Well Ukraine got worn out over last 2 years with spotty western support and weird restrictions on weapons usage.
This is where the west wanted Ukraine. So here we are.
Russia is weakened so west and US got what they wanted it so now we are ready to do a deal.
Nobody will ever give up nukes after this and many countries are going to be getting their nukes in order as that is the only way to properly secure sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Coupled with Israel behavior undermining “rules” based international order, this is the brave new world we got.
If I call you a Putin asslicker it basically means that all the evidence you posted is null and I don’t have to even read it or post evidence of my own, so, checkmate.
Add this one to the list, btw, Russia’s surpassed Japan as the 4th world economy by PPP gross domestic product.
That’s basically the level of argument libs bring to the table. The most hilarious part here is that this is stuff that’s openly reported in western media. It’s not controversial in any way, and yet we still have people running around thinking that the west managed to harm Russia in some way.
Lol, you serious? From Turkey alone around 250.000 refugees already returned since Assad fell. They were hardly able to manage that stream of returning refugees at the border. Many, many more prepare to return. Most refugees fled from the Assad governement.
The Isis-thing was never more than a minor sub-conflict.
Your reference predates Assad’s toppling and the very URL mentions people fleeing due to escalation, so it doesn’t contradict the comment to which you replied, nor does it substantiate your statements. Do you have a better corroboration?
Syria has now been invaded by Turkey and Israel, with a whole bunch of different groups fighting each other there for dominance now. If you don’t understand how this is going to result in a massive refugee crisis then I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you’ll just have to wait a few months and see for yourself
No, I’m pointing out that the west overthrowing governments tends to have negative consequences for the west. The US tried to occupy Afghanistan for decades and bled trillions on that project. Meanwhile, anytime a government is overthrown by extremists, then you necessarily end up with waves of refugee fleeing the country. What part of that are you having trouble understanding?
The “weakening” of Russia is what they considered “second prize,” but they didn’t even get that, because Russia is now stronger. The sanctions have backfired. Russia has severed its ties with the “garden” and strengthened its ties to the “jungle.”
Unlikely. If the west was pushing to destroy Russia they would have provided Ukraine with adequate arms to do so. They deliberately created a drawn out long conflict. Whether Russia has been weakened as they hoped is debateable. It does not yet appear so.
They wanted to destroy Russia economically, not militarily, you know, the usual “bog them in forever war and sanction them to death because we control the world finance systems” and it had a good chance of success, but they miscalculated since Russia relations with China and global south in general proven to be much more robust. It was also first time after 1991 so many countries just told US “no” when they demanded another country be destroyed economically. As result BRICS managed to build their own alternative for US controlled finance system, which is pretty ad hoc by now, but it already works and is being strenghtened.
I don’t think their goal was to create a drawn out conflict however. The idea was to use Ukraine as fodder and then break Russia economically. Western planners fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Russian economy, and thought that it would collapse after they froze Russian foreign assets and put sanctions on. Not only did that not happen, but major countries like China and India snubbed the west and continued trade with Russia. That’s where the whole hare brained scheme started to come apart, but the time this became obvious the west was already too invested to pull back.
The Americs really pushing Zelensky to not accept the ceasefire in 2022 is what mostly made me think they did not plan for victory. There were no new plans afterwards and it has been meat grinder ever since.
It’s bewildering to me that they didn’t have a backup plan. Like they just banked everything on Russian economy collapsing, and when that didn’t happen they just kept doubling down instead of adjusting the strategy.
Realistically, what other plan could they have? They’ve used the same playbook since Vietnam and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but since it always funnels a shit ton of money to the pentagon and its contractors pumps the value of the dollar nobody gives a shit, it was a success by the only metric they care about.
Their industry has been slowly decaying over the years and can’t adequately supply Ukraine in a long, drawn out conflict without jeopardizing their own defense. The amount of equipment Ukraine received at the first few months of the conflict was staggering, but most of it was from stockpiles built over years. Russia ramped up their industry a lot during the war and is outproducing the west, so it’s no wonder they are winning.
