Will There Be a Nuclear War?

There’s at least a fifty-percent chance that a military situation will arise in which one of the parties in this conflict faces an imminent existential defeat that it cannot allow. (I think that’s most likely to be the US/NATO/Kiev. We shall see.) And there’s at least a fifty-percent chance that the party threatened with such a defeat will use every weapon in its arsenal to stave it off.

April 1, 2023 | Source: The Polemicist | by Jim Kavanagh

At this point, I put the chances at 50-50.

Read on, and see why.

On February 22, the day after Russia recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, I said a situation had now been created in which the second most likely reaction by the US/NATO would be to “Launch a military effort to take back LPR, DPR, and Crimea—using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, or, if they dare, bringing in US/NATO troops directly,” and that would result in a “loss for US/NATO, before or after a devastating, probably nuclear, world war.”

Ten days later, on March 3rd, right after the Russian army entered Ukraine, I wrote: “WWIII is not a remote possibility. We are already in it. The only question is: How much worse will it get?

At that time, I would have put the chances of nuclear war at more than 0 but less than 30%.