Playing Russian Roulette With Russia's Nuclear Arsenal

      Yesterday I discussed the potential transfer/sale of aircraft to the Ukraine Air Force. I love and appreciate responses from our readers. One reader is always concerned about the Ukraine conflict getting out of hand with Putin resorting to nuclear weapons. In my opinion, as long as we in the West do not do something really stupid, that will not happen. Two months ago, I was privileged to have lunch with Professor William Craft Brumfield. He is the department head of the Russian Studies section at Tulane University. He speaks Russian fluently. He has been a personal friend of Vladimir Putin for over 20 years. Putin decorated him with the highest medal the Russian state can give to a foreigner-The Friendship Medal. When I asked him if he saw a nuclear war coming with Russia, he calmly responded:

       "Putin is a sane and rational man. He would not resort to the use of nuclear weapons."

    When our reader raised the prospect of Ukraine turning into a nuclear conflict, I quoted Professor Brumfield. I then made a joke as follows:

    If I was the US president and heard that Putin had gone to DEFCON ONE and was ready to launch nuclear weapons, I would make the following comment to Putin:

     "Vlad, I sure hope that your nuclear weapons work better than your conventional weapons have worked in Ukraine."

    I absorb a large amount of data each day. In the afternoon I came across an obscure report on the current status of the Russian nuclear arsenal. It painted a picture of a lot of warheads that had decayed to the point where they would not work correctly. Some thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs would only detonate as atomic bombs. Other warheads would not detonate at all.

       I shared this information with Elena. Without wasting a second, she responded:

      "This tells me that they never were really serious about using such weapons."

           I will leave all of you to reflect on this.