Not really. Only recently have they started sending modern long range missiles and semi modern fighter jets to Ukraine. Those were available since the start.
Things like missiles and fighter jets aren’t instrumental in this conflict. If they were, then Russia would’ve won a long time ago because they’ve always had a massive superiority in both. This is primarily a war of attrition with 80% of casualties coming from artillery battles. The problem the west has is that it’s simply not capable of producing things like artillery shells at the rate they’re consumed.
True but that is because both sides are mostly doing the field battle thing like they did in the 1700 instead of trying to blow up all civilian infrastructure of the other party America style. Which Ukraine cannot do much because they would get nuked. And Russia so far has not done much either.
The entire war there is just very weird. There is no way for Ukraine to win besides getting nukes or somehow destroying all Russian oil without getting nuked. And both are basically impossible.
It’s worth noting that Russia has largely dismantled Ukrainian power grid at this point. However, it very much looks like Russia is focusing on destroying the army itself first and foremost. I agree that it is absolutely illogical for the west to prolong the war at this point as it’s becoming clear that Russia has won, and that the economic blow back for the west is worse than it is for Russia. The west is falling for the sunk cost fallacy here.
The west has to balance providing adequate arms and not getting bombed/invaded themselves. They only do invasions on enemies they think can’t defend themselves.
They thought the sanctions would do to Russia what it did to Libya, Venezuela, Iraq, and many others, and that they’d only need to drag this one out to win it on the economic rather than the military front. That obviously hasn’t worked, so rather than broker the peace talks a majority of Ukrainians want, they’re escalating because they don’t know how to do diplomacy, they only know how to do extortion. They’re talking about “negotiating from strength” ffs.
Only permawar provides for the most weapon sales. The sanctions on Russia was tighter colonization of EU by the US. To the last Ukrainian is opportunity to buy Ukraine assets for cheap, and making the war last longer, means cheaper, and more EU subservience.
Also more debt. The same people whining about the fictitious Chinese debt trap are really silent about how the US are lending billions to Ukraine so they can finance these arms deals, we know what these countries do once you can’t repay, they confiscate all your shit.
If Russia was ever truly pushed to the brink Russia could always nuke Ukraine. There is no real way to win against nukes besides giving Ukraine their nukes back because America did not hold up their end of the nuclear deal.
This situation has already played out with the nukes the west put in turkey in the 60’s. I would hope they wouldn’t be dumb enough to repeat that mistake, but things these days are pretty fucking stupid over here in the USA
The restrictions aren’t “weird”. These are weapons that need satellite guidance from NATO satellites and stockpiled at NATO bases.
If they started being fired en masse, Russia would need to disable those satellites, and the US only instigated this war to weaken Russia and prevent it from arming anti imperialist resistance groups in the middle east. It’s not interested in actually fighting, because fighting an organized army is much harder, much costlier, and carries more risk than invading Asian countries with peasant militias.
The war exists only because Russia’s conditions for peace are not accepted. No NATO (or missile bases) in Ukraine. There was a very patient peace agenda by Russia, signed by the west and Ukraine btw, before SMO.
The war exists because Russia invaded. You can’t have a “peace agenda” or “conditions for peace” until someone started a war in the first place, and that was Russia.
Get ready to be told that Russia should just walk all their troops back and that’d be peace achieved (bombing in the Donbas doesn’t count, apparently, because it’s the good Nazis doing it), like a fucking toddler’s concept of geopolitics.
I don’t believe your position can be honest. It basically says all bar fights are started by the one throwing first punch, no matter what threats are made. All US media and CIA subterfuge to corrupt democracies is not done for the benefit of the democracies. War on Russia is largely a US war on its allies, and tolerance for the concept that Russia is not forced to defend its existence, or have red lines where peace can thrive, just shows how corrupt and fooling democracy can be. Not that Ukraine is a democracy.
Not forced, more goaded. This is the war the US wanted, but it didn’t want to be seen as the one who started it.
NATO expansion:
George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev HeardDeclassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland MadeAssistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in UkraineFormer Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
Love the “you made me do this to you” energy here, very progressive stance of believing that sometimes abusers just have to hit people, and there’s truly nothing that can be done about it.
