dasein and thermo-nuclear war?

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nytimes.com/2022/03/01/opin … putin.html

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

[b]The battle for Ukraine unfolding before our eyes has the potential to be the most transformational event in Europe since World War II and the most dangerous confrontation for the world since the Cuban missile crisis. I see three possible scenarios for how this story ends. I call them “the full-blown disaster,” “the dirty compromise” and “salvation.”

The disaster scenario is now underway: Unless Vladimir Putin has a change of heart or can be deterred by the West, he appears willing to kill as many people as necessary and destroy as much of Ukraine’s infrastructure as necessary to erase Ukraine as a free independent state and culture and wipe out its leadership. This scenario could lead to war crimes the scale of which has not been seen in Europe since the Nazis — crimes that would make Vladimir Putin, his cronies and Russia as a country all global pariahs.

The wired, globalized world has never had to deal with a leader accused of this level of war crimes whose country has a landmass spanning 11 time zones, is one of the world’s largest oil and gas providers and possesses the biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads of any nation.

Every day that Putin refuses to stop we get closer to the gates of hell. With each TikTok video and cellphone shot showing Putin’s brutality, it will be harder and harder for the world to look away. But to intervene risks igniting the first war in the heart of Europe involving nuclear weapons. [/b]

And…

[b]I wish Putin was just motivated by a desire to keep Ukraine out of NATO; his appetite has grown far beyond that. Putin is in the grip of magical thinking: As Fiona Hill, one of America’s premier Russia experts, said in an interview published on Monday by Politico, he believes that there is something called “Russky Mir,” or a “Russian World”; that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”; and that it is his mission to engineer “regathering all the Russian-speakers in different places that belonged at some point to the Russian tsardom.”

To realize that vision, Putin believes that it is his right and duty to challenge what Hill calls “a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force.” And if the U.S. and its allies attempt to get in Putin’s way — or try to humiliate him the way they did Russia at the end of the Cold War — he is signaling that he is ready to out-crazy us. Or, as Putin warned the other day before putting his nuclear force on high alert, anyone who gets in his way should be ready to face “consequences they have never seen” before. Add to all this the mounting reports questioning Putin’s state of mind and you have a terrifying cocktail.[/b]

my emphasis

Tell me this isn’t getting more and more ominous by the day.

Of course, with newspapers you can never be entirely certain it’s not being blown up in order to sell more newspapers. News after all is their business.

In any event, here is a conflict that has the potential to escalate into nuclear war. Hell, you and I could be vaporized if that happens.

Uh, stay tuned:

youtu.be/C2zGCh06ZVs
youtu.be/QgWDu1N9kLE

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From the NYT:

[b]"Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Overhanging all of this, of course, is that this is a nuclear power that we’re talking about. This is to all three of you. Fiona Hill, the Russia expert and Trump impeachment witness, said, and I’m summarizing here, we are already in World War III, we just haven’t realized it yet. I mean, terrifying. True? Tom, let’s start with you.

Thomas L. Friedman: I’m not sure what that means or that it’s particularly helpful. What I would say, Lulu, is that there’s only one thing more dangerous than a strong Putin, and that’s a weak Putin — a Putin on the ropes. And I still hope, and I doubt he’d start throwing around nuclear weapons. But it’s not clear what he’s going to do and what he can unleash here. So I’m quite worried about that. But World War III — I’m not quite there yet myself."

Ross Douthat: And now we’re back in that dynamic where it becomes incredibly important to have these, what can seem in the punditry game that we all practice like these sort of arbitrary lines. Like we will fight absolutely for Lithuania. But we will not intervene for Ukraine. We will arm people killing Russians. But we will do nothing that seems to threaten to kill Russians ourselves.

But all of that line drawing was absolutely essential to the management of nuclear escalation. And that’s what we’re back in right now. And, yes, I think saying we’re already in World War III misses how important it is not to be.[/b]

Are you there yet?

That’s the imponderable potential, right? To the extent the West puts Putin on the ropes in pouring in arms to the Ukrainians and in tanking the Russian economy, it really might come down to what unfolds inside Putin’s head. One head, but the fate of the world itself could hang in the balance.

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What’s YOUR gut level? & let’s say Armageddon starts because a nervous trigger finger for someone thinks he sees the white in the eye; don’t they think about the length of nuclear winter for the few survivirs?

What’s this all about? Doesn’t the infallable US hang had a similar scenario some 50+ years ago- not prepare for something even more real?

