“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails of Nazis after WW 2) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

Captain G. M. Gilbert, US Army psychologist, Author of Nuremburg Diary

In September 1995 I was working for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), charged with eliminating Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. I was the primary liaison between UNSCOM and Israeli intelligence at the time and would make frequent trips to Israel which could last between a few days and a few weeks. During one of these visits, I invited my wife Marina to join me over the weekend. Marina is a devout Georgian Orthodox Christian and was thrilled about the opportunity to see the Holy Land firsthand. We walked the “Via Delarosa” (the “sorrowful way”) in Jerusalem, tracing Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion. We dipped our feet in the River Jordan at the spot John was said to have baptized Jesus. We toured the Sea of Gallilee, visiting the various sites of Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the Bible.

All these experiences resonated deeply with us both.

But it was the excursion my wife made to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, located on Mount Herzl, in western Jerusalem, that made the deepest impression. It was there that Marina came face to face with photographs of some of the child victims of the Holocaust. Marina had given birth to our twin daughters in February 1993, and at the time of her visit to Vad Vashem our girls were 2 and a half years old—the same age as some of the children in the photographs on display at the center. Marina saw our daughters in the eyes of these children, and immediately broke down and cried.

She was overcome with empathy.

In the summer of 1997, I found myself in Baghdad at the head of an inspection team whose purpose it was to confront the Iraqi government with its inconsistent and often contradictory information about the disposition of weapons of mass destruction-related materials in the summer of 1991. Armed with defector reports and satellite imagery, I had been able to find caches of unaccounted missile production equipment, and unravel the deceit of senior Iraqi officials that had served as the foundation of their narrative for more than six years running. My inspection team was not very popular among the inner circle of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As a means of putting pressure on me and my team, the Iraqi government would air video clips of our inspection, accusing me and the other inspectors of working for the CIA, and blaming us for the ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people at the hands of western sanctions. This led to several death threats and at least one attempted assassination attempt on me and my team by disgruntled Iraqi civilians who took the accusations of the Iraqi government to heart.

Rather than back down or hide, my team and I took the opposite approach—we made our presence in Iraq as high-profile as possible, part of my “Alpha Dog” approach to inspecting, which had us figuratively “pissing on the walls” of Iraq in order to leave our mark, and to make sure the Iraqis knew who was in charge when it came to the implementation of our mandate.

At night, when the inspections were finished, and while the “news” of our efforts were being broadcast on Iraqi television, my team and I would drive to the center of town in our ubiquitous white Nissan Patrol SUV’s, with the black “UN” letters painted on the sides and our tactical markings displayed on the roofs and hoods in grey duct tape (these were the team designations for each vehicle—A-1 for “Alpha One,” etc. My vehicle was marked with a “W” for “Whiskey”). We would park on the side of the road next to whatever restaurant we had picked to dine in that night and walk in with all the cockiness of John Wayne and his cowboys (indeed, the head of the UN Humanitarian Mission in Iraq had recently called us “cowboys” in an interview he gave for Le Monde. We decided the title, meant to be an insult, fit us well).

One night, as we sat in a popular roast chicken establishment, the television started playing a “news special” which singled me out for attack. The inspectors and I watched the crowd as they watched the TV screen, where our photographs were displayed along with a running narrative of our many “crimes.” The mood in the restaurant darkened considerably, and someone recommended that we leave while the leaving was good.

“No,” I countered. “We paid for this meal, and we’re going to enjoy it. Fuck these people.”

I was in no mood for showing weakness. We had just spent a day parked outside the Iraqi intelligence headquarters, with our entry blocked by armed guards. At one point we were ushered inside the guardhouse while the police disarmed a man who had driven by with a loaded AK-47, intent on gunning me and the inspectors down.

No sooner than these words had left my mouth, I saw a woman rise from her seat at a table to our front. She was dressed in a black dress, with a black shawl covering her head. Someone at her table tried to pull her back to her seat, but she reprimanded them, and they let go of her arm. She turned and made her way toward my table, her eyes locked on mine.

“Boss,” one of the inspectors, a grizzled British soldier, said. “Incoming.”

“I got her,” I replied. I watched her closely as she drew near, my gaze fluctuating from her eyes and her hands, trying to ascertain her intent. I hadn’t reached a conclusion by the time she halted, standing over me as I sat there and wiped the chicken grease from my face with a napkin.

“You are Scott Ritter?,” she asked, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, coming to my feet.

“And these are your men? Your inspectors?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied.

“I see you on television every day. They say it is you I should blame for the death of my children.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I stuttered, not knowing what else to say.

“They want me to hate you.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She stared at me, tears welling in her eyes. Her hands were wrapped in her shawl, and suddenly one darted out. If it had been a knife, she would have been able to stab me. But it was just her hand, which she laid on my arm.

“You are doing your job,” she said. “I know this. I know in your heart you mean me no harm. I know in your heart that you did not want my child to die.”

Tears started trickling down her cheek.