I’ve also seen this analogy: “Russia had no business in Ukraine, just as US had no business in Afghanistan”. Apparently coming from someone who couldn’t find Ukraine on the map and had no idea how much history and culture these two countries share
Gringos and their fucking victim complex I swear. Y’all just got done toppling Syria and their people are already being stoned to death in the street when they’re not being bombed. A few years ago you did it to Haiti, and they’re starving to death, like you did it to Peru, and you did it to Libya, where there are slave markets now thanks to y’all.
So this is less an abusive partner insisting it’s your fault and more a motherfucker who’s killed hundreds waving a knife inches from your face insisting you’re a menace for clocking him. The fact that the US launders its provocations through their client states doesn’t mean the rest of the world is as stupid as westerners to buy it. We’re not invested in empire, so we don’t have to close our eyes and pretend we’re the good guys in this.
As opposed to accusing someone on the Internet of personally overthrowing multiple governments, which actually very serious and definitely not nonsense…
I know libs don’t do it personally, they limit themselves to cheering on genocides from their armchair and stamping down on people who want to stop their imperialist governments
This is also missing the fact that Russia and Ukraine already had a peace agreement, the Minsk II accords. Which Ukraine promptly violated by bombing Donbas for 5 years and killing upwards of 14 thousand civilians.
Nobody forced Russia to invade another sovereign nation. If anything it goes to show that being in NATO keeps you safe from Russia (just look at the baltic states). If Putin and/or Russia’s goal was to stop NATO expansion this war already did the opposite.
Well Ukraine got worn out over last 2 years with spotty western support and weird restrictions on weapons usage.
This is where the west wanted Ukraine. So here we are.
Russia is weakened so west and US got what they wanted it so now we are ready to do a deal.
Nobody will ever give up nukes after this and many countries are going to be getting their nukes in order as that is the only way to properly secure sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Coupled with Israel behavior undermining “rules” based international order, this is the brave new world we got.
Cheers.
As North Korea had correctly identified early and worked towards diligently to protect their people.
In what way is Russia weakened?
Last I checked, mainstream western sources report that Russian economy is booming. For example, the World Bank just reclassified Russia as a high income country https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/world-bank-country-classifications-by-income-level-for-2024-2025
The IMF forecasts that Russian economy is set to grow faster than all the western economies https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/russia-forecast-to-grow-faster-than-advanced-economies-in-2024-imf.html
Russian oil and gas revenues soared 41% in first half of the year, as the data shows https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-oil-gas-revenue-soars-41-first-half-data-shows-2024-07-03/
Russian military is stronger today than at the start of the war https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/ukraine-krieg-nato-oberbefehlshaber-und-generalinspekteur-ueber-folgen-und-perspektiven-a-9cb8d225-8bd8-454d-830d-009c9f46dfc9#selection-791.0-791.81
The number of Russian troops is constantly increasing https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/12/17/ukraine-s-top-general-to-le-monde-the-number-of-russian-troops-is-constantly-increasing_6736188_4.html
Russian MIC is outproducing the west. For example, Russia is able to produce 3x as many artillery shells as all of the west combined https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery-shell-production-us-europe-ukraine/index.html
If I call you a Putin asslicker it basically means that all the evidence you posted is null and I don’t have to even read it or post evidence of my own, so, checkmate.
Add this one to the list, btw, Russia’s surpassed Japan as the 4th world economy by PPP gross domestic product.
https://www.intellinews.com/russia-overtakes-japan-to-become-the-fourth-largest-economy-in-the-world-in-ppp-terms-328108/
On the other hand: Germany, one of the biggest sponsors of this war, is currently on its way directly to the shitter https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2024-12-18/the-german-government-collapse-and-a-trend-of-discontent
That’s basically the level of argument libs bring to the table. The most hilarious part here is that this is stuff that’s openly reported in western media. It’s not controversial in any way, and yet we still have people running around thinking that the west managed to harm Russia in some way.
Dude don’t come in here with evidence. You’ll pop their bubble.
😆
Russia just lost Syria.
