Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,
After a recent summit between new partners China and Russia, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued an odd one-sentence communique: “There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought.”
No one would disagree, even though several officials of both hypocritical governments have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks.
But still, why did the two feel the need to issue such a terse statement—and why now?
Rarely has the global rhetoric of mass annihilation reached such a crescendo as the present, as existential wars rage in Ukraine and Gaza.
In particular, Putin at least believes that he is finally winning the Ukraine conflict. Xi seems to assume that conventional ascendant Chinese military power in the South China Sea has finally made the absorption of Taiwan practicable.
They both believe that the only impediment to their victories would be an intervention from the U.S. and the NATO alliance, a conflict that could descend into mutual threats to resort to nuclear weapons.
Thus the recent warnings of Xi and Putin.
Almost monthly, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un continues his weary threats to use his nuclear arsenal to destroy South Korea or Japan.
A similarly monotonous, pro-Hamas Turkish president, Recep Erdogan, regularly threatens Armenians with crazy talk of repeating the “mission of our grandfathers.” And he occasionally warns Israelis and Greeks that they may one day wake up to Turkish missiles raining down upon their cities.
More concretely, for the first time in history, Iran attacked the homeland of Israel. It launched the largest wartime array of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones in modern history—over 320 projectiles.
Iran’s theocrats simultaneously claim they are about ready to produce nuclear weapons. And, of course, since 1979, Iran has periodically promised to wipe Israel off the map and half the world’s Jews with it.
Most ignore these crazy threats and write them off as the braggadocio of dictators. But as we saw on October 7, the barbarity of human nature has not changed much from the premodern world, whether defined by savage beheading, mutilations, murdering, mass rape, torture, and hostage taking of Israeli elderly, women, and children.
But what has radically transformed are the delivery systems of mass death—nuclear weapons, chemical gases, biological agents, and artificial-intelligence-driven delivery systems.
Oddly, the global reaction to the promise of Armageddon remains one of nonchalance. Most feel that such strongmen rant wildly but would never unleash weapons of civilizational destruction.
Consider that there are as many autocratic nuclear nations (e.g., Russia, China, Pakistan, North Korea, and perhaps Iran) as democratic ones (U.S., Britain, France, Israel, and India). Only Israel has an effective anti-ballistic missile dome. And the more the conventional power of the West declines, the more in extremis it will have to rely on a nuclear deterrent—at a time when it has no effective missile defense of its homelands.
In a just-released book, The End of Everything, I wrote about four examples of annihilation—the classical city-state of Thebes, ancient Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople and Aztec Tenochtitlán—in which the unimaginable became all too real.
In all these erasures, the targeted, naïve states believed that their illustrious pasts, rather than a realistic appraisal of their present inadequate defenses, would ensure their survival.
All hoped that their allies—the Spartans, the anti-Roman Macedonians, the Christian nations of Western Europe, and the subject cities of the Aztecs—would appear at the eleventh hour to stave off their defeat.
Additionally, these targeted states had little understanding of the agendas and capabilities of the brilliantly methodic killers outside their walls—the ruthless wannabe philosopher Alexander the Great, the literary patron Scipio Aemilianus, the self-described intellectual Mehmet II, and the widely read Hernán Cortés—who all sought to destroy utterly rather than merely defeat their enemies.
These doomed cities and nations were reduced to rubble or absorbed by the conquerors. Their populations were wiped out or enslaved, and their once-hallowed cultures, customs, and traditions lost to history. The last words of the conquered were usually variations of, “It can’t happen here.”
If the past is any guide to the present, we should take heed that what almost never happens in war can certainly still occur.
When killers issue wild, even lunatic, threats, we should nonetheless take them seriously.
We should not count on friends or neutrals to save our civilization. Instead, Americans should build defense systems over the skies of our homeland, secure our borders, ensure our military operates on meritocracy, cease wild deficit spending and borrowing, and rebuild both our conventional and nuclear forces.
