The whole rationale to have nuclear weapons is illegal, insane, and immoral. Yet through the cold war the massive accumulation of nukes only provided cover for proxy war and the threat of nuclear deployment along with the increased threat of accidental use of these weapons.
What was also omitted in the Bulletin article was the nuclear policy of the United States and its NATO military alliance: It is both NATO and America’s right to use nuclear weapons as a preemptive nuclear first strike. Russia does not have a first use policy; nor do the Chinese. This may be the precedent and policy that President Putin is alluding to; The precedent that birthed the policy of preemptive first strike was the precedent that the United bases it nuclear doctrine; actual first use of nuclear weapons. Which in the scheme of things, is an aggressive act.
Holloway and Tannewald have been duped to say Putin is wrong. Putin’s statement does not contradict Russia’s condemnation of nuclear weapons. This is an example of dupes of the deep state using their platform to dupe the rest of American society. They follow a hegemonic script, so they too, project America’s shadow. Moreover, Vladimir Putin may well be acting more like John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile crisis. In 1962 upon learning through intelligence photographs that Soviet intermediate range missiles were being deployed to Cuba to counter the effects of U.S./NATO missiles deployed in Turkey, Kennedy and his national security advisors ordered a special military operation-a Naval blockade of Cuba. The blockade nearly triggered World War III were it not for the conscientious objection of one Soviet nuclear torpedo launch officer.
In fact, US leaders, including Scientists, have behaved as if the precedent of the 1945 atomic test were not a crime against humanity at all. Even though they agreed with the international community that the U.S. did not set a precedent for future use?! Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, said later in life, "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan." In a speech at Hiroshima in 2016, President Obama spoke of “the future we can choose—a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.” The moral awakening the United States needs to acknowledge is the 78 years of moral injury informed, criminal insanity, it has projected upon the world for not apologizing for its crimes against humanity.
As a lifelong prisoner of the Cold war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, the NATO Interventions in the Balkans, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe: This is now a hot war and the way out for Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin and Actor Zelensky of this failed state of aggression, is a commitment to diplomacy and real Democracy and abolishing nuclear weapons.