Russia’s parliament took the first step on Tuesday towards revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and its top lawmaker hinted it might go further by abandoning the pact altogether.
Parliament’s lower house, the Duma, voted by 412 to zero, with no abstentions, to approve the withdrawal of the ratification in the first of three readings.
Russia says the aim is to restore parity with the United States, which has signed but never ratified the 1996 treaty, and that it will not resume testing unless Washington does.
But arms control experts are concerned that Russia may be inching towards a test that would be perceived as a threatening signal by the West at a time of heightened confrontation over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
I wonder what it would cost – not just financially but personally – a member of the Duma to have voted against this insanity, or to have abstained.
Putin got the vote he wanted, that is clear. But it just leaves me wondering what the real vote would have looked like, because not just the Duma but the entire world knows this is bullshit. Even the best-kept nukes are never risk free, but throw in Russia’s overwhelming commitment to military maintenance, especially at the lower leadership levels (“tank not need woman like I do, woman she cost more”) and those nukes are as likely to explode upon key turn as they are to ever achieve flight.
If there were ANY way for that lil taterhead Putin to have “accidentally” unleashed a smaller one in some controlled way in order to underscore for the world that he has nukes, he would already have done so. That is the kind of saber-rattling he enjoys, and has reveled in so far. But he can’t. He literally cannot touch Russia’s nukes without triggering MAD, not just from Western retaliation but from the non-zero chance that one or more just detonates on the pad before ever leaving Russia.
But today, from the Duma, we have a vote of 412 with no abstentions, nary a peep of objection.
Lol, no. Political theater. And the ONLY nuclear saber-rattling left to Putin without actually moving or using nukes.
The difference between Russians and Americans has always been that we have used them before, for no reason (Nagasaki) and many presidents since then would love to have a go. Trump wanted to nuke some bad weather, once.
They believe it is all a head game, so they’re good at the game aspect of it. But they are atheists, and so fall short in the “crazy enough to really do it” side of things. Most of us believe in an afterlife, much to my chagrin; in pure game theory terms for MAD, that’s an edge.