Seems to me that the west just gained a new Afghanistan. I’m sure Europe is going to love the new refugee crisis.
Lol, you serious? From Turkey alone around 250.000 refugees already returned since Assad fell. They were hardly able to manage that stream of returning refugees at the border. Many, many more prepare to return. Most refugees fled from the Assad governement.
The Isis-thing was never more than a minor sub-conflict.
Yeah, I’m very serious. The country is literally overrun by jihadists now. If you don’t understand that people are going to be fleeing what’s happening you’re living in a fantasy world. Even reuters understands what’s happening https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/up-15-million-people-could-flee-syrian-escalation-un-official-says-2024-12-06/
Oh my, and you accuse of living knowledge a fantasy world…
They literally just unearthed a mass grave of approximately 150.000 people that have been murdered by Assad…
amazing counterpoint
Your reference predates Assad’s toppling and the very URL mentions people fleeing due to escalation, so it doesn’t contradict the comment to which you replied, nor does it substantiate your statements. Do you have a better corroboration?
Syria has now been invaded by Turkey and Israel, with a whole bunch of different groups fighting each other there for dominance now. If you don’t understand how this is going to result in a massive refugee crisis then I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you’ll just have to wait a few months and see for yourself
You are blaming Afghanistan for african refugees ??
No, I’m pointing out that the west overthrowing governments tends to have negative consequences for the west. The US tried to occupy Afghanistan for decades and bled trillions on that project. Meanwhile, anytime a government is overthrown by extremists, then you necessarily end up with waves of refugee fleeing the country. What part of that are you having trouble understanding?
What the West wanted ideally was the balkanization and re-neocolonialization of Russia. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/17/the-west-is-preparing-for-russias-disintegration/
The “weakening” of Russia is what they considered “second prize,” but they didn’t even get that, because Russia is now stronger. The sanctions have backfired. Russia has severed its ties with the “garden” and strengthened its ties to the “jungle.”
Unlikely. If the west was pushing to destroy Russia they would have provided Ukraine with adequate arms to do so. They deliberately created a drawn out long conflict. Whether Russia has been weakened as they hoped is debateable. It does not yet appear so.
They wanted to destroy Russia economically, not militarily, you know, the usual “bog them in forever war and sanction them to death because we control the world finance systems” and it had a good chance of success, but they miscalculated since Russia relations with China and global south in general proven to be much more robust. It was also first time after 1991 so many countries just told US “no” when they demanded another country be destroyed economically. As result BRICS managed to build their own alternative for US controlled finance system, which is pretty ad hoc by now, but it already works and is being strenghtened.
People planning this stuff aren’t idiots and they knew that there was no scenario that Ukraine could defeat Russia militarily no matter what weapons they provided. For example, back in 2016, Obama declared Ukraine to be not a core American interest and that he is reluctant to intervene in the country, because Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.
I don’t think their goal was to create a drawn out conflict however. The idea was to use Ukraine as fodder and then break Russia economically. Western planners fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Russian economy, and thought that it would collapse after they froze Russian foreign assets and put sanctions on. Not only did that not happen, but major countries like China and India snubbed the west and continued trade with Russia. That’s where the whole hare brained scheme started to come apart, but the time this became obvious the west was already too invested to pull back.
The Americs really pushing Zelensky to not accept the ceasefire in 2022 is what mostly made me think they did not plan for victory. There were no new plans afterwards and it has been meat grinder ever since.
It’s bewildering to me that they didn’t have a backup plan. Like they just banked everything on Russian economy collapsing, and when that didn’t happen they just kept doubling down instead of adjusting the strategy.
Realistically, what other plan could they have? They’ve used the same playbook since Vietnam and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but since it always funnels a shit ton of money to the pentagon and its contractors pumps the value of the dollar nobody gives a shit, it was a success by the only metric they care about.
That’s very true, the MIC will be happy either way. They’re looking at decades worth of contracts from Europe already.
Their industry has been slowly decaying over the years and can’t adequately supply Ukraine in a long, drawn out conflict without jeopardizing their own defense. The amount of equipment Ukraine received at the first few months of the conflict was staggering, but most of it was from stockpiles built over years. Russia ramped up their industry a lot during the war and is outproducing the west, so it’s no wonder they are winning.
