Nuclear war is winnable
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Nuclear war is winnable is a proposition John Kiriakou attributes not to cranks but to identifiable factions inside two governments' orbits.

The American version

Asked in June 2025 what the chances were that people actually wanted a nuclear war, his answer was that they exist. "I think there are people who want that. I think you're exactly right. There is a faction, not just in Ukraine, but here in the United States as well, that believes a nuclear war is a winnable war. That sure, millions of people are going to be wiped out, but ..."

The formulation he reaches for is Pat Buchanan's, from the 1992 presidential campaign: "of course a nuclear war is winnable. We come out from our caves and we pick up and continue the fight."

The Ukrainian version

The version he attributes to Kyiv is a bet on alliance rather than survival. There is a faction "in Ukraine that believes that a nuclear war is winnable, or that even if the Russians were to resort to nuclear war, the Americans, the British and the French, also nuclear powers, will step up against the Russians and perhaps use nukes as well."

He reconstructs the choice as it would be posed internally: what is the lesser of two evils, "to just let the Russians roll into Europe, as people say, roll into Europe, or to use nuclear weapons to preserve freedom and democracy." His own comment: "and that's insanity, of course, but I think that that's probably a Ukrainian calculation."

What he thinks is missing from it

The premise he attacks is the one about Russia rolling westward. Germany's eastward project at least had a logic, however evil, "they needed Russian resources to fuel a German industrial base and a German war machine", whereas he can identify nothing in Western Europe that Russia needs badly enough to invade for. "Honestly, I think the Europeans need the Russians a lot more than the Russians need the Europeans." The evidence he gives for that is the cost of doing without Russian gas.

See also

- Ukraine as a proxy war
- Europe Without Russian Gas
- Breaking the nuclear taboo
