The Threat of Nuclear Holocaust Is Real.
- Editorial Staff
- May 8, 2022
- 4 min read
Editorial Staff: May 8, 2022 This article is modified from an article on NewsMax
Gordon Chang: Russia, China Closer to Using Nukes Than You Think
By Charlie McCarthy and Editorial Staff Writer May 8 2022
In recent months or should say since the beginning of the Biden administration there has been a lessening fear of the United States. That is the major reason that China and Russia have been threatening to use nuclear weapons, one Chinese expert said.
Author Gordon Chang, who is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, wrote that "Russian President Vladimir Putin and China President Xi Jinping have been emboldened since President Joe Biden took office." Biden's inability to show strength on the world stage has left not just the United States vulnerable to the threats of nuclear attack but also our allies worldwide.
In a Gatestone opinion column, Chang quoted Hudson Institute senior fellow Peter Huessy.
"The bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and the unwillingness to effectively support Ukraine since our 1994 guarantee and especially over the past year have led nuclear-armed enemies to ratchet up threats to the U.S. and its allies," Huessy told Gatestone in March, Chang wrote. "They sense a growing American weakness." This is quite obvious in our opinions here at wewon2020.com .
Despite Putin and Xi's nuclear threats, Western leaders have been determined not to believe them, Chang wrote. "In response to Russian threats, President Joe Biden on February 28 said the American people should not worry about nuclear war," Chang wrote. "On the contrary, there is every reason to worry.
The Russian botched invasion of Ukraine has laid waste to the areas they have attacked but have done little to destroy the resolve of the Ukrainain people who have fought diligently to stall the Russian aggression. This very fact puts Russian President Vladamir Putin in a bad situation. This war was expected by the Russians to be quick with an efficient victory, and nothing could be further from the truth. Putin has made repeated threats about the use of nuclear weapons, and seriously, what does he have to lose at this point?
"In line with Western thinking, presidents and prime ministers have almost always ignored nuclear threats, hoping not to dignify them. Unfortunately, this posture has only emboldened the threat-makers to make more threats. The later the international community confronts belligerent Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, the more dangerous the confrontations will be.
"The world, therefore, looks like it is fast approaching the worst moment in history."
Chang referenced several recent Russian threats, including one on a state-owned TV program during which Aleksey Zhuravlyov, chairman of Russia's pro-Kremlin Rodina Party, urged Putin to nuke Britain with a Sarmat, the world's largest and heaviest missile.
"The program noted that a missile launched from Russia's Kaliningrad enclave would take 106 seconds to hit Berlin, 200 seconds to reach Paris, and 202 seconds to obliterate London," Chang wrote. "The NATO designation of the Sarmat is 'Satan II.'"
Chang also cited a Russian media executive who called on Putin to launch a "Poseidon underwater drone with a 'warhead of up to 100 megatons'" that would create a 1,640-foot tidal wave that would "plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean."
"This tidal wave is also a carrier of extremely high doses of radiation," executive Dmitry Kiselyov said, Chang wrote. "Surging over Britain, it will turn whatever is left of them into (a) radioactive desert, unusable for anything. How do you like this prospect?"
These we would hope of course to be idle threats, but when an enemy is pushed back to the wall, what do they have to lose? So to dismiss these threats as nothing more than propaganda would be a big mistake.
But this isn't just about the war in Ukraine. Because China has long had its sites set on annexing Taiwan. A move that would be seen as a violation of Taiwan's status although not a member of NATO "Taiwan shall be treated as though it were designated a major non-NATO ally (as defined in section 644(q) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2403(q))[)]."
Chang went on to say, "As for China, that the country's defense minister in March promised the "worst consequences" for countries helping Taiwan defend itself.
Chang expounded on why Russia, China, and even North Korea have threatened "to launch the world's most destructive weaponry." Surely by most definitions leading to World War III and most likely the end of civilization as we know it.
Besides a decreasing fear of the U.S., Chang cited the desire to intimidate enemies and "a last-days-in-the-bunker mentality" as reasons for the increased nuclear threats. These leaders Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong-un all seem to share this mentality and all are embrazened but the sheer weakness showed by Washington.
Russia, Chang noted, has a nuclear doctrine known as "escalate to deescalate" – more accurately, "escalate to win," which contemplates threatening or using nuclear weapons early in a conventional conflict. After all I think we all know that in such a conflict (surely ending in world destruction) the one who shoots first wins. But at what cost?
"Because the Western democracies have largely stood down and are clearly not fighting in Ukraine, Beijing and Pyongyang want similar successes," Chang wrote.
"These threats may reveal that the leaders of these regimes share a last-days-in-the-bunker mentality. Both Russia and China, albeit in different ways, are ruled by regimes in distress, which means their leaders undoubtedly have low thresholds of risk." And those low thresholds could mean devastation without regard for the rest of the world or even for humanity on the whole.
We of course hope and pray that never happens, but how can we be sure? The fact that our leadership is weak, and perceived to be a joke on the world stage, we are no longer the big deterrent we once were. That is sad news for all of us.
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