Not really. Only recently have they started sending modern long range missiles and semi modern fighter jets to Ukraine. Those were available since the start.
Things like missiles and fighter jets aren’t instrumental in this conflict. If they were, then Russia would’ve won a long time ago because they’ve always had a massive superiority in both. This is primarily a war of attrition with 80% of casualties coming from artillery battles. The problem the west has is that it’s simply not capable of producing things like artillery shells at the rate they’re consumed.
True but that is because both sides are mostly doing the field battle thing like they did in the 1700 instead of trying to blow up all civilian infrastructure of the other party America style. Which Ukraine cannot do much because they would get nuked. And Russia so far has not done much either.
The entire war there is just very weird. There is no way for Ukraine to win besides getting nukes or somehow destroying all Russian oil without getting nuked. And both are basically impossible.
It’s worth noting that Russia has largely dismantled Ukrainian power grid at this point. However, it very much looks like Russia is focusing on destroying the army itself first and foremost. I agree that it is absolutely illogical for the west to prolong the war at this point as it’s becoming clear that Russia has won, and that the economic blow back for the west is worse than it is for Russia. The west is falling for the sunk cost fallacy here.
One twist is Ukraine is being used to get Europe to fund the American military industrial complex big time.
One twist is Ukraine is being used to get Europe to fund the American military industrial complex big time.
True, but they wouldn’t have changed the course of the war.
The west has to balance providing adequate arms and not getting bombed/invaded themselves. They only do invasions on enemies they think can’t defend themselves.
They thought the sanctions would do to Russia what it did to Libya, Venezuela, Iraq, and many others, and that they’d only need to drag this one out to win it on the economic rather than the military front. That obviously hasn’t worked, so rather than broker the peace talks a majority of Ukrainians want, they’re escalating because they don’t know how to do diplomacy, they only know how to do extortion. They’re talking about “negotiating from strength” ffs.
Only permawar provides for the most weapon sales. The sanctions on Russia was tighter colonization of EU by the US. To the last Ukrainian is opportunity to buy Ukraine assets for cheap, and making the war last longer, means cheaper, and more EU subservience.
Also more debt. The same people whining about the fictitious Chinese debt trap are really silent about how the US are lending billions to Ukraine so they can finance these arms deals, we know what these countries do once you can’t repay, they confiscate all your shit.
If Russia was ever truly pushed to the brink Russia could always nuke Ukraine. There is no real way to win against nukes besides giving Ukraine their nukes back because America did not hold up their end of the nuclear deal.
If the west gave nukes to Ukraine, Russia would obviously treat that as a nuclear attack by the west. At that point everybody dies.
This situation has already played out with the nukes the west put in turkey in the 60’s. I would hope they wouldn’t be dumb enough to repeat that mistake, but things these days are pretty fucking stupid over here in the USA
pretty much yeah
Possibly. Which is the point. There is no way for Ukraine to win unless the west wants to risk nuclear war.
Exactly, the whole thing was a folly from the start.
Well, the only party that did was Ukraine, really.
Maybe don’t give nukes to a fucking nazi government in hopes that’ll bring peace? Why not start with diplomacy and iterate from there?
Removed by mod
The restrictions aren’t “weird”. These are weapons that need satellite guidance from NATO satellites and stockpiled at NATO bases.
If they started being fired en masse, Russia would need to disable those satellites, and the US only instigated this war to weaken Russia and prevent it from arming anti imperialist resistance groups in the middle east. It’s not interested in actually fighting, because fighting an organized army is much harder, much costlier, and carries more risk than invading Asian countries with peasant militias.
Well, that’s certainly a perspective.
Really unclear how the US forced Russia to invade, you’ll have to explain that part I think.
I mean RAND published a whole paper on this that you can read, it’s not like this stuff was hidden https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
The war exists only because Russia’s conditions for peace are not accepted. No NATO (or missile bases) in Ukraine. There was a very patient peace agenda by Russia, signed by the west and Ukraine btw, before SMO.
