re: #196 No Malarkey!

He argued that Putin’s nuclear sabre rattling is just a bluff; a rational calculation by Putin that he can get the West to back down in its support of Ukraine, because nuclear weapons the only card he has left to play.

I get that there is an actual distinction in that Putin himself is not nuttier than a shithouse rat, but rather it’s the beliefs, assumptions and “facts” guiding his decisions which are cuckoo for Coca Puffs. If we know what he actually believes and he is rational we should be able to predict his behavior.

The problem is how much and which parts of the lunacy being churned out by Russia he actually believes. If we don’t know that, we can’t predict his behavior and he might as well be irrational from our perspective. In addition, if he believes the most extreme stuff like the US manufacturing advanced bioweapons on the Russian borders and attempting to release it into Russia, using nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional failure becomes rational.