To be blunt; I think the US has something up the sleeve the Russians may not know about, that’s why a) yhe posturing…

Or; my gut level is playing cybernetics games up my cranium.

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Gut level will prove me right if he goes after Moldova next; then a safe conclusion seems to be that he doesn’t want to rattle the big guns; and yet he still has to save some face he has left; similar to his performance with Crimea.

Belarus is already in his pocket. He is a bluffing poker player

[

".Russia may be planning aggressive moves against the Republic of Moldova, according to a map Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko displayed during a meeting of his country’s security council.
Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He seemingly allowed Putin to use Belarus as a staging ground for his invasion of Ukraine and is reportedly planning to commit his own country’s troops to the conflict.
The map, which Financial Times Moscow bureau chief Max Seddon shared on Twitter, shows Ukraine split into its four operational command districts and features red arrows that appear to indicate planned troop movements.

March 3 2020

One of those arrows originates in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa, which Russian troops have not yet reached, and terminates on the other side of the Moldovan border.

In January, Ukrainian intelligence warned that Russia could initiate false flag operations in Moldova to justify intervening in the pro-Russian separatist-controlled region of Transnistria, according to Al Jazeera.
Transnistria, a narrow strip of land with around 400,000 inhabitants, is internationally recognized as part of Moldova, but the Moldovan government has exercised no authority over the breakaway republic since 1992. Russian troops have been stationed in Transnistria ever since.
In 2014, after Putin seized control of Crimea, the head of Transnistria’s parliament requested to join Russia, BBC reported at the time.

<<<<<<<<<>

If so, a protractedstruggle may continue for two decades.
WHICH WOULD BE PREFERRABLE TO THE ALTERNATIVE.

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But then:

"Putin ordered the Russian defense minister and the chief of the military’s General Staff to put the nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty.” The move signals tensions could boil over into a nuclear war. "

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Back to what Ross Douthat noted above:

[b]"Like we will fight absolutely for Lithuania. But we will not intervene for Ukraine. We will arm people killing Russians. But we will do nothing that seems to threaten to kill Russians ourselves.

“But all of that line drawing was absolutely essential to the management of nuclear escalation. And that’s what we’re back in right now. And, yes, I think saying we’re already in World War III misses how important it is not to be.”[/b]

The line drawing. Now back in the day the line here revolved around M.A.D. – Mutually Assured Destruction.

The idea being that those with their fingers on the buttons recognized that if we attempted to destroy them, they would destroy us. That’s the beauty of it. It may well be why there has not been a World War 3. No sane person is willing to risk the lives of millions and millions on “our side”, if the “other side” has a nuclear arsenal.

Ah, but suppose one of the men with their fingers on the button is not sane? We don’t quite know how “disturbed” he might be but are we willing to go toe to toe with him if he invades Lithuania. Or Poland. Or Hungary. Or the Czech Republic.

It’s one thing to favor war when it’s others doing the fighting and the dying, another thing [perhaps] when, in a nuclear exchange, you yourself might be one of the dying.

Though this too is no less rooted in dasein. And in what you have been able to think yourself into believing the fate of “I” is on the other side.

In other words, the part where conflicts of this sort go beyond “rational calculation” and enter into the domain of the labyrinth that can be human psychology.

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Unless ‘you’ are driven by proto-religious beliefs; then that formula mayn’t be applicable. Or better said; the ones in the know of religious dogma don’t prescribes to death as commonly understood; immortal life means their future progeny’s survival.

Could you or anyone commit to giving up your own life so that the future could be ascertained? Even if such sacrifice entailed the deferred uncertainty over the range of accuracy that an ‘objective science’ can convey ( which is not an absolute guarantee over preventing obsessive need to examine it’s defensive fail-proved near exhaustive exercise in judgement) ;

Nevertheless , those who harbor such thoughts, are prone to excavate tons of dirt to install space absolutely guaranteeing their survival, even in the dead of a near timeless winter.

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Some good news!

Ukraine and Russia will sit down today to try to end war.

Other more disconcerting news :

"Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear weapons to be placed on high alert last week.

Europeans are buying iodine because they think it could protect them from radiation, reports say.

Multiple officials said iodine would not help in a nuclear war."