“I know you are someone’s son. That all of you,” she said, gesturing to the hard men seated around the table, “have mothers who love you, as I loved my child.”

She looked up at me. “I will pray for your safety, so that you can finish your work, and that sanctions can be lifted, so other mothers do not lose their children to disease.”

She squeezed my arm, and turned away, heading back to her table, where she sat down and sank her head into the arms of the lady seated next to her, sobbing.

I looked down at my unfinished meal, no longer hungry.

“Let’s go,” I said, the anger and cockiness that had defined my earlier tone gone.

We left, each of us reaching into our pockets to leave as large a tip as possible, as if we all were trying to atone for our sins by buying forgiveness.

The crowd in the restaurant let us leave without incident.

As I sat in the Nissan Patrol, heading back to our headquarters building where I would finish the daily inspection report, I could still feel the grip of the lady on my arm where she had squeezed me.

I tried to figure out why she did what she did.

She had every right to hate us. I know that if I was to come face to face with the man responsible for the death of my children, the meeting would not be described as peaceful.

But she chose peace.

She did so in a very public manner, singling me out for the entire restaurant to see.

I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t stood up.

If she hadn’t confronted me.

What would the crowd have done? I had been caught in several public settings, including a restaurant, when the mood of the crowd soured. Things got real ugly, real fast.

But her intervention prevented that.

She intervened to protect us.

Because she was a mother.

And she knew we had mothers.

She had been overcome with empathy.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit the Donbas region of Russia, including the city of Lugansk. Once part of Ukraine, these territories were caught up in the turmoil that gripped Ukraine following the coming to power in Kiev of anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists following the US-orchestrated Maidan revolt of February 2014. The Russian-speaking population of the Donbas revolted against the new Ukrainian nationalists, who sought to impose a sort of cultural genocide by banning the Russian language, religion, culture and history. The revolt that followed lasted nearly eight years, culminating in the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of four former Ukrainian regions, or oblasts, including the two—Donetsk and Lugansk—which together form the Donbas.

While in Lugansk I was taken to a memorial dedicated to the children of Lugansk who perished in the fighting that has been raging since 2014. When the monument was installed, back in 2017, there were 33 angels depicted, one for each Lugansk child that had perished in the fighting. Since that time, 35 additional Lugansk children have perished, raising the total number killed to 68.

What struck me when visiting the memorial was how each child’s life resonated with the citizens of Lugansk, as if everyone in the city claimed the lost children as their own. I had witnessed this phenomenon before. Back in 2000, I visited Iraq for the purpose of filming a documentary on UNSCOM and the disarmament of Iraq. While there, I visited the site of the Martyr’s Place Elementary School where, on the morning of October 13, 1987, an Iranian SCUD missile strike killed 22 children and injured more than 160 others as they gathered in the school playground to start the day. At the entrance to the playground was a memorial depicting 22 bronze angels ascending to heaven.

At the time of my visit to Baghdad, some 13 years after the attack, the residents of the neighborhood surrounding the school were still emotional over the loss of life among the children. “They would be young adults today,” one elderly man said. “Just starting their lives.”

It is the loss of the children that hits a community hardest. Whether in Lugansk, Baghdad, or Ma’alot, a town in Israel where, in May 1974, Palestinian militants occupied the Netiv Meir elementary school, where they took some 115 persons hostage, 105 of whom were children. The Israeli military stormed the building, killing the three Palestinian gunmen as well as 31 hostages, 22 of whom were children. Israelis were still talking about Ma’alot when I visited in 1995, some 21 years later.

Some things cannot be forgotten.

And even though I was not a witness to any of these events, as a father of twin daughters I felt the pain of those who lost their little ones as if the lives lost were my own flesh and blood.

Because I had empathy.

If the lack of empathy is the principal characteristic of evil, then the ability to empathize must be the trademark of good.

This Christmas season finds the world engulfed in conflict, with tragedy playing out before our very eyes daily.

We wouldn’t be human if we start to become immune to the horror, our senses overwhelmed by the repetitive scenes of death and destruction that we are constantly confronted by. Being physically separated from violence, we have the option to tune out the unpleasant sights and sounds of human suffering.

After all, how many times can we see the torn, lifeless body of a child pulled from the rubble of Gaza and Beirut?

Or from the wreckage of homes in Ukraine and Russia?

Overdosing from senseless tragedy leads to the numbing of our soul, the hardening of our heart, the diminishment of our humanity.

But we must endure, for no other reason than to make sure that those young lives lost did not perish in vain.

We must learn and remember the names of those who have perished, not to serve as fuel for the furnace of hatred that drives one to seek revenge, but because we have a duty as humans to put ourselves in the shoes of those who have lost their loved ones in war, to feel their pain, to understand their loss, so that we know the importance of trying to bring the violence that took these lives to an end.

War is never the solution.

Peace is always the answer.

