NUCLEAR SABER-RATTLING: Putin’s Plan to Send Russians to Heaven.

Nuclear threats are central to Russia’s strategy for dealing with the West and are sometimes made over trivial issues. Noted Russia expert Dr. Stephen Blank has pointed out that, “When 300 marines came to Norway to help Norway defend its coastline in the Arctic, they [Russia] made nuclear threats against Norway also. This is what they do, because it’s the only way they can intimidate people and force them to take Russia at Russia’s own self-evaluation.”[7] Notably, the recent Russian threats concerning responses to U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty were made during a period in which Russia was trying to downplay nuclear threats as part of a strategy aimed at ending sanctions, terminating the increase in NATO military budgets and ending NATO military exercises directed against a Russian invasion. However, Russia just can’t stop making them. As Alexei Arbatov, former Duma Vice Chairman of the Duma Defense Committee and head of the International Security Center within the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Major General (ret.) Vladimir Dvorkin and Petr Topychkanov stated in November 2017, there is “a visceral assumption among contemporary Russian strategists that the decision to use force—including nuclear weapons—would be a rational step.”[8]

Today, President Putin not only threatens to kill his enemies with nuclear weapons but asserts that he is doing so in a way that results in their eternal damnation.

This would be a huge deal if it were an American President — of a particular political party, of course.

Reagan was called a warmonger, even while working publicly to render the damned things useless, and privately some in the White House wondered if he’d actually push the button should the Soviets strike first. And now Trump, too. It’s almost as though the media has a single playbook for GOP presidents, regardless of the facts.