of modern Russia is replaced with white, but also the blue one with azure. The azure stripe could be seen on the flag of Russia from 1991 to 1993 until it was replaced with a vigorous blue. The early nineties were an unstable economic and political period in the history of our country, but it was then that Russians believed that our country had embarked on the path of democracy. Azure color is a symbol of hope and faith in the future.
White color symbolizes peace, purity, prudence, and azure (blue) is for truth and justice.
The white-blue-white flag is similar to the symbolics of Veliky Novgorod. One of the oldest cities in Russia was the center of the Novgorod Republic, the only proto-democratic state formation in the history of our country. The Novgorod Republic did not have a flag in the modern sense of the word, so we borrow colors from the flag of Veliky Novgorod.
. Flag of the Wonderful Russia of the Future — whitebluewhite.info
Some Russians use this as a symbol of where Russia can go in the future.
Others who want to end the war and rebuild a new peaceful law abiding Russia think they should continue with the Russian flag, as used, for instance as a basis for the flags of Slovakia and Slovenia.
Others want to return to the use of the paler azure in place of the darker blue. That’s because it is associated in their minds with the period of Glasnost where for a while Russia seemed to be on the path to a true liberal democracy valuing peace and freedom.
See my:
There’s a difference here between the Russian government and the Russian people. There are many Russian people who are strongly opposed to the war. Like Marina Ovsyannikova who held this sign up during a Russian TV program.
Or the tennis player Andrey Rublev
See : Andrey Rublev, Russian Tennis Player, Writes 'No War Please' After Winning Semi-Final Match
Meanwhile most of us are at peace - most of the world is at peace - even most of ukraine is at peace and people are naturally kind - war crimes are such news because kindness is natural to us
It is awful that this war continues. But the positive side is that if Russia loses conclusively like that they are not likely to try anything like this again any time soon. Their army is so depleted it will take a lot to get back - years of resupply and training and new soldiers to get back to the levels they had at the start of the war. So this can hopefully help to move to a safer world. And send a signal to the rest of the world that a war based on brutality and war crimes doesn't work.
Hopefully this will have an effect in the other direction on other war crimes in other parts of the world.
But meanwhile - most of us are at peace. The bombs are only falling in Ukraine and also only in parts of Ukraine mainly East and South East apart from a few explosions in the rest of Ukraine. If you live in Kyiv or Lviv or Odesa your risk of death from a Russian missile is likely far less than the risk of dying of a traffic accident. As with traffic then you take basic precautions like respond to air raid sirens and then continue your life.
For mental health of mind it is good to focus on how most of us are at peace and most people are kind and that even in the war in Ukraine most people are kind most of the time -the news tends to focus on unkindness and harm just because kindness is so normal and natural to us that it isn't news.
The Dalai Lama put it like this
"love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are news, compassionate activities are so much part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.."
. Compassion and the Individual | The 14th Dalai Lama
Instead of cowering in fear and depression, you can try actually doing something. If you can.
As a simple example you can donate to help with the crisis in Ukraine. It doesn't matter if it is a small amount, $1 say, lots of small amounts add up. They have a Ukraine crisis appeal.
. Big humanitarian crisis in Ukraine - you can donate to help
But - don’t feel you have to give away more than you can afford or get into financial hardship! Small things are fine. Far better to give a small amount without any financial worries on your side than to give a lot and then be worrying about it and what it will do to your own life.
There may be other things you can do. For instance helping people who are scared, as we do in our Doomsday Debunked group - then that’s also helping with the collateral from the war.
And if you can’t then there is no use in much worry. The Dalai Lama put it like this, 1:17:40 into this video: He in turn is quoting the 8th Century Indian sage Shantideva:
1:17:40 into the video:
"When we face some problem, if there is a way to work on it, then make effort. If the situation is such that there is no way to overcome it, then there is no use in much worry." [Dalai Lama's comment on the quote] A very realistic and very scientific way of thinking.
He goes on to talk about how he applied this advice to his exile from Tibet and his interactions with China and the Chinese people.