Otherwise, we will naively—and fatally—believe that we are magically exempt when the inconceivable becomes all too real.
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ha ha ha….my morning laugh…good one Vikky.
“Only Israel has an effective anti-ballistic missile dome…I just released a book ”
Yes when it comes to nukes there is no iron dome, only one nuclear missile getting through would be the end of Israel, it is that small a country. Iran would also kill millions of Islamic’s with that missile, but I doubt they would care.It would be the end of Hamas too.
Who is talking nukes…the Iron Dome is as fake and gay as the nation it pretends to defend, and Iran’s light duty missile barage proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The pivot to Ukraine was the Synagogue of Satan’s last hope.
The terse statement was a warning, not just to the US, which is stupid enough to use nukes, but to the rest of the countries that think a nuclear war will somehow make them a winner, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Iran and Israel.
“There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought.”
Q. “Why is that PutinXi?”
PutinXi “Because there were never any nukes. Just theromobaric fuel air bombs.”
A distinction without a difference. The damage will be the same.
America is already defeated. If one watches movies for instance such as Alexander Revisited, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, or reads books about these historical time periods, what’s always evident is that these countries had practical divisions among the sexes. The men were effectively sequestered with other men, they either trained each other up or had plenty of examples in day-to-day situations to get the gist of what was expected of them in terms of warfare, physical and mental training, and their civic responsibilities. They were prepared throughout their lifetimes. Americans are set up for failure in these regards as this and many western countries are effectively nations of single people with no ties to the civic functioning thereof (voting isn’t applicable here), largely without a historical or contemporary context of the applicable training and preparations of such to be viewed as a formidable state actor within and outside the said countries, and the idea of being a people is about is hyperindividualism.
Another fully retarded author:
“even though several officials of both hypocritical governments [of Russia and China] have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks”
We’re so lucky the USSA never threatened anyone!!
This part of the post doesn’t make a lot of sense because it seems to imply a top-down centric government (the same levers of power), even at these late stages of the country’s existence.
“Americans should build defense systems over the skies of our homeland,”
Who exactly? The military-industrial complex, or the defense industry, and who would compel them do so and who would profit from this?
“secure our borders,”
The primary reason this would happen is to keep Americans and others in, to prevent them from leaving or escaping.
“ensure our military operates on meritocracy,”
This is a fantasy when it’s not the military of the people, but rather a state-centric standing army that has extended its influence and control beyond military objectives implementing it’s hegemony.
“cease wild deficit spending and borrowing,
Again, who’s going to control this when the American educational system doesn’t even teach how to manage personal finances or how the economy actually works and what it comprises of?
“and rebuild both our conventional and nuclear forces.”
As far as conventional forces it’s against the Constitution to have a standing army by, for and of the government. Who would the employment for rebuilding nuclear forces go to and would this once again lead to a stratification of political power? Are more nuclear weapons really desired?
Been fed this nuclear Holocaust hysteria since elementary school over 70 years back. False alarms maybe fake false flag nothing materialized but kept us on edge of our seats. We had no existential threat over those years but we have one now. The unimpeded invasion via the borders and pick up flights bringing 10,000 plus each day into our unprepared and apathetic welfare state. They will not kill us in open combat; they will bleed us out through indolence and our virtue seeking compassion.
Remember how our government coined the term “Axis of Evil” for the Middle East wars and “Axis Powers” for our WW II enemies…anyone see a pattern developing in this Fourth Turning? It’s coming again…the cycle never stops.
October 7th, a date that will kvetch in perpetuity.
why the fuck did I read this crap
You’re not responsible for the sounds you hear when you put your ear to the train track. You’re merely an “interested observer”.
Feelin better now?
By his own admission Victor Davis Hanson is a Neocon ideologue and a warmonger.
And that bothers you, WHY, exactly? Can you contrast it with your own beliefs and prove him wrong? I’d like to see that!