Two Russian Sukhoi Su-24 attack aircraft fly over the USS Donald Cook guided-missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea in April 2016 (AFP Photo/)
AFP: As US ties slump, Russian war rhetoric spikes at home
Moscow (AFP) - State television threatens the West with nuclear weapons, the Kremlin halts a disarmament treaty, the army warns of shooting down US jets. As ties between Russia and the West have once again slumped, rhetoric in Moscow has peaked.
"Relations between Russia and the US, and the West in general, have been dragged down to the bottom, to a level below which it is difficult to fall," Konstantin Kalachev, the head of the Moscow-based Political Expert Group think tank, told AFP.
But it wasn't meant to be like this.
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WNU Editor: I watch/read/and cover both Russian and Western (specifically Canada and the U.S.) news. From my vantage point I can say the following .... it is true that there is a lot of war rhetoric going around now .... but far more war rhetoric is coming from the U.S. press and its punditry class than what is coming from the Russian press.
4 comments:
WNU, that's true but the only side which is talking about nuclear war is the Russian one. It could make a difference.
Jac .... this is where culture/education/the impact of the media comes into play. The military in Russia and in the U.S. believe that war between the two countries will accelerate to the use of nuclear weapons within 24 hours. This is always constantly driven into the Russian public's mind when discussions of war come out .... and that is why they always talk about nuclear. In the U.S. the language used is different .... it is rare that they talk about nuclear war .... what they talk about is war but without the nuclear component. But for all practical purposes .... any war between the two countries will result in a nuclear exchange .... and I do agree with the assessment that such an exchange will occur less than 24 hours after the first major military fight has occurred. In short .... we will have less than 24 hours to get out of the cities before they start using the "big stuff".
Will America's "big stuff" work if needed? It hasn't been tested or upgraded in quite awhile. Team Trump was quite right to address this concern.
In contrast, the Russians have acted to upgrade their nuclear weapons capability. Additionally Russia has a huge conventional military edge over America. As such, their only concern would likely be America's nuclear weapons capability. Without America's nuclear weapons capability the Soviet Union would still exist and would have conquered America long, long ago if it chose to do so. America's only choice would have been to acquiesce before the superior power and perhaps it could have been avoided being conquered.
Today bears little difference. Russia is the world's most powerful country. If the United States can learn to act accordingly, good outcomes are still possible.
Russian cyber warriors would likely knock American nuclear weapons before they could be launched
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