Yes we can rebuild after a war - one day all ukraine’s cities damaged by the war will be restored - and the economies of ukraine - and russia too - rebuilt and renewed
It is possible to rebuild after war. This is Dresden's Frauenkirche as it was before the fire bombing in WW2.
After the bombing
And as now restored
. Dresden Frauenkirche winter blue sky
This is another example, Warsaw, St Casimir church in 1770
. Bellotto New Town Market Square
In 1945:
. Bestand:Ruins of St Casimir Church in Warsaw.jpg - Wikipedia
(for another view see Ruins of St Casimir Church)
And as it is now
. :Saint Kazimierz Church in Warsaw - New Town
See:
. St. Casimir Church (Warsaw) - Wikipedia
Belloto’s paintings were used to help reconstruct these buildings.
. Bernardo Bellotto and the reconstruction of Warsaw
Any time you visit a city you see it as it is now, you can't go to Athens and see the Athens of ancient Greece, you see modern Athens with a few ruins left from centuries ago
.View of the Acropolis of Athens from Mt Lycabettus on April 22, 2022- Wikimedia Commons
Cities are being rebuilt constantly. Demolishing things, building new things in their place, household or business fires, just someone wants a different design for their premises and can afford to rebuild.
This for instance shows the skyscrapers that have been built in New York over the decades:
From this video
[If anyone knows a similar Russian or Ukrainian video do say]
Ukraine is already rebuilding after the war with many volunteers from other parts of Ukraine coming to help the settlements north of Kyiv to rebuild.
From this video
And rebuilt the bridge to Irpin very fast
Video from here:
Text on graphic:
Bucha, May 2022.
Bucha May, 2023
(same street after restoration)
See: Are These Before-and-After Pics of the Same Location in Bucha, Ukraine?
Cities are not as fixed as they seem to be. The buildings in cities, the landscape, the statues, the street funiture, it's constantly changing. But slowly so people don't notice.
But if you could be put in a time machine and go forward or backward a few decades it would look very different.
Basically the same but changed.
Some buildings gone, some new ones appear, things changed.
In the same way Ukraine and Russia can rebuild after this war. Not necessarily the same. Some restored as is but moving forward to a new future.
Just as you can't blame or generalize the whole of Islam for the terrorist attacks on 9/11 you should not generalize the actions of a few mischievous Russian soldiers and commanders to the whole of the Russian people and culture - this is totally wrong
The Dalai Lama commenting on 9/11:
QUOTE
“You can’t blame or generalize the whole of Islam. Islam like any other religion, the essence is a message of love, forgiveness. The very word Jihad. Ji is struggle, or combat your own destructive emotion. Not harming others. “
“That’s the genuine Islam practitioner. If any Muslim create bloodshed, actually no longer Islam practitioner, sincere practitioner. I’ve heard that. So therefore this is wrong, I think, to generalize Islam, Muslim.”
In context:
This is where the Dalai Lama says it
“Terrorist act carried by Muslim. But because of this incident should not generalize whole Muslim is something negative. This totally wrong, unfair. Some mischievous people among all followers of different traditions. Amongst Hindus some mischievous people there. Amongst Jews. Amongst the Christian. Among the Buddhist. Yes there are mischievous people there. Those few mischievous people, use that then generalize the tradition - that’s totally wrong.”
“So since then every occasion some interfaith meeting. I’m Buddhist. I’m non believer about Allah. But I can to forward to different Islam tradition. As you rightly mentioned. According to many of my friends they say. Genuine practitioner of Islam they should not harm other people. Genuine practitioner of Islam must extend love to entire creatures of Allah. And then any person who claim themselves as Muslim but create bloodshed, actually no longer Islam practitioner. And then one time the former chief minister of state he told me, very meaning of Jihad is not harming other, but combat with your own destructive emotion. So all major tradition teach us practice of love, tolerance. So then when follower of different tradition, when destructive emotion of anger, hatred, and all to harming other - then that moment jihad, combat that destructive emotion. So then all major religion, who really practice self discipline. Sometimes not easy. Sometimes destructive intent comes, then must control that. So that’s the meaning of Jihad. So I think people, including many media people, wrong interpretation about Jihad. “
“So, I genuinely respect, admire your tradition. So then that religious harmony, I think India, this country, India is a living example where all major world religion live together. This is not modern India but I think over thousand years. Beside home grown religion. That’s sanksim Jainism, Buddhism, then later Sikhism. Then, very early period Zoroastrianism from ancient Persia, then Christian, Muslim, Jews, all settle here. I always admire in Bombay, Parsee, very small community. Now less than 100,000. But no fear. Millions of Hindus and some Christians, Muslims, very small community [of Parsees] very safe, very peaceful. That’s India”
So it's not bad to be Russian just like it's not bad to be Muslim.
