Go Get Your Nukes
Seventy Years Held. Three Presidents Broke It.
Since World War II, America’s greatest unseen success was containing the spread of nuclear weapons. Through military dominance, ironclad alliances, and credible threats, Washington built a system where most nations believed it was safer to stay under the U.S. nuclear umbrella than to build their own arsenal. For nearly seventy years, the strategy held. New nuclear states were rare, rogue programs were isolated, and nuclear blackmail never took root.
Then came the first rupture — the clearest signal in seven decades that if you got nukes, you could fly under the American threat and carve up countries at will. President Obama looked the other way when Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea. A few sanctions, a pat on the back, and back to the White House.
Putin got the message. It worked.
He tried again in Syria. Obama drew red lines; Putin and his pet crossed them for sport. Obama quietly erased them. Second message delivered.
When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, it must have been music to his ears to hear President Biden, in full view of the world, declare: "There won't be World War Three."
Putin dangled the nuclear threat, and Biden blinked. America sent a boatload of low-end weapons — but refused to arm Ukraine with what it needed to win. Ten Patriot systems. Hundreds of HIMARS. Thousands of ATACMS. That’s all it would have taken. Ukraine could have crushed Russia two years ago. Cost less than $20 billion.
Is there any reason Biden balked — other than the nukes in Putin’s hand?
Now Donald Trump is doing even better — bending over backwards to deliver Putin a win. He wants Ukraine to write off Crimea. If that happens, one message will ring louder than any in modern history:
Go get your nukes.
It only took three presidents to teach the world: the bomb is your best friend.
Fear is a terrible strategy.
That means Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark should all have them. Definitely for Ukraine. What a disaster it was giving up their nukes.
Time is the biggest enemy of spending on defence updates. After every major war involving mass killing, there is a false assumption that the world has learned a lesson that will avoid another war. The West visibly relaxed after the fall of the old USSR and started cutting defence spending. We forgot that there are still despots out there ruthless enough not to care who dies. The British forces were cut down far too much but we are awake again thanks to a despot arising in a place nobody could have expected - our own aly, the USA. Previous presidents did misread what would happen by not standing up sufficiently to a bully lamenting the old communist power bases but there is now no excuse for letting that remain. If not stopped now, our children and grandchildren will have a major war on their hands. It would be my generation that let it happen. All the money in the world would be of no value to any rich man or property developer if it can be blown up together with their lives. Putin and Xi must be laughing their heads off at the blithering idiots in the White House and the rest of us trying to catch up. However, it is not yet too late to resolve the issue without the USA.
Stop Trump's profiteering cabal from trying to impose a property deal on Ukraine and we can collectively stop Putin.