One proposal for US retaliation to punish Russia for its Ukraine actions is to send more US fighters into Poland. One proposal, fortunately rejected at least for now, was to send in nuclear weapons for the US fighters based there. One hopes that this was never taken seriously by anyone in command of those weapons. Younger readers will not recall, but when Khrushchev proposed much the same thing -- nuclear weapons into Cuba -- the result was that I was out in my back yard in Seattle filling bags with dirt to line the fallout shelter in the basement of my house in the Green Lake district. I cannot think that Putin would find the prospect of US nukes just across his border than Kennedy did when the Russians were sending them to Cuba.
Secretary Kerry continues to bluster about what Russia can and cannot do, as if that were up to us. That is not diplomacy as I understand it. Loud public threats are seldom effective between great powers, and are often not very useful when delivered from a great power to a client state. No one seems to see any similarity between Crimea and Texas. |