by Dmitri Orlov, The Saker:
The Cuban Missile Crisis is a malicious misnomer. Cuba never had any nuclear missiles; it temporarily played host to some Soviet ones. The crisis started when Americans put their intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Turkey that posed a new threat the Soviet Union, which responded by placing similar missiles in Cuba, evening the score. The Americans flew into a rage but eventually calmed down and withdrew their missiles from Turkey. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the crisis was over. And so it should be called the American Missile Crisis.
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What’s happening now couldn’t be more different. Unless you spent the last few weeks hiding under a rock, you have probably heard that some sort of new nuclear crisis is underway because of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” or some such. Some people have suffered nervous exhaustion as a result, neglecting their duties and generally letting themselves go. Take former British PM Liz Truss, for instance. The poor silly thing latched on to Putin’s words that “the wind rose can point in any direction” (a factual point about the utter uselessness of tactical nuclear weapons). She then allowed the British economy to go into free-fall while she obsessively tracked the wind direction over the Ukraine. It all ended badly for poor Liz. Don’t be like Liz.
I am here to tell you that there is nothing going on beyond the usual—the usual Western propaganda fakery, that is.
In particular, this has nothing to do with anything Putin or with anything nuclear. Instead, this is all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for narrative failure, and a failed attempt at that. The problem for the collective West is simply this: 80% of the world’s population has refused to join it in condemning, sanctioning or otherwise punishing Russia, with some very large countries (China, India) either supportive or neutral on the subject.
Most of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is carefully watching Russia systematically destroy what was by far the largest and most capable NATO-equipped, NATO-commanded army in the world (the Ukrainian army, that is), understanding full well that what is unfolding is Washington’s Waterloo. Some countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance) are so sure of the result that they are already refusing to obey Washington’s dictates. This is a problem, because all the Washingtonians know how to do is impose their will on the world. Treating others as equals or looking for opportunities to negotiate a win-win is simply not part of their core competence—or any of their competence, for that matter. Once defanged, all they know how to do is bark and drool.
To fix this problem, the narrative-mongers in Washington and Brussels have decided to play the nuclear card and accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail. Meanwhile, all that Russia has done is decimate the Ukrainian army several times over, then accept four former Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation based on highly conclusive local referenda closely watched by a goodly number of international observers, and then announce that it will defend these regions against foreign attack by all means necessary. These, obviously, include nuclear means, since Russia does have them, and would use them in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, which precludes their first use.
Meanwhile, the US has no such stipulation in its nuclear doctrine, has actually used nuclear weapons against civilians (in Japan), and has for decades dreamed of developing a nuclear first strike capability that could not be countered. If any country should be judged to be a nuclear threat, it is the US, not Russia… except, as I will explain, the US is no longer much of a nuclear threat either. Putin barely hinted at this, but a mere hint was enough to utterly infuriate the US national defense establishment, whose worst enemy is reality itself. Putin pointed out that at this point Russia has some weapons in its nuclear deterrent arsenal that are superior to that of the West.
These new weapons, of which more later, guarantee that any nuclear attack on Russia would be a suicidal move. That is, the West has no way of reliably destroying Russia (it is too big and its economic core is too independent and too well defended with air and space defense systems) while Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first. Unlike back in the old Soviet days, Russia has no missionary zeal; it is happy to sit back and watch the West starve itself (due to a lack of Russian chemical fertilizer) in the dark (due to a lack of Russian oil and gas). All it wants to do is gather the pieces of the shattered Russian world and all the people and lands that the collapse of the USSR abandoned behind some Bolshevik-decreed border. In this situation, the risk of a nuclear war is pretty much zero. Please sit back, take a series of deep breaths and let the good news soak in. Feel the joy.
But the joy probably won’t last if you listen to craven idiots whose job is to lie to you about “Putin’s nuclear threat.” When, for instance, Jack Philips writes that Moscow has threatened to use… tactical nuclear weapons… in Ukraine to salvage its war there,” he is basically just lying to us, and not once but thrice in the same sentence: Russia did not threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons but instead pointed out their uselessness; and Russia’s special operation is a success. The fact that there is no threat is the main message of this article, but let us briefly digress and describe of Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat look like.
The Ukraine is victorious in that according to the IMF its GDP is down 35% in 2022; according to its national bank inflation has topped 30% and isn’t slowing down; according to the World Bank next year 55% of Ukrainians will be below the poverty line, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day; according to the Ukraine’s economics minister, unemployment has reached 30%; according to its prime minister, it will be unable to pay pensions and salaries without immediate foreign aid; according to the UN, 20% of the population has left the country and another 33% are internally displaced; according to its energy ministry, it has already lost 40% of its electricity generating capacity. The Ukrainian army is drafting any male up to the age of 60, having run out of reservists, and the casualties it is suffering at the front are nothing short of horrific.
Meanwhile, Russia is vanquished because according to Reuters the Russian ruble is the strongest currency in the world; according to the Guardian Putin is more powerful and popular than ever; according to its agriculture ministry this year’s grain harvest is over 150 million tonnes, 50 million of which are for export, making Russia the world’s largest grain exporter; according to The Economist, Russia is emerging from recession just as the West is entering recession; and according to Goldman Sachs the index of economic activity in Russia is now higher than in the West. Russia just got done calling up 300 thousand, or 1%, of its trained and experienced reservists, who are now being drilled in the latest NATO-fighting techniques before being sent to the Ukrainian front.