Or Christian, there have been many mischievous Christians indeed Putin is an example, he himself is Christian but that doesn't mean that all Christians are responsible for what he did or even Christians in teh Eastern orhtodox church or even Christians in Moscow or in whatever church he goes to himself.
Putin is just a mischievous Christian who isn't practicing the teachings of Jesus on loving kindness, generosity and so on. He probably thinks he is a good Christian but something has got mixed up as there is no way this is what Jesus taught.
Every tradition has mischievous people in them. There are mischievous Buddhists too as the Dalai Lama said.
"Those few mischievous people, use that then generalize the tradition - that’s totally wrong.”
The Russians can still be proud of their tradition and values and uphold what is good in their culture and work to restore the "Wonderful Russia of the Future"
Our path to a fully civilized species is surely a path to an end of all war
I think it’s fair to say we are not yet fully civilized for as long as we have wars and kill people.
We are headed towards more not less civilization. Carl Sagan is one of those who though the same way. I cover it here:
. Why it makes sense for aliens to be kind - and more so the more advanced their civilization
Our generation’s children want a future of peace. This is from kids caught up in the conflicts in Yemen that rarely hit the news.
One of the poems:
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
What if peace was a pandemic?
where everyone come close to everyone to spread love?
What if peace was education itself?
Where we learn how to make everyone happy?
We need peace,
We have to spread peace,
With peace we are happy, we are calm, we are smiling.
With peace, we can get through any conflict.
With peace, no bad dreams, no hatred.
Together, in one group, holding each others hands
let's build peace, let's make peace.
Areej Essam, 13
See: Poems for Peace from Children of Yeme
This is from All on the Board Companion,, inspiring messages on the London Underground by Ian Redpath and Jeremy Chopra. This message is from Jeremy Chopra.
Finding peace For me life is about peace and finding it as much as possible, whether that be within myself, with who I am or with the world. I genuinely believe that we all have a purpose to make this world a peaceful place for those here now and those who inherit it after we’re gone.
Peace can be found in many places – from sailing on a boat in calm waters to lying on a sunny beach, from the moment anxiety is lifted from your shoulders, in the embrace of loved ones or even in the warmth of a cup of tea – but at its core is harmony, and surely the world would be a far better place for most with that.
Peace on earth for us all would be a wonderful thing. I hope we can have it one day and I believe we can because if anything is possible, then why not world peace? We don’t have to give up on trying to make it so just because someone says it’s unrealistic. They said that about aeroplanes once, and I can’t tell you how many people said Ian and I couldn’t make All On The Board get to 100 followers, or write a bestselling book. Let’s give peace a chance.
All On The Board - Your Daily Companion: Inspiring words to take you from morning to night (p. 273). .
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I do the short debunks more often but they are less polished - they are copies of my longer replies to scared people in the Facebook group.rough Ukraine and will do so no matter what its allies do to support Ukraine.
Thank you for this Robert, it has really put my mind at ease.
What do you think of these two different articles with interviews from Mark Rutte and Keir Giles about Russia's capabilities to attack NATO once Ukraine War is over, especially if they are victorious.
Rutte thinks NATO should prepare for war and really invest on defense, because Russia might try something in next four-five years. Sure, this is, really not nothing new statements, as many others have said the same, but it's bit different coming from head honcho of NATO
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly41x7eg71o
Giles believes once war in Ukraine is over, Russia might attack one or more NATO members. Giles doesn't believe this would be WW3 scenario, but this would be more of an test on limits on Article 5
https://www.hbl.fi/artikel/keir-giles-ryssland-planerar-en-attack-mot-nato/
What do you think?