With the news that Putin’s Russian army at best is facing a stalemate in Ukraine, the odds that Putin might use a so-called tactical nuclear weapon are increasing daily.
The thing about autocrats is this: Just when you think they’ve gone as far (or as low) as they can go, they cross a new threshold of evil.
We were both surprised and dismayed to read that Russia has nuclear weapons that only are about two percent as powerful as the atom bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.
Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. have long-maintained nuclear arsenals with hydrogen bombs that are 2000-3000 times more powerful than the first A-bombs, but we were not aware that both sides also have developed these mini-nukes.
Indeed, Putin can look at our use of the A-bombs in WWII as an example of how to force an opponent into submission. Japan only surrendered after we used the bombs. With the Ukrainains defiantly resolved to fight to the last person, the use of a small nuclear weapon might be the only option left to Putin to win his war.
So what if Putin were to drop a small nuke over say, Kyiv?
What will be the response of NATO and the U.S.?
The world as we know it is being threatened — and thereby controlled — by.a sociopath.
The civilized world can impose all of the economic sanctions it wants upon a despot, but in the final analysis, nukes are what matter, which is why the No. Koreans are trying to get them.
We can only speculate about the future path that the war in Ukraine will take us.
We are entering a deep, dark cave with no light at the end of the tunnel.
Hopefully, that light, when it comes, will not be the flash of a nuclear bomb.