{"id":1439741,"date":"2022-04-15T08:15:24","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T12:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1439741"},"modified":"2022-04-15T08:15:36","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T12:15:36","slug":"victor-davis-hanson-loose-nuke-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/victor-davis-hanson-loose-nuke-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Davis Hanson: Loose Nuke Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fvictor-davis-hanson-loose-nuke-talk%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1439741&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Americans, like the planet\u2019s other 7.5 billion people, are not prone to talk or think much about nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Of course, some of us are old enough to remember how \u201cmutually assured destruction,\u201d or MAD, was supposed to ensure the general peace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Some recall the eerie Cold War-era nuclear bomb movies like \u201cDr. Strangelove\u201d or \u201cFail Safe\u201d or the more recent post-nuclear Armageddon films like \u201cThe Book of Eli.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Millions have grown up referring to the scary \u201cdoomsday clock\u201d of atomic scientists that usually ticks closer to a midnight nuclear holocaust in times of crisis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">So the planet is not na\u00efve about the dangers of its 13,000 to 15,000 nuclear weapons. In 1961, the Soviet Union terrified the world when it exploded history\u2019s greatest nuke \u2013 the 50-megaton \u201cTsar Bomba.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">The Cuban Missile Crisis a year later brought the United States and the Soviet Union closer to a nuclear exchange than at any time since.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">In 1983, former President Ronald Reagan countered the Soviet nuclear-tipped SS-20 ballistic missiles aimed at Europe by stationing American Pershing II missiles in Germany.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">In response, for a few months Hollywood and the media began talking about a \u201cnuclear winter\u201d to follow the supposedly reckless war talk of the American cowboy president. But what followed was a series of superpower missile negotiations that lowered the tensions of the waning Cold War.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">During the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, Russian-backed Serbia was bombed by NATO air forces intent on stopping the slaughter of Kosovars. At one point in 1999, a senior British NATO commander Lt. General Michael Jackson refused an order from his superior U.S. counterpart General Wesley Clark to block Russian use of an airfield with the now famous rejoinder, \u201cI\u2019m not going to start Third World War for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Every time a nondemocratic nation joins the nuclear club \u2013 Pakistan in the mid-1980s, North Korea in 2006 \u2013 the chances of a nuclear exchange supposedly increase.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">But we forget that a number of powerful European and Asian states could easily go nuclear at any time within months. Instead, influential, wealthy nations like Australia, Germany, Japan, and South Korea rely on either NATO or the huge nuclear arsenal of the U.S. to deter their nuclear enemies. If that assurance is ever in doubt, then at any moment they may decide to go nuclear themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Nuke talk especially heats up anytime a rogue nation \u2013 usually one ostracized by the United Nations, such as Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq, the late Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s regime in Libya, or theocratic Iran \u2013 begins enriching uranium.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Yet for the most part as long as the world\u2019s three largest nuclear powers \u2013 the U.S., Russia and China \u2013 do not square off in a war or are not sucked into a third-party conflict, the world assumes nukes are out of sight and out of mind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Or so we thought until recently.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">The current Ukraine war has restarted loose nuke talk. Once outmanned, outnumbered Ukraine unexpectedly repelled Russian invaders \u2013 thanks to massive shipments of sophisticated Western anti-tank and anti-aircraft arms \u2013 talk arose from Russia about the use of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently boasted of possibly using nukes against both Ukraine, and, more ominously, those NATO countries who aided Kyiv. In response, French President Emmanuel Macron reminded Russia that NATO itself has an ample nuclear deterrent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">In theory, should NATO and the U.S. supply Ukraine tanks, artillery, and planes, the fierce Ukrainians could push the entire Russian army entirely out of their country. But would a nuclear Putin allow that?<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Over the last few weeks nuclear talk has arisen over a myriad of issues. If the war continues to go badly for Russia, at what point will a seemingly erratic Putin begin issuing nuclear redlines to Ukraine and its allies?<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Would a crushing defeat push over the edge a nuclear trash-talking Putin \u2013 facing the possible end of his regime?<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Ukraine nuke talk spins off into lots of other places. Nuclear North Korea is resuming its ballistic missile launches to intimidate non-nuclear South Korea and Japan. China is rapidly expanding its nuclear stockpiles and now talks openly of ending a free Taiwan, warning Taiwan\u2019s friends and allies to keep out \u2013 or else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Iran promises to become nuclear soon. Nuclear Russia has assumed the role of interlocutor of all discussions to restart a new nuclear \u201cIran deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Russia controls Syrian airspace. In theory, Putin could stop nuclear Israel either from replying to terrorist attacks emanating from Syria, or from staging a preemptive attack on Iran\u2019s nuclear bomb facilities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Suddenly newspapers and blogs seemed fixated on hyping the relative stockpiles and megatonnage of various nuclear states, as if they were just GDP or energy output data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">The world has become nuclear obsessed. Is there a danger in daily normalizing the abnormal and casually thinking the unthinkable?<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\">Curbing loose nuke talk won\u2019t calm tensions or guarantee peace, but it wouldn\u2019t hurt either.<\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\"><em>Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of \u201cThe Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,\u201d from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing <a href=\"mailto:authorvdh@gmail.com\">authorvdh@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"krtText\"><em>\u00a92022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Americans, like the planet\u2019s other 7.5 billion people, are not prone to talk or think much about nuclear weapons.Of course, some of us are old enough to remember how \u201cmutually<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":505,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1439741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/505"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}