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.
Can we just fucking stop for one minute? Total destruction accomplishes what? It’s mind boggling how absolutely selfish and childish some adults and mostly politicians act. Really depressing actually, feels like a constant battle everywhere against these sorts of people.
It’s inevitable.
For a while we lived in a unipolar world. The US ruled the roost, for better and for worse. The world was relatively calm.
But now we’re transitioning to a multipolar world. Things will become more and more unstable. More wars and the risk of escalation is part and parcel of that transition. So it’s back to preparing for the possibility of nuclear war.
It’s a shame really. Perhaps we could have tackled climate change if the world was more unified. Perhaps not, given the lack of progress so far. Or perhaps a different world order will help and offer new opportunities, if we survive the transition.
Total destruction is not that big a deal if you believe in an afterlife and think you’ll go to the good one.
You know that this was actual policy for decades right? Lookup Mutual Assured Destruction (mad).
Doesn’t mean it’s not the dumbest shit humans have ever come up with
you don’t own shit unless you can stop others from taking it
thinking otherwise is a naive privilege
It absolutely is, living in the time of ‘duck and cover’ was awesome. It’s nice to see a return.
it never stopped being that, everything else is theatre
Threat of total destruction can accomplish quite a lot.
Just do it, but please don’t spare anyone, back to monke we go
You shouldn’t really assume that the Russian government is up to anything aside from imitating some activity to present the their superiors, which is all a long chain going from the very down to the very top.
It’s a corrupt government that consists of people only aiming at filling their pockets with as much money as possible, for as long as possible. Sometimes they need to play along and make people (mostly their gone-mad old-aged marasmatic superiors) believe they’re loyal, should be allowed to keep their money and pay, and are super busy.
There is no ideology. There is no long-term goal. There isn’t even an evil goal. There’s only greed and some things that they think they must do to keep their pockets growing.
What total destruction? This is meaningless political posturing.
We did stop for one minute and now that minute has passed. Simple truth is there can be no trust between competing countries. All the major players have proven they can and are willing to do anything for complete hegemony.
They’ve had time to do the math and see the effects. Once they have countermeasures in place and decide the losses will be worth the price, nuclear war will happen.
Some people are dumb enough to try and make it happen while feeling all smug or righteous about it.
We are that dumb.
Parliament’s lower house, the Duma, voted by 412 to zero, with no abstentions
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.
So why did the US sign and never ratify this treaty?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
MOSCOW, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Russia is revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty because of the irresponsible attitude of the United States to global security, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament said on Tuesday.
“The Russian Federation will do everything to protect its citizens and to maintain global strategic parity,” Volodin said.
Russian officials say that the revocation of ratification does not mean Russia is going to test a nuclear bomb and that it is simply coming into line with the U.S. position, though arms control experts are concerned Russia could be inching towards a resumption of nuclear testing.
But the Ukraine war has raised tensions between Moscow and Washington to the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis just as China seeks to bolster its nuclear arsenal to accord with its status as an emerging superpower.
A bipartisan panel appointed by the U.S. Congress said on Thursday that Washington must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Moscow and Beijing by expanding its conventional forces, strengthening alliances and enhancing its nuclear weapons modernization programme.
Putin has dismissed that talk as nonsense and has said that he sees no need to change Russia’s nuclear doctrine - a document that outlines that Russia would only order a strike with nuclear weapons if it was attacked, or if the existence of the state was endangered by an attack with conventional weapons.
The original article contains 601 words, the summary contains 236 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It sounds a lot like russia trying to use the wests fear to get us to pull support for ukraine.
Kind of hard to be intimidating while getting one’s ass kicked.
Maybe they can try give us a stern talking to