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"The russian invasion of Ukraine is not going to plan. In Kharkiv, the country’s second city, Ukrainian defences appear to have repulsed a major assault. In the south Vladimir Putin’s forces have taken territory, but partly by avoiding Ukrainian towns. Around Kyiv, Ukrainian forces have foiled numerous attacks. In the capital itself, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, has cut a defiant figure. In contrast to the drug-addicted Nazi Mr Putin describes in his speeches, Mr Zelensky has taken his place at the head of a nation buoyed by courage and patriotism.

The war is still in its first week. Russia’s president can summon reserves of military force that he could yet use to surround Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, at terrible cost to civilians and the soldiers of both sides. It is still a war that Mr Putin may well win, in that he could eventually impose a puppet government"

Internal - multicultural dissent:

"Business)Russia’s second largest oil company has broken ranks with President Vladimir Putin.

Lukoil, which produces more than 2% of the world’s crude oil and employs over 100,000 people, has called for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The company’s board of directors said in a statement to shareholders, staff and customers that it was “calling for the soonest termination of the armed conflict.”

Analysis:

Is Putin being 'painted into the corner; that exorbitates him further ( adding fuel to the fire) diminishing his self propelled 'will to conquer retroactively revise territorial ‘integrity’ : Or; can he be obliged to realize the faults within a misperceived conflation between past and changed interpretation of ‘ideological struggles’.

After all; he used to drive a taxi for a living…

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Mr. Putin has insisted that Ukraine is rightfully a part of Russia, not a real country, and he is bent on re-establishing Moscow’s hold over much of Eastern Europe. He has called NATO’s eastward expansion a threat, particularly the prospect that Ukraine might join someday.

But the war has hardened anti-Kremlin

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Let’s see how the rest of Eastern Europe reacts to these atrempts; if and when they materialize.

This is duplicitous utterances remind of pre WW 2; with the Wetern alliance basically stalling with a wait and see ‘phony’ attitude that everybody saw through. Appeasement works only until the real aims are no longer just supposed , but when they become crystal clear.

The NWO? Which side is Trump on; and how will such bypartisan alliance hold out? This depends on that and all seems calm on the Western front.

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WASHINGTON — Senior White House officials designing the strategy to confront Russia have begun quietly debating a new concern: that the avalanche of sanctions directed at Moscow, which have gained speed faster than they imagined, is cornering President Vladimir V. Putin and may prompt him to lash out, perhaps expanding the conflict beyond Ukraine.

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nytimes.com/2022/03/05/opin … trump.html

[b]Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding military aid to Ukraine — (“I would like you to do us a favor though”) — until Zelensky dug up dirt on Joe Biden, Trump’s rival, and Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.

As Franklin Foer wrote in The Atlantic, before that call, America had always tried to inject morality into Ukrainian politics. But Trump “polluted Ukraine with his own transactional politics.”

Representative Adam Schiff and other Democratic leaders of that impeachment say people can now see how wrong Trump was to try to withhold aid to Zelensky, then in office only two months.

“It hammers home how despicable an act it was to treat Ukraine as a political plaything,” Schiff told Rolling Stone.

The claim by Trump and his sycophants that his relationship with Putin had kept Russia out of Ukraine is ludicrous. He was Putin’s poodle and Putin would have rolled over him; he was biding his time as Trump weakened NATO.

Trump praised Putin for an act of “genius” even as the rest of the world was watching in horror as the mad Russian president prepared to order the bloody march through Ukraine and suffocated the remnants of a free press in Moscow.

That was a shameful moment, as was a House committee on Wednesday producing evidence it said showed that Trump had conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by bamboozling Americans about the election and trying to flip the result.

There were even some Republicans — mirabile dictu — backing away from the toxic Trump over Ukraine. In a speech to top G.O.P. donors Friday night in New Orleans, Mike Pence included the line, “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin.”[/b]

How can this not bring us around to imagining the world today if Trump actually had won the 2020 election fair and square?

Perhaps the irony being that there would be much less the likelihood of Putin resorting to World War III.

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Now hating to become even more narrowly focused than a eurocentric observer; must point to the sources contributing to these states of affairs; well preceeding Trump.

In fact 'goulash communism-captalism was the brain child of then Hungarian president Kadar, and according to historians, no other leader in Russia’s eastern european orbit could have dared such an opening, perhaps Tito of then viable baltic Yugoslavia. However his approach has been well defined prior to the hardliners adoption of russian geopolitics.

