Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Russia Has Devised New Generation Of Nuclear Weapons W/Oliver Stone pt 2" video.

  1. This. If you're going to criticize someone like Brian Williams for being "guided by the beauty of our weapons," you have to criticize someone like Oliver Stone for salivating over the terrible power of Russia's weapons. Stone makes the, in my opinion, inexcusable error of conflating the critique of one state power with fawning support for another.
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  2. I don't think either of us did. At the end of the interview Stone gives away his position. Like any petty sycophant, he believes in power and his political views, rather than being governed by principles or concern for human prosperity and peace, betray a desire to be next to power. For him, that power is Putin, and he's willing to excuse any and every crime so that he can have access to power. He's no better than any of our American commissars who carry water for powerful people.
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  3. No, there is no "balance of power" with nuclear weapons in the world. Mutual Assured Destruction, rather than keeping us (?) safe, put the world in jeopardy multiple times. The instance of Stanislav Petrov is well known, "the man who saved the world." Less well known is the case of Vasili Arkhipov, the flotilla commander during the Cuban Missile Crisis whose sole dissenting vote of three prevented a nuclear strike against the US that would have automatically triggered all-out nuclear war. There are other "near misses." The very existence of these weapons constitutes a threat that no attempt at reinstating MAD or "modernization" have alleviated. Just the opposite: they exacerbate the problem. Moreover, Stone is being propagandistic. Russia has long had the ability to overwhelm US anti-missile systems. Sarmat does not herald a new paradigm, but it makes good copy if you say it does. What Sarmat does do is make the threat of the use of nuclear weapons more real by generating hysteria and an arms race. The US will develop a strategic countermeasure, perhaps nuclear, perhaps conventional. It will see this as a restoration of the balance of power. Russia will develop its own counter-countermeasure and see this as a restoration of the balance of power. This can only lead to the increase of nuclear weapons in the world (because smaller states will want their own to safeguard themselves from either the US or Russia) and/or the increased likelihood of their use, either purposely or, more likely, accidentally. This isn't a hypothetical scenario. It's precisely what we've seen happen in the 20th century. It should not be up to one person, or a group of people, to decide whether or not the world survives. No one should have that power, and the only sane thing to do is support and advocate for nuclear disarmament. Then, and only then, will the world be safe from nuclear weapons.
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