I often think back to my encounter with the Iraqi mother at the restaurant in Baghdad. It was an ugly time in my life, when I was overcome with a sense of duty that clouded my own humanity. I was so singularly focused on the task at hand—disarming Iraq—that I forgot that there was a human cost associated with my work and that of my inspectors.

I’ve told the story of this encounter a few times, but I always left out one part of the story, because the memory of it rips at my heart to this day.

After the lady squeezed my arm, and started to turn away, I reached out and laid my hand on her shoulder. She spun around and looked at me.

“What was your child’s name?” I asked.

Her eyes filled with tears, but she smiled slightly before answering. “Zaynab,” she said.

“Zaynab,” I repeated. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“She was a beautiful child,” the mother replied.

I don’t tell this part of the story because it takes away from the tough guy, Alpha Dog persona I had developed during that time.

Because when she turned and walked away, she left me standing alone, sobbing.

But we must confront these things.

Zaynab would have been in her late 20’s today, old enough to have found love, married, and began a family of her own.

But it wasn’t to be.

We must remember Zaynab, just as we must remember every child whose life was taken from this earth too soon.

We must empathize with those who have lost their loved ones because of the senseless wars fought by men.

We must make sure that the children who are alive today have the chance to grow up and raise families of their own.

Otherwise, we become the tools of evil, if not evil itself.

Merry Christmas.

Miles for Military is the only nonprofit that provides service members with free round-trip air tickets (if they also perform community service) so they can come home for Christmas and other special occasions.

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In the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 11, Joe Biden tried to start a nuclear war with Russia.

And on Thursday, December 12, Donald Trump did his best to stop it.

If he succeeds, Donald Trump will have saved Christmas.

Take that, Grinch.

This isn’t a laughing matter, and yet, in writing this, I am overcome by a sense of giddiness that only comes when you’ve pulled off something that nobody thought possible.

Back on November 19, in response to news that the Biden administration had given the greenlight to Ukraine to use US ATACMS missiles to strike targets inside Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a new, revised Russian nuclear war doctrine which gave him that option to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack against Russia by a non-nuclear state that was backed by a nuclear power. According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, the use of US-supplied ATACMS missiles by Ukraine to hit Russian territory could potentially be a trigger for a Russian nuclear response under the revised document.

Later that same day, Ukraine, using intelligence information provided by the US to guide the missiles to their targets, fired several ATACMS missiles against targets in Russia.

Russia retaliated with a new intermediate-range missile—the Oreshnik—which, while capable of carrying nuclear warheads, was outfitted with a new, novel conventional warhead.

The use of the Oreshnik represented the first time in the history of warfare that a strategic missile was used in combat, a major escalatory move by Russia reflecting the seriousness with which they took the ATACMS attack.

On November 26, the Ukrainians struck again, using ATACMS missiles to strike a Russian air defense position in the Kursk region.

The next day, on November 27, Russian General Valery V. Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces, called General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to inform him that Russia was prepared to use the Oreshnik missile to retaliate against any further ATACMS attacks, and that the Russian targets could include locations outside of Ukraine.

The phone call was part of a concerted effort by the Russians to impart on the leadership of the US the seriousness to which Russia attached to the use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine against targets inside Russia.

The next day, November 28, Russia launched a retaliatory strike against Ukraine’s energy grid, crippling large segments of an already diminished infrastructure. But the Russian attack was made using conventional weaponry that Russia had used in the past, not the Oreshnik.

Russia was playing its part to try to deescalate a situation it found to be extremely dangerous.

But the Russian concerns were falling on deaf ears.

General Brown knew what very few outside the innermost circle of American leadership knew—that the CIA, contrary to reports published in the New York Times and Washington Post, did not believe the Russians were bluffing when it came to its threats to retaliate with nuclear weapons should the Ukrainians continue their use of ATACMS missiles.

The CIA had briefed select members of Congress and the White House that it assessed the Russians were serious about their willingness to employ nuclear weapons if the attacks continued.

And General Brown knew that the position taken by the White House was that they were prepared for this.

That they were ready for a nuclear “exchange” with Russia over the issue of Ukraine.

Indeed, on November 20, at a presentation before the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, the Director of Plans for Strategic Command, responsible for executing America’s nuclear war plans, told an audience just that—that the Biden administration was ready to engage in a nuclear conflict with Russia, one that it expected to win.

On December 5, accompanied by the irrepressible Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, her able Washington, DC, Director, Adnaan Stumo, and other volunteers and activists, including Jose Vega and Morgan Blythe, I paid a visit to several congressional representatives and their senior staff to talk about the danger of nuclear war between the US and Russia, and possible ways that such a war could be avoided.

One of the points that I drove home was, in the face of continued use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine against Russia, and void of any possibility of getting the Biden administration to rescind its permission regarding ATACMS use by Ukraine, it was imperative that President-elect Trump issue a statement which distanced himself from this policy, and provided Russia with assurances that a Trump administration would not continue to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS against Russia.

We were assured by several of the people we met with that they would do their best to get this message to senior members of the Trump transition team.

