Russia - threadbanned users in OP

So two wrongs make a right, is that what you're saying?

Mad Vlad is waving his nukes around in an irresponsible manner, so we should just copy his behaviour?

Sounds like an odd stance to take. Is this the road to the moral high ground, or have we taken a slight detour somewhere along the way?

Yes indeed, nuclear weapons since WW2 were supposed to be a deterrent and to prevent a country from being attacked or invaded. They were never supposed to be used while attacking and attempting to colonise another country.....use of one in this context would be terrorist state behaviour, pure and simple.

It's quite interesting to read the various opinions and discussions between those Boardsies born in the '90's or even late 80''s as they may have missed the bulk of the Cold War.

As a 70's child, I distinctly remember much, much more tension and heightened readiness during certain periods of the Cold War. I hail from a military family so, growing up, we were particularly aware of operations, threats, tensions that were much, much worse that what the younger folks are worriedly discussing in interesting cross-discussions. ( apart from the "Orc" discussion, which is just Wokey nonsense. I have a suggestion to settle the argument. Visit your local Ukranian Refugee centre and ask one of the folks there what they think of your discussion. Should settle it fairly quickly)

I digress. Anyway, living in a world with no mobile phones allowed for easy eavesdropping on conversations from the phone in the hall and around the kitchen sink. In the 80's, Ireland was under immense pressure to join Nato. There was great interest in our aviation infrastructure at the time. Plus there were many, many close calls between the two superpowers.

Both Powers were watching each society with great interest, looking for clues that one side or the other were preparing for war. For example, a blood drive might indicate preparing for the influx of wounded during a battle. Things like that.

In 1983, I was a teen and distinctly remember the excitement around an operation called Able Archer, where NATO conducted an excercise where by, in the story, Russia has invaded some European states and, in order to stop the push forward, NATO has resorted to using a nuclear weapon. ( ring any bells, in the reverse). The excercise was so real to the Russians, that the prepared their nuclear weapons, causing the US to go to Defcon 1. ( higher than the Cuban Missile Crisis). Only the Back Channel communications averted a war.

That brings me to Back channels. What politicians say in Public in one thing, as they speak to three audiences. But what happens in the back rooms and on secure data streams is something totally different. Russia and the US are in constant, private communication, all the time. So read through the Bluster and calm down. The US will know when Russia are likely to use a Nuke well before anyone else. I can see their use only in the circumstances I mentioned on other pages.

I keep saying this, and the older folk know what I mean. NATO and the US want a conventional war with Russia. Its the very, very thing that Russia is avoiding. If NATO go conventional on Russia, its game over in two weeks. Putin Knows this, which makes his rhetoric pointless. Playing to 3 audiences. Ourselves, his country folk and his Military leaders.

Similar rhetoric was used to depict your average Japanese citizen during ww2, which enabled the Americans to round up Japanese American citizens and place them into internment camps. And also arguably made it much more publicly acceptable and viable to drop two nuclear bombs on thousands of innocent men women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So I would caution against that sort of dangerous rhetoric.

You are falling into a very obvious and foolish trap, when you pursue that line of thinking. And it doesn't bring about any positive outcomes. I lived and worked in Russia for a number of years, so I find it deeply offensive to hear people trying to lump all citizens of a nation that has over 140m people into one lazy sweeping caricature "pure and utter evil scum". It's not right, and most importantly it's not true!