The baltics have been carefully circumvented because of conflict going back to Saravejo prior to the Ausro-Hingarian epoch of the assassination of the Holy Roman Emperor’s son.Hitler considered the balkans, the underbelly of european political significance ,therefore it could be a retracted form of later form of
goulash mentality of Kadar et al.

Having noted that; the importance of that development consisted of the later staged communist regression, into the basic elements within the dialectically framed as Marxist-Leninist ideals, adopted states leading to Perestroika liberalization. This was conveyed to the capitalistic world during the meeting in Canada between Gorbachev and Reagan
That this was the era when the famous political formula known as the Trilaleral Commission overcame the now vacuous dialectical uncertainty , is based on no mere shadowy coincidence. (Then sec.of state Kissinger’s conception)

These were carefully plotted geopolitical events long a brewing.

So surprised of surprises. The messy hashtag that came out of that goulash; sustained Hitler’s famous adage that the scepter that he observed during and actually before the second world war; did not simply disappear , as a foretaste of a shadow between socialism , capital and nationalism

The present hiatus is exactly that: a kind of extended test of underlying ideological motives which define attempts at aligninment with political , economic and social -psychological realities to today.

To even guess this being a test, albeit a very expensive test between the ideal and the substance of what they are made of, corresponding to the test men’s mettle on both sides.

Actually; are Russian oligarchs, including Putin. willing to give up their billions in a fair exchange for social justice?

That is the litmus test of ultimate faurness; in fact he knows he is in a life and death crosshairs of survivability of however the test turns out.

No question about the goulash; the fate of the whole world may come to depend on it.

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How does the Budapest agreement tie into the goulash (

brookings.edu/blog/order-fr … emorandum/

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“Russian State Ilyushin Il-96 Heads To Washington DC”

Despite the sanctions ; this lone plane is heading to Washingtom D.C… what’s going on? Good or bad sign? It is probable it’s coming on a high level fiplatic mission because it has been used for that purpose. So let’s see what becomes of it. There is no account of it’s purpose as of yet.

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Read it and weep?

washingtonpost.com/opinions … r-threats/

[b]On Feb. 27, Vladimir Putin, a commander in chief with an estimated 1,588 deployed nuclear warheads and 2,889 in reserve at his disposal, issued an apocalyptic threat by putting Russia’s nuclear forces on alert and transferring “the deterrence forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty.” It was the second ominous warning in one week from the Russian dictator, who faces no constraints on his decision-making. Earlier he had warned that any country that interfered with his war in Ukraine would face “consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”

Only one other country in the world, the United States, has the same nuclear capability (1,644 deployed warheads and 1,964 in reserve). But no U.S. president has ever made such a threat. Until this week, no Russian or Soviet leader had ever uttered such frightening words.

As codified in the New START pact signed in 2010, the United States and Russia committed to maintaining mutually assured destruction (MAD). Neither country can win a nuclear war. Both countries, as well as much of the world, would be completely destroyed by a nuclear exchange. Only a madman would entertain launching a nuclear attack against either the United States or Russia.

Putin’s threat reveals his frustration and desperation. In invading Ukraine, he has miscalculated. After 22 years in power, he is now profoundly isolated, surrounded only by yes men who have cut him off from accurate knowledge about the resilience of the Ukrainian people, the resolve of the West, the low morale for this war within his army and the unpopularity within Russian society of the senseless invasion. The initial attack has not gone according to plan. Now Putin feels cornered and compelled to double down: both in the conduct of the war and in words. His recent emotional statements suggest instability. Rational leaders do not hint at launching a nuclear holocaust.

Putin has a long history of engaging in highly risky behavior: authorizing assassination attacks across Europe; ordering an invasion with alleged war crimes in Syria; interfering in repeated U.S. and European elections; poisoning political opponents in Russia with chemical weapons; and invading Georgia once and Ukraine now twice, followed by annexation and recognition of regions of these two countries as independent entities. More than ever, his decision-making is marked by this willingness to take risks and his arrogant dismissal of advice.

On the international stage, Putin thinks he has only one peer, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and one central enemy, President Biden. Earlier in his career, he maintained warm relations with several Western leaders, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and even President George W. Bush for a time. Aside from Xi, he respects no other international leader today. He is alone — and evidently listens to no one.

It is the job of intelligence officers to assess probabilities about security outcomes, including nuclear war. My guess is that those estimates are still very low. But even if they are at 0.1 percent, the job of policymakers is to shape and decrease these probabilities. The horrific consequences of being wrong about nuclear warfare are too great to not do everything to reduce its likelihood.