On December 6, Tucker Carlson, the former FOX television star-turned independent journalist who conducted an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin this past February which garnered over one billion views, was back in Moscow.

In a video posted from Moscow, Carlson declared:

We’ve watched from the United States as the Biden administration has driven the US ever closer to a nuclear conflict with Russia, the country that possesses the world's largest nuclear arsenal. It has accelerated ever since, and it’s reached its apogee so far in the weeks after Trump’s election. He's now the president-elect.

In that time, just a few weeks ago, the Biden administration, American military personnel launched missiles into mainland Russia and killed at least a dozen Russian soldiers. So we are, unbeknownst to most Americans, in a hot war with Russia, an undeclared war, a war you did not vote for and that most Americans don’t want, but it is ongoing. Because of that war, because of the fact that the U.S. military is killing Russians in Russia right now, we are closer to nuclear war than at any time in history, far closer than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Tucker Carlson was in Moscow to do what the Biden administration wouldn’t—to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about the threat of nuclear war between the US and Russia.

In the interview, Lavrov declared that Russia was “ready to do anything to defend our legitimate interests,” adding that “We hate even to think about war with the United States, which will take nuclear character.” Lavrov reiterated that Russia was prepared “to do anything to defend our national interests,” adding that Russia would “send additional messages” (i.e., additional Oreshnik missiles) if the leadership in the US and Europe “don’t draw necessary conclusions.”

On December 7, I hosted a series of panels at the National Press Club on the danger of a nuclear war between the US and Russia triggered by the US greenlighting of ATACMS missile targeting of Russia by Ukraine. One of the panels focused specifically on the importance of getting President-elect Trump to weigh in on this issue to assure the Russian government that he did not support these attacks.

On December 11, despite every warning Russia had given regarding its concerns regarding the continued use by Ukraine of US-provided ATACMS missiles against targets inside Russia, Ukraine fired six ATACMS missiles against a Russian airbase outside the Russian city of Taganrog. Russian authorities immediately signaled that they were preparing to respond with several Oreshnik missiles.

On December 12, Time Magazine published an interview with President-elect Trump, whom they had selected as their “Person of the Year.” It was a wide-ranging interview which touched on many topics and issues, including the decision by the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS against Russia.

“It’s crazy what’s taking place,” Trump said, referring to the ATACMS attacks. “It’s crazy. I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they’re doing not only missiles, but they’re doing other types of weapons. And I think that’s a very big mistake, very big mistake.

“I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it's a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that.”

The interview was conducted on November 25, after the initial ATACMS attacks and Russian Oreshnik retaliation, but before Tucker Carlson’s interview of Lavrov, or my congressional intervention and National Press Club event. Simply put, there are no causal inferences that can be drawn between Trump’s statements and anything that came after. But what is critical is that the efforts of Tucker and myself to get the Russians to be open to the possibility of a new mindset in a future Trump administration helped create an environment where the Russians were ready to receive any declaratory statement by the President-elect which could provide insight into the actions of a future Trump administration when it came to the continued use of ATACMS missiles by the US once Trump took office.

The Time Magazine interview provided just that.

On the night of December 12, Russia launched a massive retaliation against Ukraine for the ATACMS attack on Tagonrog.

Like the strike that took place on November 28, the Russian action was undertaken only using conventional weapons that had already been a part of past Russian retaliatory actions.

Russia did not make use of the Oreshnik missile.

While Russia has not provided any statement which links its decision not to use the Oreshnik missile to Trump’s Time Magazine interview, one can always hold out that such a linkage did occur.

In any event, the Russians are now apprised of the position of President-elect Trump regarding the use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine—Trump is “vehemently opposed” to such action, which he has characterized as “foolish.”

This a major declaration, one which could—even should—prevent the kind of nuclear escalation the Biden administration seems hellbent on engaging in with Russia.

But Trump’s statement cannot be allowed to stand on its own.

It needs to be reiterated by both Trump and his team, so that there is no uncertainty in the minds of the Russian leadership what awaits them if they withhold from undertaking escalatory retaliatory strikes against Ukraine and possibly NATO in response to what will inevitably be additional ATACMS attacks by Ukraine on Russian territory.

The governments of the United Kingdom and France have just authorized Ukraine to use the Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles against Russian targets.

To forestall a Russian retaliation against UK and French targets outside of Ukraine, Russia needs to know whether Trump’s attitude toward ATACMS extends to Storm Shadow, SCALP, or any other foreign-made long-range weapon (the German-made Taurus missile comes to mind).

We all may get to celebrate Christmas this year because of an interview Trump gave to Time Magazine.

But we cannot rest on our laurels.

Keep up the pressure.

Call your members of Congress.

Ask them to support HR 10218, which prohibits the use by Ukraine of ATACMS missiles against Russia.

HR 10218 may not become law, but with enough signatures, it cannot be ignored.

By rallying support around the issue of ATACMS used by Ukraine against Russia, we can raise the profile of this issue and empower those who might otherwise be hesitant to embrace this policy course out of fear of political backlash to add their voices.

