While the U.S. and Russia have a similar number of deployed strategic (i.e., high-yield) nuclear weapons as limited under New START, Russia has a 10:1 advantage over us in nonstrategic (i.e., low-yield) nuclear weapons — aka tactical or battlefield nukes:
Today, while open-source numbers are fuzzy, Russia has about 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear weapons, while the U.S. has about 200 total — with half in the U.S. and half in Europe as part of NATO.
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The idea is Russia might employ one (or more) tactical nuclear weapon during a conventional conflict with NATO forces to prevent a defeat, consolidate gains, or even freeze a conflict in place without further fighting.
Because the disparity between Russian and U.S. tactical nuclear weapons is so large, Moscow may perceive a NATO nuclear response to lack credibility.
Isn’t it interesting. 80 million “voters” got rid of that war-mongering unstable Trump and put in reliable old Sleepy Joe — and now we are looking at a situation in which it is entirely within the bounds of possibility that we could be on the brink of a nuclear war.
A tactical nuclear weapon would be useful if NATO assembled a big force in Poland to invade the Ukraine — eliminate that force before it crossed the border. But it is more likely that we would see strategic nuclear weapons deployed on Berlin, London, and the DC Swamp if Russia was pushed far enough.
Wouldn’t it be better if we just all agreed that the Ukraine will never ever be allowed to join NATO?
Yes, indeed. Nancy and the other Dems were all hot and bothered that a man like Don had sole control of the nuclear codes. They wanted a team effort to release the nuclear weapons. Don was just too much a danger, as he was mentally unstable and unbalanced and could not be trusted.
Now you don’t hear a word from the Dems about Joe needing a consensus and the approval of others to use the nukes. That has all been forgotten.
In all fairness to the Dems, they said similar things about Barry Goldwater and Reagan. “These people are crazy and cannot be trusted with such responsibility.”
But as been said, now that you have a man whose mental faculties really do seem to be less than adequate, not a word spoken.
“Russia might employ one (or more) tactical nuclear weapon during a conventional conflict with NATO forces to prevent a defeat”
Russian conventional power in Eastern Europe is so great that a conventional defeat is unimaginable.
The likely scenario, which occurred in all the NATO war games during the Cold War, is that US/NATO would resort to nuclear weapons first, because their own defeat was imminent.
In the US military of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the saying was the Germany villages were 1 kiloton apart.
Entirely possible that Biden is nowhere near the trigger for nuclear weapons; after all, he is nowhere near the role of president and making decisions. Just think, a lifetime in politics and all he achieved in the end was to be rolled out to read a teleprompter or listen to the voice in his earphone.
While I think the Dems (and in my country their equivalent, Labour) are morons of the first water I suspect the ‘unseen committee’ who really runs things in DC have slightly more idea than Joe. They just do it without being needing to be seen.
It’s unlikely the nukes USG has kicking around in storage even work anymore tbh. They need to be constantly maintained, which is not happening, and they need to be tested, to check if your maintenance is working – which even more significantly, is not happening either.
This dying beast can’t even produce tritium anymore.