Some food for thought.
The blanket response to Russia's progress in the Ukraine war and China's continuing rise is
"we can always just ramp up sanctions so that Russia and China will descend into civil unrest and revolution and their governments will collapse".Yes, they might collapse. They might descend into anarchy and chaos. Great for the USA and its friends, right?
Well, not so much.
You see, Russia and China are nuclear-armed powers whose arsenals would become
extremely insecure in the event of total governmental and societal collapse.
Just one example of why is that t
here are radicals and nationalists in both countries who hate the West 50x more than Putin and Xi do.
What do you suppose they might do with their country's nukes in the event of a total meltdown when they know for certain that the country they love is going to be torn apart and destroyed?
Think about it. They know their country is about to collapse completely. There will be pilots in strategic bombers and captains in submarines carrying nukes. Word will come through from their commanders - their entire country is in the throes of total revolution and collapse, because of total economic warfare waged by the West. You can imagine the kind of orders that might come through.
Why do I say this? Because
it will be deemed an existential threat to the nation in the most literal sense of the term.
There is no universe in which that would NOT trigger standard operating procedure for the nation's strategic nuclear forces. In the same way it would in the United States. The U.S certainly would not let Russia and China pulverize them without taking them down too.
And the same goes with Russia and China.
We must be very careful what we wish for.
Nuclear war can come about in many other ways besides a direct physical conflict.
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link to www.ucsusa.org (secure)]