And right now, the most important voices that need to be heard are those of President-elect Trump and his national security team.

Saying “no” to ATACMS doesn’t weaken any future American negotiation position regarding the end of the conflict in Ukraine.

It does ensure that such negotiations can, in fact, take place.

Yes, Virgina, there is a Santa Clause.

And he looks like Donald Trump.

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The threat of a nuclear war between the US and Russia is real—on this point, there is rare bipartisan agreement in Congress.

The question which emerges is what can Congress do to reduce this threat. Here the potential paths toward a solution become clogged with political obstacles.

There is a House Resolution that has been introduced by Congressman Higgins, R-Louisiana which is, from the perspective of preventing a nuclear war, the proverbial “cure for cancer.”

HR 10218 (“To prohibit the transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems to Ukraine, and for other purposes”) (see text) is a carefully—indeed masterfully—crafted piece of legislation which condenses the potential trigger for a US-Russian nuclear conflict down to its most basic component—the use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine to strike Russian territory. As has been explained in detail elsewhere, the Ukrainian ATACMS attacks on Russia are seen as an attack by the US, making the US a direct participant to the conflict.

If the attacks stop, then the US will no longer be seen by Russia as engaging in offensive military operations against Russian territory.

And as such, the trigger for the release of Russian nuclear weapons will not be pulled.

“Cancer” is cured—there will be no nuclear war.

While there are many procedural obstacles in place that will likely prevent this resolution from becoming law, it is essential that every member of Congress be familiar with the bill’s contents, and its relevance regarding the prevention of nuclear war.

It is essential that every American who reads this post, pick up the phone and call their representative in Congress and insist that they sign on to this bill.

A bill that possesses sufficient signatures from both sides of the aisle takes on an air of political relevance, and its contents cannot be ignored, especially by members of the incoming Trump administration.

A bipartisan bill blocking the use of ATACMS by Ukraine against Russia possessing a respectable number of signatures may not move the needle when it comes to action by the Biden administration, but it could very well influence the appropriate decision makers in the Trump national security team when it comes to formulating policy regarding Ukraine.

If Trump allows Ukraine to use AtACMS on Russian territory, then the risk of nuclear war will continue unabated.

But if the Trump team can be moved to articulate policy which conforms to the substance of HR 10218, the nuclear war can be prevented.

All it takes is for enough Americans to take the time to call their Congressional representatives.

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“The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burned things with the firemen and the sun burned Time, that meant that everything burned!”

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Annie Jacobson, in her book “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” describes the first few seconds of a one-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonating over an American city as beginning “with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred-and=eighty-degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature that occurs at the center of the sun.” The fireball produced by this explosion is so intense “that concrete surfaces explode, metal objects melt or evaporate, stone shatters, humans instantaneously convert into combusting carbon.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at a meeting held in the Kazakh capital of Astana this past Thursday, declared that Russia's new intermediate-range ballistic missile, Oreshnik, which was used to strike a Ukrainian military production facility near the city of Dnipropetrovsk, possessed destructive power comparable to that of a nuclear weapon.

“Dozens of warheads, self-guided units attack the target at a speed of 10 Mach (ten times the speed of sound),” Putin said. “This is about three kilometers per second. The temperature of the striking elements reaches 4000 degrees. If my memory serves me right,” Putin noted, “the temperature on the surface of the Sun is 5,500-6000 degrees. Therefore, everything that is in the epicenter of the explosion is divided into fractions, into elementary particles, everything turns essentially into dust.”

In short, the Russian President declared the use of several Oreshnik missiles in one strike would be comparable in destructive power to a nuclear weapon.

The imagery presented in Annie Jacobson’s book is so utterly horrific as to surpass the ability of most humans to comprehend, let alone apply real-life examples that allow for a modicum of intellectual comprehension. As such, when Vladimir Putin made his analogous claim regarding the comparative destructive power of a hydrogen bomb and the Oreshnik missiles conventional warhead, one’s brain is deflected away from the unthinkable and toward the practical.

The Oreshnik missile attack against the Yuzmash factory outside Dnipropetrovsk produced stunning visual images of six separate impact “events,” each comprised of six luminescent “rods” impacting the factory grounds. The Russian government had alluded to the destruction caused by this attack as being devastating; the Ukrainians, on the other hand, have minimized the damage done as negligible.

In theory, the destructive potential of kinetic “rods” striking the earth at hypersonic speeds is enormous. A 2003 US Air Force study on what were called “Hypervelocity Rod Bundles (HRB)” speculated that 20-foot by six-foot rods of Tungsten, when dropped from a space-based platform and impacting the earth at a speed of ten times the speed of sound, would produce results equivalent to a nuclear explosion.

