Posted on 09/25/2022 6:34:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Don’t forget Libya. They had WMD but gave them up and then got hit by an Arab Spring revolution and then a civil war and the whole country fell apart. When a government has an ace in the hole, people tend not to move against it. Libya and Ukraine found this out.
Put Japan and Taiwan on the list. They could both go nuclear over a long weekend.
The United States invaded Libya when they were our allies.
And building a lot is very expensive. The US - which is choking on the inflation and debt caused by trying to finance everyting including its MIC, Britain which is holding on to its nuclear deterrent by a thread, North Korea which has beggared its population - nothing new for them however - France which is holding its own, Russia - which a military industrial state, and China which has had an enormous economy to draw on as well as stealing US secrets and personnel trained in the US.
It's not as easy as it looks and it doesn't even look easy.
You seem to be trying to give the impression that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is not the best in the world, with the best delivery systems.
Nukeland in the US is kind of a military backwater. We were into all the stuff that cost gazillions and failed to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and ...
“Put Japan and Taiwan on the list. They could both go nuclear over a long weekend.”
Japan could. But it would probably take Taiwan the full week.
PS. A lot of this is irrelevant. Nuclear weapons don’t fight nuclear weapons so the only thing that matters is if your nukes can hit the target and detonate. other than that it doesn’t matter how old they are or the technology level.
Quite a sales pitch for Russia and Red China, but we are still number one in nukes and the dependable delivery of them, even before Trump.
Under Trump, America’s nuclear weapons industry has boomed
Los Angeles Times
“While the country has been preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, economic decline and the election, President Trump’s administration quietly and steadily steered America’s nuclear weapons industry to its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War, increasing spending on such arms by billions of dollars with bipartisan congressional support.
Overall, the budget for making and maintaining nuclear warheads has risen more than 50% since Trump was elected in 2016, substantially outpacing the rates of increase for the defense budget and overall federal spending during his presidency before the pandemic. On Monday, Congress approved Trump’s proposal to increase spending next year for the production of such weaponry by nearly $3 billion.”
Hate to burst your bubble.
President Trump’s administration quietly and steadily steered America’s nuclear weapons industry to its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War, increasing spending on such arms by billions of dollars with bipartisan congressional support.
And with all that money what have we actually built? Nothing yet actually.
“The United States invaded Libya when they were our allies.”
Do you have a copy of that treaty or pact that we can read? Perhaps a link?
Here is a good unclassified summary - https://thebulletin.org/premium/2022-02/nuclear-notebook-how-many-nuclear-weapons-does-russia-have-in-2022/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Ads&utm_campaign=SearchAds&utm_content=RussiaNuclearNotebook&gclid=CjwKCAjw-L-ZBhB4EiwA76YzOc7jIvAumDLZlskfdmgRPCeSRF04N5IzNSqyfzznkchsyr1tAcTiwRoCllEQAvD_BwE
Wishful thinking won’t make deteriorated, degraded, rusty Russia, the most powerful nuke power on earth.
Well ok. If you think that the Russians have a degraded rusty stockpile and delivery system you can go on believing that. Meanwhile you might go look up the public testimony of the Commander of US Strategic Command about comparative states of readiness.
The Big Lie About the Libyan War
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/
“The Obama administration said it was just trying to protect civilians. Its actions reveal it was looking for regime change. ...”
More there.
And NATO offensively attacked Libya on Obama’s behalf, breaking its own charter, when Libya hadn’t attacked a NATO member, and under Obama’s unproven allegations that Gaddafi was going to kill 10k of his own people.
“Meanwhile you might go look up the public testimony of the Commander of US Strategic Command about comparative states of readiness.”
It’s their business to cry doom and gloom, because then they can use that to justify new purchases.
It was probably before your time, but there was a little something called the “missile gap” in the 1950s and early 1960s. Our military brass hyperventilated before Congress, decrying the missile gap between the US and the USSR, which they claimed left the US with the short end of the stick. That resulted in a fast-track program to develop and build nukes. Which we did. Made everybody happy, especially the MIC. However, later analyses showed there was no such gap. But we got what we wanted, anyway.
Welcome to the real world.
The result of Russia’s nuclear sabre rattling will be it’s neighbors obtaining nuclear weapons for self-defense. History teaches us that a nation can really only depend on itself for self-defense. Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics are likely to integrate further on defense matters, and adding a nuclear deterrent makes much sense considering the history of their big neighbor.
"Ours work".
A quasi stable nuclear balance in the Eastern Pacific might be attainable for a while.
No way in heck do I trust Europe in the long run, following a Pooty win in Ukraine and a crack-up of NATO. And no way in heck for 2 seconds do I trust ME Muzzies with petro money for nukes in what may be 3 or 5 sided confrontations.
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