Bob Woodward issues a stark warning on Trump weeks from Election Day

[Dulcinea]

(CNN) The arrival of a new Bob Woodward book has a well-established choreography; enterprising reporters get hold of copies of the heavily embargoed volume a week or so ahead of its publication date and mine it for the news it contains.

Both CNN and The Washington Post, where Woodward retains the honorific title of associate editor, covered the news in the latest book, “War,” last week. And news there was: At the height of the pandemic, President Donald Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin a secret shipment of Covid-19 testing equipment, and since he has left office, Trump has called Putin as many as seven times.

Ahead of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden blamed former President Barack Obama for not doing more to counter the Russian leader when he invaded Crimea in 2014, telling a friend, “That’s why we are here. We fucked it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.”

Putin had a heated call with Biden in the run-up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, in which the Russian president threatened a nuclear war. Later, Biden’s national security team assessed there was a 50% chance Putin might use a tactical nuclear weapon during the Ukraine conflict. It is worth noting that back in March, CNN’s Jim Sciutto had similar detailed reporting about Putin’s possible use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine in late 2022.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bob-woodward-issues-stark-warning-060038868.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO&ncid=crm_19908-1202929-20241016-0&bt_user_id=4NhdVDlWO7mwH%2FHLFwX5bGuQLKGIZQgA2rBiLn8NSzU2TjBVNNtmWOy2nh49yl7z&bt_ts=1729079375154

[-misanthroptimist]

1. There is little chance that Russia...

...will use tactical nukes in Ukraine or anywhere else. The war in Ukraine has exposed how badly Russia's military equipment has been maintained. It can only be worse for nukes. Nuclear weapons are expensive The US spends more maintaining our nuclear weapons than Russia spends on its entire military, including their nukes. They can only afford to maintain a pretty small number of nukes, or to poorly maintain all of them.

That means that there is a high probability that many, most, or perhaps all of Russia's strategic nukes are of dubious reliability. Given that, that it makes it very unlikely that Russia wants a large-scale nuclear exchange with the West -there's a high probability that they would be wiped out, while causing little to no damage to the West. Using tactical nukes raises the probability of initiating that very exchange. If Russia was invaded and Moscow itself was threatened then they'd probably throw the dice. Short of that...not likely at all.

I doubt that that could have been known in 2014, probably even in 2022 it was speculative. But there can be little doubt in 2024 that Russia largely is a paper tiger whose only real military advantage is its willingness to sacrifice huge numbers of people.