Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, and be willing to consider allowing Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles to be used inside Russia.
Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.
“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”
I agree with your first paragraph 100%.
Re: your second, we know Russia has functioning nukes because, at least until a year and a half ago, we used to go and inspect them on a regular basis.
The inspections did not test nav, propulsion or detonation functionality. The inspections only confirmed existence.
Russia’s weapons have been maintained by notorious black market scalpers for decades now. Nearly every gram of fuel, every PCB and every detonation component on the black market in the last 50 years has been from Russian equipment. The world’s intelligence community has noticed and done a little math on the subject.
Coupled with the West’s advanced defense systems, Russia poses almost no real nuclear threat to any ally at this point. Their delivery systems would be more effective if they were DHL deliveries.
Take the recent Chinese intelligence scandals coming out about their nukes having water in the fuel tanks and silo caps that cant retract. I believe wholeheartedly that corruption has stolen most of the nails from the thermonuclear hands in both Russia and China. Probably even NK too, to some extent.
Well sure, for land-based static and mobile systems, but it’s an open secret that the only division of the Russian military that has halfway-decent funding on a consistent basis since the fall of the USSR is their SSBN fleet.
I’m not saying that meaningfully changes the calculus imo, but if any of their shit is going to work, it’s probably going to be the boomers (subs, not the generation)