In 2018, Chinese researchers from the North University of China located in the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi province, working with the university's Intelligent Weapon Research Institute, test-fired a tungsten rod from an unnamed high-altitude platform. In the test, a 140-kilogram tungsten rod was fired at a speed of over four kilometers per second and produced a crater with a depth of three meters and a width of over four and a half meters—far from the effect one would expect from a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the penetration effect of the tungsten rod was reduced at speeds over three and a half times the speed of sound.

The physics surrounding the effects of the Oreshnik payload remain confusing to even those who have spent a lifetime studying the physics of such weapons. Dr. Theodore Postol, a weapons expert from MIT, has done some preliminary studies on the Oreshnik which mirror the assessment of the researchers from the North University of China.

But Russian experts have spoken about advances made by Russia in material sciences associated with the performance of materials at hypersonic speed, advances which may alter the physics in question (for instance, the pure tungsten rod envisioned by the US Air Force and tested by the Chinese may, in the case of the Oreshnik, have had a coating of an advanced alloy formed from tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide, materials used by Russia in reentry operations from space, where heat absorption is desired).

The Russians point out that the Oreshnik “rods,” whatever their precise composition, would, once heated to 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,232 degrees Fahrenheit), would vaporize steel and concrete, including reinforced concrete, on contact. “It would vaporize,” as President Putin observed, “everything that is in the epicenter of the explosion is divided into fractions, into elementary particles, everything turns essentially into dust.”

The underlying question remains, how much of an area does the “epicenter of the explosion” encompass? Ukraine has been surprisingly reticent about documenting its claims that the Oreshnik caused “minimal damage,” only noting that the warheads which struck Dnipropetrovsk carried no explosives and, as a result, did not cause significant damage. This conclusion was shared by German experts commenting in Bild Magazine. Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, in a recent interview with Reuters, commented on the Oreshnik, noting that, “This is a new capability, but this is not a new capability that represents a dramatic change in the way that conventional weapons are developed.” He continued, “It’s a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way.”

Lewis added that using the Oreshnik with conventional warheads was an expensive means "to deliver not that much destruction,” noting that, given the expense associated with ballistic missiles of the Oreshnik class, using this type of weapon to hit Ukraine was more likely designed to achieve a psychological effect than military impact. “If it were inherently terrifying, [Putin] would just use it. But that’s not quite enough,” Lewis said. “He had to use it and then do a press conference and then do another press conference and say: ‘Hey, this thing is really scary, you should be scared.’”

While Lewis’ analysis is open to scrutiny (his claim that the Oreshnik was simply a bunch of “old technologies” that have been “put together in new ways” is refuted by Russian statements and the evidence—his analysis of the reentry system is sophomoric, and does not take into account Russian reports which suggest the Oreshnik made use of new independent post-boost vehicles, or IPBVs, known in Russian as blok individualnogo razvedeniya (or BIR). Likewise, Lewis’ critique seems to simply parrot Ukrainian battle damage assessments without any attempt to delve further into the new technologies associated with the kinetic rods used by the Oreshnik.

(It should be noted that Theodore Postol, in conducting his analysis, has incorporated these new technologies in his work.)

Therein lies the rub—while President Putin undoubtedly employed the Oreshnik as a warning to Ukraine and its western allies about the consequences of striking Russian soil with US- and UK-manufactured and directed weapons such as the ATACMS and Storm Shadow, the deterrence value of the Oreshnik depends entirely upon its ability to inflict damage of such magnitude that Ukraine and its allies, when doing a risk-benefit analysis of the consequences of continuing to strike Russia with ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles, would opt to avoid escalation.

Assessments like those produced by Bild and Reuters, when backed by the statements made by Ukrainian officials, lend credence to the notion that the Oreshnik was all bark, with little or no bite. This mindset has resulted in Ukraine, with the blessing and assistance of its US and UK masters, continuing to strike targets in the Kursk region using ATACMS missiles.

This in turn has resulted in Russian President Putin warning that Russia may hit Ukraine again with one or more Oreshnik missiles. Putin indicated that the targets could include military, industrial, and national decision-making centers, including Bankova Street in Kiev, where the seat of the Ukrainian government is located.

It is in Russia’s interest to make the results of such an attack visible to a global audience and, by doing so, negate the analysis of western experts such as Jeffrey Lewis. If the Oreshnik, fired singly or as a multi-missile salvo, can impart on Ukrainian and western leaders the futility of continuing their missile strikes into Russia, then such an escalation would be of value.

If, however, the Oreshnik’s impact is hidden or—worse, for Russia—supports Jeffrey Lewis’ less than flattering assessment, then the deterrence value of the Oreshnik will be negligible, encouraging Ukraine to increase the scope and scale of its missile attacks on Russia, and putting Russia in a position where it must, given the political capital already invested in trying to deter Ukrainian missile attacks, escalate its response. This could include using new conventional weapons possessing massive destructive capability, such as the “father of all bombs” thermobaric weapon or the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle.

But escalation begets escalation, and if Russia is not able to deter Ukraine and its western allies from attacking its soil using ATACMS and Storm Shadow (and, perhaps in the coming days, the French-provided SCALP missile), then at some point the question of nuclear weapons becomes part of the escalation equation.

