How Putin Will Go Nuclear

By Howard Bloom

We are in a war with one man, Vladimir Putin. And Vladimir Putin is nuclear.

Putin has made two kinds of nuclear threats. He has threatened to use nuclear warheads. And he has implicitly threatened us with deliberate disasters at the nuclear reactors he has captured.

But that’s not all. Since the year 2000, Russian military policy has been to use “a limited nuclear strike” if you’re losing. In fact the Russian government’s official “military doctrine” calls “a limited nuclear strike ‘de-escalation.’” You heard that right. Russian military doctrine calls the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield de-escalation. Why?

Because if Russia is losing to the overwhelming conventional forces of the United States and NATO, a limited nuclear strike will make those overwhelming forces withdraw in fear.

The development of that new military doctrine 22 years ago was supervised by just one man: his name is Vladimir Putin. And “all large-scale military exercises that Russia [has] conducted beginning in 2000 [have] featured simulations of limited nuclear strikes.” And Business Insider reports that Russia now has a “massive arsenal” of 2,000 battlefield nuclear weapons.

What’s worse, the Putin doctrine of limited nuclear strikes extends to any conflict “in which Russia has an important stake” Which means it’s applicable to the Ukraine. Or to any Eastern European country that once belonged to the Soviet Union.

Why is Vladimir Putin so willing to use nuclear weapons? Because he can’t compete with us in conventional military terms.

According to American Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, we outspend Putin on our military fifteen to one. We have 25,000 planes. Putin has 5,000. We have four million troops. Putin has only one million. But we have a gaping weakness. We see the first use of a nuclear weapon as a step toward the apocalypse, a step toward the end of the world, and a step toward the possible end of the human race.