What is this now?
"Trump's comments on nuclear arms rattle U.S. and foreign leaders"
"Trump challenges the world order"
"Trump, promising arms race, could set world on uncertain path."
Okay, stop. Putin said the following earlier this week:
Putin went on: Russia would, “need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense system.”
Now: the missile defense system, remember SDI? Star Wars?, that was what caused Gorbachev to fold. His morally and economically bankrupt Soviet Union could not compete. Remember Reykjavik? Reagan sorrowfully refused to give up SDI. That was the beginning of the end of the USSR. That was a good thing!
We never got SDI of course but Europe did get a missile defense system and that has bedeviled Gorby's successors, especially as NATO expanded.
So what Putin was saying there was that he hasn't, and won't, give up. He won't give up until Russia can blast through the anti-missile system.
Trump "rattled"? Trump "challenged the world order"? Trump "could set the world on an uncertain path"?
No.
Putin did all of that rattling and challenging and uncertain-izing.
Trump responded to Putin's truly alarming statement of intent with a laying out of the American response:
“Let it be an arms race…we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
That is Reagan-esque and that is good. And Putin knows he would have to fold just as Gorbachev had to fold. Americans have the capability for a new arms race, the Russians do not. Putin knows this very well. So today he did the self-evident thing, he stated Russia wasn't interested in a new nuclear arms on accounta the Russians would be lapped by the U.S. in such a race. That is why they have gone cheap with cyber-invasion of America.
Trump got this one right. And for the Putin-Trump mutual admiration society, Trump is ready to go all in on expanding and modernizing the American nuclear arsenal and establishing facts on the ground that will stop Russia from neutralizing the European missile defense system.
It is all good. Trump got the various strands of an American response to Putin's bluster exactly right. Spend away, Trump, and be lavish in your spending.
"Trump's comments on nuclear arms rattle U.S. and foreign leaders"
"Trump challenges the world order"
"Trump, promising arms race, could set world on uncertain path."
Okay, stop. Putin said the following earlier this week:
“Of course the U.S. has more missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers, but what we say is that we are stronger than any aggressor, and this is the case."
Russia's nuclear capability is stronger than that of "any aggressor," meaning the U.S. That was a statement of fact by Putin, "that is the case." I take that as fact that the Russians believe that. Maybe they do. Maybe that is fact-fact. Whether it is fact-fact or Russian belief fact, that is not good!
We must disabuse the Russians of that belief fact and of the fact-fact if it exists.
Putin went on: Russia would, “need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense system.”
Now: the missile defense system, remember SDI? Star Wars?, that was what caused Gorbachev to fold. His morally and economically bankrupt Soviet Union could not compete. Remember Reykjavik? Reagan sorrowfully refused to give up SDI. That was the beginning of the end of the USSR. That was a good thing!
We never got SDI of course but Europe did get a missile defense system and that has bedeviled Gorby's successors, especially as NATO expanded.
So what Putin was saying there was that he hasn't, and won't, give up. He won't give up until Russia can blast through the anti-missile system.
Trump "rattled"? Trump "challenged the world order"? Trump "could set the world on an uncertain path"?
No.
Putin did all of that rattling and challenging and uncertain-izing.
Trump responded to Putin's truly alarming statement of intent with a laying out of the American response:
“Let it be an arms race…we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
That is Reagan-esque and that is good. And Putin knows he would have to fold just as Gorbachev had to fold. Americans have the capability for a new arms race, the Russians do not. Putin knows this very well. So today he did the self-evident thing, he stated Russia wasn't interested in a new nuclear arms on accounta the Russians would be lapped by the U.S. in such a race. That is why they have gone cheap with cyber-invasion of America.
Trump got this one right. And for the Putin-Trump mutual admiration society, Trump is ready to go all in on expanding and modernizing the American nuclear arsenal and establishing facts on the ground that will stop Russia from neutralizing the European missile defense system.
It is all good. Trump got the various strands of an American response to Putin's bluster exactly right. Spend away, Trump, and be lavish in your spending.
