Pre-emptive nuclear strikes

So, Colossus: The Forbin Project is being resurrected?

Please tell me this is just more bullshit posturing.

On exactly what planet does that make sense? Planet Crazy, that's what.

Clearly, we need another Superman movie where Supes gathers up the nukes and throws them all into the sun...

One of Putin's generals threw this out a few days ago. And with Russia's military being so depleted it makes sense they would threaten this. Today Putin and co. shot a missle into the Atlantic in a Test. Odds are this is NATO's way of saying, "Whatever you do we can do too!"

Sane people have no intention of lobbing nukes at anybody "just in case."

However, we (humans generally) have a bad habit of believing ourselves to be sane, while our enemies are insane. Look at our political discourse: "The Iranians are nuts! Putin's lost his mind!" or whatever. The ugly truth is that almost all of the leaders who oppose our agenda are entirely sane, but have competing objectives themselves and a radically different point of view. It's very, very rare for a totally cuckoo person to get into power; when it happens, North Korea is what it looks like (and even then it's not that simple). In contrast, by any objective standard, Hugo Chavez is not only not a "loon" or whatever, he is proceeding on the basis of an entirely rational strategy in pursuit of completely understandable goals.* Doesn't mean we have to agree with them; just means it doesn't take much cogitation to figure out where he's coming from.

And yet, we habitually reduce the opposition to the status of fruitcakes and whackjobs, and we establish a military posture that reflects this. "We aren't crazy. We aren't going to lob nukes just for the hell of it. But Syria, man, those guys are bonkers. Who knows what they might do. If they were rational, like us, we could have a rational strategy. But they aren't. They're insane. So we have to show a little insanity ourselves, so if necessary, we can out-crazy them." Insert names of players as you like, depending on whether this statement comes from the U.S. or Russia or whomever. Doesn't matter; it'd be formulated the same.

Seen in that light, the position makes a little more sense. However, note that this is a logical formulation, which by definition is contrary to how one deals with a so-called crazy person. If the enemy really were insane, there'd be no functional reason to meet them with a logical counterpoint, because they'd be irrational and unpredictable. (I leave it to the reader to decide which kind of foe is more dangerous.) In other words, implicit in this message is an acknowledgement that the enemy is not, in fact, nuts. It is, as stated, merely posturing.

But it's not empty puffery, or worse, incomprehensible madness; it's based on a self-fulfillingly delusional (and, unfortunately, pervasively common) worldview. And it isn't likely to change any time soon. Which, naturally, makes all of us a little bit crazy. But that's another thread.


* (And for the liberals among us, George Bush and Dick Cheney ain't crazy either.)

using nukes in order to stop the use of nukes? your right...this is all from planet crazy! haha

It is foolish to use nukes first, unless you have a special covert ops group on the ground to disable their missle detection system before hand. If you had that then the first strike would be an only strike, which is the key to any victory.. Remember, M.A.D. is B A D.

Putin's a little bat shit crazy, trying to reclaim the stake that Russia is a superpower, truth be told it's just posturing while he tries to secure more resources\companies for his own personal wealth when he retires as President and becomes Prime Minister.

Crazy? I don't think there's a large group of people accusing him of being crazy. An evil soulless greedy pile of shit I think is the correct term to describe Mr. Bush and Cheney.

But since you put it out there, insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If this President believes that his strategies are going to put an end to terrorism instead of increasing it, and that staying the course in Iraq is indeed going to result in us not making that giant hole we've dug for ourselves even bigger, than he is insane. No question about it.