The war exists because Russia invaded. You can’t have a “peace agenda” or “conditions for peace” until someone started a war in the first place, and that was Russia.
The war only started in 2021 if you ignore the fact that fascist Nazi militias were shelling civilians and civilian infrastructure in eastern Ukraine for 7 years before Russia launched its SMO. There were two ceasefire agreements signed (Minsk 1 & Minsk 2) that these militias consistently violated. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to see for yourself. A French journalist documented this and spoke to residents about the ongoing conflict. CW: death and devastation.
Get ready to be told that Russia should just walk all their troops back and that’d be peace achieved (bombing in the Donbas doesn’t count, apparently, because it’s the good Nazis doing it), like a fucking toddler’s concept of geopolitics.
History ended in 1991 and started up again 30 years later. Everything in between doesn’t count.
I don’t believe your position can be honest. It basically says all bar fights are started by the one throwing first punch, no matter what threats are made. All US media and CIA subterfuge to corrupt democracies is not done for the benefit of the democracies. War on Russia is largely a US war on its allies, and tolerance for the concept that Russia is not forced to defend its existence, or have red lines where peace can thrive, just shows how corrupt and fooling democracy can be. Not that Ukraine is a democracy.
Not forced, more goaded. This is the war the US wanted, but it didn’t want to be seen as the one who started it.
NATO expansion:
.
US-backed Maidan coup & fascist attacks on Eastern Ukraine:
Love the “you made me do this to you” energy here, very progressive stance of believing that sometimes abusers just have to hit people, and there’s truly nothing that can be done about it.
The geopolitics of nuclear powers as an interpersonal relationship. Peak Marvel brain.
I’ve also seen this analogy: “Russia had no business in Ukraine, just as US had no business in Afghanistan”. Apparently coming from someone who couldn’t find Ukraine on the map and had no idea how much history and culture these two countries share
Yeah, analogies are hard when you take them as literally as possible.
Gringos and their fucking victim complex I swear. Y’all just got done toppling Syria and their people are already being stoned to death in the street when they’re not being bombed. A few years ago you did it to Haiti, and they’re starving to death, like you did it to Peru, and you did it to Libya, where there are slave markets now thanks to y’all.
So this is less an abusive partner insisting it’s your fault and more a motherfucker who’s killed hundreds waving a knife inches from your face insisting you’re a menace for clocking him. The fact that the US launders its provocations through their client states doesn’t mean the rest of the world is as stupid as westerners to buy it. We’re not invested in empire, so we don’t have to close our eyes and pretend we’re the good guys in this.
Wow, I had no idea I personally intervened in Syria, Myanmar, Haiti, and Libya, I must have a ton of airline rewards and severe memory issues!
Don’t sins-of-the-father me if you don’t even know where I am, thanks in advance.
And the Olympic gold for comically missing the point by getting strangely defensive goes to…
More deeply unserious nonsense.
As opposed to accusing someone on the Internet of personally overthrowing multiple governments, which actually very serious and definitely not nonsense…
I know libs don’t do it personally, they limit themselves to cheering on genocides from their armchair and stamping down on people who want to stop their imperialist governments
Have you considered that doing an imperialism under a non-western flag is still doing an imperialism?
This is also missing the fact that Russia and Ukraine already had a peace agreement, the Minsk II accords. Which Ukraine promptly violated by bombing Donbas for 5 years and killing upwards of 14 thousand civilians.
I’m sorry but those happened before the beginning of history, which started on February 24, 2022.
Jesus Fucking Gish Gallop Christ.
Nobody forced Russia to invade another sovereign nation. If anything it goes to show that being in NATO keeps you safe from Russia (just look at the baltic states). If Putin and/or Russia’s goal was to stop NATO expansion this war already did the opposite.
All of those are Western sources, and most of them are well-known, MB/FC-blessed sources.
Next you’re going to tell me that NATO is a defensive alliance.
So why did biden lift them 2 years too late now?
Because he’s a senile genocidal fuck whose only restraints for provoking a nuclear war was that he might lose an election he already lost.