The bad news for Russia is that the US intelligence community has conducted several assessments over the course of the past several months which conclude that Russia would not use nuclear weapons in response to Ukraine’s use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles to attack Russia. This conclusion has been embraced by the White House and Congress, which explains the almost non-existent pushback from within US political circles to the decision to allow Ukraine to strike Russia.

The US intelligence assessment hinges around the notion that Russia will instead seek to match the ATACMS/Storm Shadow escalation with escalations of its own—of which the use of Oreshnik was the first.

As things stand, Russia appears to have two, perhaps three, rounds of conventional escalation left in terms of its retaliation for continued attacks. These could be exhausted by mid-December, which means the possibility—indeed probability, given the apparent mindset in Kiev, Brussels, and Washington, DC—of a nuclear exchange preempting Christmas is quite real.

The inability and/or unwillingness of Ukraine’s western masters to understand the consequences of deterrence failure makes nuclear war seem inevitable. The collective ignorance of the US and European leaders in this regard reminds one of the mindset of Guy Montag, the “fireman” in Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451:

“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.”

Life, however, isn’t a novel. And when the modern-day incarnations of Guy Montag decide to “flick the igniter,” all life as we know it will “blow away on a wind turned dark with burning.”

There will be a “No Nuclear War” event held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on December 7, where the danger of nuclear war and the options available to prevent it will be discussed by leading experts such as Larry Wilkerson, Theodore Postol, Melvin Goodman, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Margaret Kimberly, Garland Nixon, Dan Kovalik, Wilmer Leon and others, including the author of this article.

The National Press Club venue can accommodate 400 attendees. For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be streamed live. Go to NoNuclearWar.com for details. #NoNuclearWar

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There’s an old saying, “Fool around and find out.” On November 19, Ukraine fired six US-made missiles at a target located on Russian soil. On November 20, Ukraine fired up to a dozen British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles against a target on Russian soil. On November 21, Russia fired a new intermediate-range missile against a target of Ukrainian soil.

Ukraine and its American and British allies fooled around.

And now they have found out: if you attack Mother Russia, you will pay a heavy price.

In the early morning hours of November 21, Russia launched a missile which struck the Yuzmash factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk. Hours after this missile, which was fired from the Russian missile test range in Kapustin Yar, struck its target, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on Russian television, where he announced that the missile fired by Russia, which both the media and western intelligence had classified as an experimental modification of the RS-26 missile, which had been mothballed by Russia in 2017, was, in fact, a completely new weapon known as the “Oreshnik,” which in Russian means “hazelnut.” Putin noted that the missile was still in its testing phase, and that the combat launch against Ukraine was part of the test, which was, in his words, “successful.”

Putin declared that the missile, which flew to its target at more than ten times the speed of sound, was invincible. “Modern air defense systems that exist in the world, and anti-missile defenses created by the Americans in Europe, can’t intercept such missiles,” Putin said.

Putin said the Oreshnik was developed in response to the planned deployment by the United States of the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile, itself an intermediate-range missile. The Oreshnik was designed to “mirror” US and NATO capabilities.

The next day, November 22, Putin met with the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, Sergey Karakayev, where it was announced that the Oreshnik missile would immediately enter serial production. According to General Karakayev, the Oreshnik, when deployed, could strike any target in Europe without fear of being intercepted. According to Karakayev, the Oreshnik missile system expanded the combat capabilities of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces to destroy various types of targets in accordance with their assigned tasks, both in non-nuclear and nuclear warheads. The high operational readiness of the system, Karakayev said, allows for retargeting and destroying any designated target in the shortest possible time.

“Missiles will speak for themselves”

The circumstances which led Russia to fire, what can only be described as a strategic weapons system against Ukraine, unfolded over the course of the past three months. On September 6, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled to Ramstein, Germany, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who pressed upon Lloyd the importance of the US granting Ukraine permission to use the US-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile on targets located inside the pre-2014 borders of Russia (these weapons had been previously used by Ukraine against territory claimed by Russia, but which is considered under dispute—Crimea, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Lugansk). Zelensky also made the case for US concurrence regarding similar permissions to be granted regarding the British-made Storm Shadow cruise missile.

Ukraine was in possession of these weapons and had made use of them against the Russian territories in dispute. Other than garnering a few headlines, these weapons had virtually zero discernable impact on the battlefield, where Russian forces were prevailing in battle against stubborn Ukrainian defenders.

Secretary Austin listened while Zelensky made his case for the greenlight to use ATACMS and Storm Shadow against Russian targets. “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the divided territory of Ukraine but also on Russian territory so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” Zelensky argued, adding that, “We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.”

Austin rejected the Ukrainian President’s request, noting that no single military weapon would be decisive in the ongoing fighting between Ukraine and Russia, emphasizing that the use of US and British weapons to attack targets inside Russia would only increase the chances for escalating the conflict, bringing a nuclear-armed Russia into direct combat against NATO forces.

