Back in the USSR
So much for subtlety. This statement of Rissian military strategy was announced while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Moscow — Russia’s assertion of its right to pre-emptive nuclear strikes, and guess which country is mentioned by name:
Presidential Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev…said a sweeping document on military policy including a passage on preventative nuclear force will be handed to President Dmitry Medvedev by the end of the year, according to Izvestia.
Officials are examining “a variety of possibilities for using nuclear force, depending on the situation and the intentions of the possible opponent,” Patrushev was quoted as saying. “In situations critical to national security, options including a preventative nuclear strike on the aggressor are not excluded.”
The proposed doctrine would allow for the use of nuclear weapons “to repel an aggression with the use of conventional weapons not only in a large-scale but also in a regional and even local war,” Patrushev was quoted as saying. He said a government analysis of the threat of conflict in the world showed “a shift from large-scale conflicts to local wars and armed conflicts.”
“However, earlier military dangers and threats for our country have not lost significance,” he was quoted as saying. “Activity on receiving new members into NATO is not ceasing. The military activity of the bloc is being stepped up. U.S. strategic forces are conducting intensive training on using strategic nuclear weapons.”
Give these fellows an inch and they’ll take a mile, as The New Republic’s editor said below. And meanwhile, back in the good old USA: “The Pentagon is reviewing the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive military strikes with an eye to modifying or possibly ending it.”
Some might think that balooning the deficits out of control, attempting to take over vast swaths of the US economy, and disarming and apologizing in front of our adversaries was the Obama administration’s gameplan and not a series of naive mistakes — but you’d have to be some right-wing nut to imagine that.