If they ever felt they had nothing to lose, then to strike first would be their best chance to “win” although no one wins a nuclear war between superpowers.
That’s why I think the next large scale nuclear blast will be more of a covert operation somewhere. And hard to pin on who it was, or how it happened.
https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/us-may-help-ukraine-launch-an-offensive-on-crimea/
“If however Ukraine goes on to try to reconquer Crimea, which the overwhelming majority of Russians regard as simply Russian territory, the chances of an escalation to nuclear war become extremely high.
Decamp writes that “The lessening concern about Putin resorting to nukes appears to be based only on the fact that he hasn’t used any up to this point.” But this is as logical as believing that it is safe and wise to jump even harder on the sleeping bear you’ve been jumping on just because the bear hasn’t woken up yet.
The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias. The assumption that because a disaster has not happened in the past it will not happen in the future, even though you keep doing things to make it increasingly likely, is just being a fucking idiot. It’s like Wile E Coyote jumping up and down on the land mine until it explodes because it didn’t explode when the Roadrunner ran over it.
https://dnyuz.com/2023/01/18/u-s-warms-to-helping-ukraine-target-crimea/
“The new thinking on Crimea — annexed illegally by Russia in 2014 — shows how far Biden administration officials have come from the start of the war, when they were wary of even acknowledging publicly that the United States was providing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for Ukrainian troops.
But over the course of the conflict, the United States and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing Javelins and Stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems, armored fighting vehicles and even some Western tanks to give Ukraine the capacity to strike against Russia’s onslaught.
Now, the Biden administration is considering what would be one of its boldest moves yet, helping Ukraine to attack the peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin views as an integral part of his quest to restore past Russian glory.”
I am whipping through my remaining bucket list items at a much faster speed these days.
I think an attack on Crimea will be the final countdown item.