First, Biden was right to respond to Putin’s threats by declining to raise the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces. He and European leaders should continue this policy of restraint. It serves no purpose to match Putin’s maniacal threats with others that would only increase international panic.

Second, every nuclear power in the world must reach out privately to Moscow to seek clarification about Russia’s position. In January, the five major nuclear powers signed a new declaration that affirmed “nuclear weapons … should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war” and also avowed “none of our nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other State.” Every leader who signed this declaration, especially Xi, should call Putin to confirm his commitment to this document.

Given the disturbing and likely falsified referendum in Belarus this week reversing the country’s non-nuclear status, these leaders should also remind Putin of Russia’s commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In parallel, and maybe more importantly, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley should call his counterpart, Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, to seek the same reassurances. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should do the same with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Third, Biden must signal to Putin — again, privately — that the United States and the West would be prepared to relax sanctions if Putin withdraws his soldiers from Ukraine. If Putin continues his slaughter of innocent civilians or arrests and kills President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government, this offer ought to be withdrawn. But, today, Putin should be offered a way out of the corner in which he has trapped himself.

Tragically, Putin’s increasingly unhinged discourse, coupled with inhumane war tactics, suggests that he has little interest in off-ramps regarding his war in Ukraine. Let’s hope he can still be persuaded to back down from future threats of using nuclear weapons.[/b]

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THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN in the NYT:

The good news for most?

“The most important innovation in this war is the use of the economic equivalent of a nuclear bomb, simultaneously deployed by a superpower and by superempowered people. The United States, along with the European Union and Britain, has imposed sanctions on Russia that are crippling its economy, critically threatening companies and shattering the savings of millions of Russians at an unprecedented speed and scope that bring to mind a nuclear blast.”

The bad news for all?

[b]"Putin has now figured that out — and said so explicitly on Saturday: The U.S.- and E.U.-led sanctions are ‘akin to a declaration of war.’ (Vladimir, you haven’t felt the half of it yet.)

“If the economic nuclear bomb that the United States and its allies just detonated in Russia crushes its economy as quickly and deeply as I suspect it will, there is a danger, however remote, that Putin will go to greater, even unthinkable extremes, like launching a real nuclear weapon.”[/b]

Just in case…

survivenature.com/fallout-s … ear-me.php
ready.gov/nuclear-explosion

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"Putin’s test run, besides Crimea, was witness to Trumps incongruous visa to North Korea.

In addition, grave US internal doubts risen since McNamara belated theory about the house of cards scenario , with the Afganistan withdrawal being the last nail in the coffin.

The trilateral versus the ideological struggle . Can mass psychological effect preempt or ( erase: per Ecmando) the abysmal fear of mass I’ve insecurity? Was Kissinger and Trump wrongly asses?

Was Spengler right?

Is MADD passe?

If things are as rosy as Pravda suggests; that Putin has won the war, then supposing that to be true , then what other races could he have?

"ROBERT GATES:

"He has nowhere near enough troops to put down a rebellion among millions of people in Ukraine, so he’s going to have to keep a significant military force in Ukraine. He’s probably going to have to increase it if he wants to hold on to that country, even if he imposes a puppet government, he’s going to have to keep forces there to keep that government in power. So I think between having his hands full in Ukraine and the risk of a true war with NATO, I think he’ll be very cautious about doing anything that crosses borders of NATO countries.

Now I do think in the Baltic States, there is the chance that he will use intelligence means — cyber, covert operations and so on — to try and create unrest in those countries. Thirty percent of the population in Estonia and Latvia, both are Russians. And so I can see him trying to create problems in the Baltic countries, but I don’t see him invading, and I would just make one final point. I think that what’s really important here are the troops that the United States has sent, and it’s not just the 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne, it’s sending heavy armored brigades. This is serious stuff, and that’s what’s needed to send a signal to the Russians that crossing into a NATO country, we mean business. And I think sending even more of those armored brigades would be a good idea."

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From Fix News march 3, 2020

“Speaking about research which suggests a war between Russia and the United States is inevitable, Koffler said it is time for other NATO countries to step up and pitch in with defense efforts as she reflected on statements made by Putin in 2015. “Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me one thing: If a fight’s inevitable, you must strike first,” Putin said at the time, referencing a place from his childhood.”

And the following from top brass:

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg warns Putin ‘does not bluff’