A majority of voters say they are concerned that Russia will use nuclear weapons in its war with Ukraine, but are less worried that the U.S. could be a target of a Russian nuclear attack.
That’s according to Rasmussen Reports.
The survey found that 77% of likely U.S. voters are concerned that Russia will use nuclear weapons in its invasion of Ukraine, including 41% who are very concerned.
Twenty-one percent (21%) say they are not concerned about Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
To see survey question wording, click here.
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Current sentiment in Russia is not particularly anti-Ukrainian. They aren’t even calling it an invasion. A call was recently made by someone in Russia to rather send a nuclear message to a site that was used for atomic testing.
Regarding “escalation” https://youtu.be/Da8MEjc4F-s?t=311
At that link Greg Sheridan is putting the odds of WWIII at about 20%. He is apparently from the clip The foreign editor of a news outlet or paper called THE AUSTRALIAN. (WWIII in a full-fledged sense does mean nuclear war.) (It is possible, perhaps for the first time in Russian US history to have some nukes used without going all out.)
Greg Sheridan’s analysis though of the motivations of Putin and Russia though is all crap. Because he doesn’t understand or (pretends not to understand) the motivations of Putin and Russia, I think the odds of escalation are really much higher.
Congress, for the most part, is trying to “de-escalate” the situation by increasing sanctions and increasing pressure on Putin to get him to back down. That would be a great strategy in dealing with a bully. However, few in the US actually understand the motivations of Russia and Putin. How can they? They don’t listen to him and they ban almost every source of information from Russia. What sources they aren’t banning… it is hard to tell. Duck Duck Go is burying Russian perspectives in their search results. The big tech companies have de-platformed and threatened to ban any information that doesn’t adequately march in step with the thoughts inside their heads.
In the executive branch right now, there is an acceptable amount of hesitancy to escalate, but the rhetoric still from the executive branch isn’t what a hostage-negotiator would likely use in trying to defuse the situation. Donald Trump would typically insult a lot of people with tweets etc. But he was respectful to powerful people around the world that he would have to work with. Maybe this was a result of his business experience. The current occupant of the white house is sometimes (mostly? always?) respectful to people across the isle in congress… he has a long history of working with those people.
Yet, in the past, the US was a dominant super-power and could hold other nations power in shear contempt and treat other non-allies with a measure of contempt, because they lacked power.
There has been a shift though. China’s economic power is now strong. They haven’t made huge mistakes (that I can think of) in terms of foreign policy that cost them trillions etc. The US, with its huge defense budget, hasn’t been able to keep up militarily with either Russia or China in terms of hypersonic missiles. Russia warned George W Bush and other US leaders that if we withdrew from anti-ballistic missile treaty that they could circumvent our new defensive systems. Our military defensive anti-missile system was put [ on or near, I’m not sure ] Russia’s border rather than take up Russia on the offer to have a joint anti-ballistic missile system on Iran’s borders, that was the location of the weapon system we were worrying about and said we were protecting from. In any case, though they said they didn’t want to spend the money to upgrade the effectiveness of their nuclear weapons and their ability to penetrate US defenses, they did so. The US did not rejoin the anti-ballistic missile treaty, nor did the US co-operate by building a jointly operated one near the Iranian border.
But back to respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T “A little respect” as the song goes… it is missing from diplomatic language. Deescalation is a bit more difficult when the whole country can not listen to, nor understand the viewpoint of the one they are provoking.
There is getting to be a “righteous indignation” a strong moral feeling in Russia that what the US is doing is wrong. Sun Tzu spoke about the importance of understanding your enemy. Ronald Reagan reportedly spent a great deal of time trying to understand President Gorbachev in order to deal and negotiate with him. Reagan wasn’t brightest president we ever had, but he spent time even learning Russian proverbs. After that though, Thomas Friedman had previously felt the diplomatic ability of the US dropped off real fast after George Herbert Walker Bush left office. George Kennan, Thomas Friedman felt was a giant of man, and then Thomas Friedman and George Kennan himself recognized a stage was being set for a new cold war, as their was a rush to expand NATO. The elderly Kennan was distraught at the expansion of NATO, though he was the one who had engineered the containment strategy of the Soviet Union. (I think I’m mostly correct on that analysis, but I’m not a historian of all this.) Both those men (Kennan and Friedman) saw problems ahead. Currently, Thomas Friedman says something about what NATO is doing and has been doing as not reflecting “innocent” behavior.
Even Thomas Friedman’s tepid analysis of this (due to the current political climate) is really insufficient to catch the attention and arrest the rage of the war-mongers.
I’m not sure exactly how stress and conflict can be decreased when the tech giants and media are pushing so hard to paint one side as bad and the other side as all good.
I’m reading The Doomsday Machine. Just got through the chapters about how the US intentionally burned down almost every big city in Japan. New York Times was then reporting with no sympathy what-so-ever that maybe 2 million Japanese burned to death in the bombing of Tokyo. It was wildly over-estimated, but still more people died from the conventional burning of Tokyo, than died from the bombing of Hiroshoma and Nagasaki combined. The US basically had a policy whose net-result was to burn the Japanese civilians to death, with no remorse.
In Europe the eventual policy of the US and British was to try and start firestorms in German cities, but they didn’t build their houses out of the easily burnable stuff and all the paper that was used in Japanese construction so only two German cities got that treatment.
I hate to bring that stuff up. So negative. But, it appears Americans can no longer think. Cancel culture has perhaps made two safe-zones. A Republican and a Democratic safe zone. If a Venn Diagram is used, maybe it can be thought that people are only indoctrinated to be aware of these two positions. And if people in the media and the two parties agree on something like Russia and Putin being bad and that the US needs more money for military spending, this gets the OK from big tech and other views are electronically erased and suppressed. (I’m over-simplifying … of course the tech firms favor one party over another. And of course any President that might argue for the breakup of such a firm may be further criticized.)
By censoring opposing viewpoints, we can get to a place where a crowd does insane things. Some call for a no-fly-zone in Ukraine to be set up even though they know it will/may lead to WWIII. Maybe the loss of billions of lives can be set aside, if it gives them an emotional feeling of satisfaction. After getting their news from big tech I suppose some get all involved in the life they see on the screen, as if they are getting immersed in a video game, tv show or movie and the larger life outside the “matrix” they have constructed for their thinking becomes less real.
Peacemakers have their work cut-out for them now.
[Prayer: Lord if you want the country destroyed stay the hand of the reasonable people. If you don’t want the US or other countries destroyed now help the peace-makers to help the others realize they are about to kill themselves with their thoughtless, anger, driven by only hearing one side of a story.]
@SharylAttkisson Putin wants the country taken back as intact as possible, he wants it to still function after its all over, unlike the US that goes in and bombs the piss out of everything and then goes in.
Hes not going to nuke something he is trying to preserve.