On September 11, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accompanied by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, traveled to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, where Zelensky once again pressured both men regarding permission to use ATACMS and Storm Shadow on targets inside Russia. Both men demurred, leaving the matter for a meeting scheduled between US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, on Friday, September 13.

The next day, September 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to the press in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he addressed the question of the potential use by Ukraine of US- and British-made weapons. “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia,” Putin said. “And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

President Biden took heed of the Russian President’s words, and despite being pressured by Prime Minister Starmer to greenlight the use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow by Ukraine, opted to continue the US policy of prohibiting such actions.

And there things stood, until November 18, when President Biden, responding to reports that North Korea had dispatched thousands of troops to Russia to join in the fighting against Ukrainian forces, reversed course, allowing US-provided intelligence to be converted into data used to guide both the ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles to their targets. These targets had been provided by Zelensky to the US back in September, when the Ukrainian President visited Biden at the White House. Zelensky had made striking these targets with ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles a key part of his so-called “victory plan.”

After the approval had been given by the US, Zelensky spoke to the press. “Today, there is a lot of talk in the media about us receiving a permit for respective actions,” he said. “Hits are not made with words. Such things don’t need announcements. Missiles will speak for themselves.”

The next day, November 19, Ukraine fired six ATACMS against targets near the Russian city of Bryansk. The day after—November 20—Ukraine fired Storm Shadow missiles against a Russian command post in the Kursk province of Russia.

The Ukrainian missiles had spoken.

The Russian response

Shortly after the Storm Shadow attacks on Kursk occurred, Ukrainian social media accounts began reporting that Ukrainian intelligence had determined that the Russians were preparing an RS-26 Rubezh missile for launch against Ukraine. These reports suggested that the intelligence came from US-provided warnings, including imagery, as well as intercepted radio communications from the Kapustin Yar missile test facility, located east of the Russian city of Astrakhan.

The RS-26 was a missile that, depending on its payload configuration, could either be classified as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM, meaning it could reach ranges of over 5,500 kilometers) or an intermediate-range missile (IRBM, meaning it could fly between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers). Given that the missile was developed and tested from 2012-2016, this meant the RS-26 would either be declared as an ICBM and be counted as part of the New Start Treaty, or as an IRBM, and as such be prohibited by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The INF Treaty had been in force since July 1988 and had successfully mandated the elimination of an entire category of nuclear-armed weapons deemed to be among the most destabilizing in the world.

In 2017, the Russian government decided to halt the further development of the RS-26 given the complexities brought on by the competing arms control restrictions.

In 2019, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the INF Treaty. The US immediately began testing intermediate-range cruise missiles and announced its intention to develop a new family of hypersonic intermediate range missiles known as Dark Eagle.

Despite this provocation, the Russian government announced a unilateral moratorium of producing and deploying IRBMs, declaring that this moratorium would remain in place until the US or NATO deployed an IRBM on European soil.

In September 2023, the US deployed a new containerized missile launch system capable of firing the Tomahawk cruise missile to Denmark as part of a NATO training exercise. The US withdrew the launcher from Denmark upon conclusion of the training.

In late June 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would resume production of intermediate-range missiles, citing the US deployment of intermediate-range missiles to Denmark. “We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” Putin said.

At that time the western media speculated about the mothballed RS-26 being brought back into production.

When Ukraine announced that it had detected an RS-26 being prepared for launch on November 20, many observers (including me) accepted this possibility, given the June announcement by President Putin and the associated speculation. As such, when on the night on November 21, the Ukrainians announced that an RS-26 missile had been launched from Kapustin Yar against a missile production facility in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, these reports were taken at face value.

As it turned out, we were all wrong.

Ukrainian intelligence, after examining missile debris from the attack, seems to support this assertion. Whereas the RS-26 was a derivative of the SS-27M ICBM, making use of its first and second stages, the Orezhnik, according to the Ukrainians, made use of the first and second stages of the new “Kedr” (Cedar) ICBM, which is in the early stages of development. Moreover, the weapons delivery system appears to be taken from the newly developed Yars-M, which uses independent post-boost vehicles, or IPBVs, known in Russian as blok individualnogo razvedeniya (BIR), instead of traditional multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, or MIRVs.

In the classic weapons configuration for a modern Russian missile, the final stage of the missile, also known as the post-boost vehicle (PBV or bus), contains all the MIRVs. Once the missile exits the earth’s atmosphere, the PBV detaches from the missile body, and then independently maneuvers, releasing each warhead at the required point for it to reach its intended target. Since the MIRVs are all attached to the same PBV, the warheads are released over targets that are on a relatively linear path, limiting the area that can be targeted.

A missile using an IPBV configuration, however, can release each reentry vehicle at the same time, allowing each warhead to follow an independent trajectory to its target. This allows for greater flexibility and accuracy.

The Oreshnik was designed to carry between four and six IPBVs. The one used against Dnipropetrovsk was a six IPBV-capable system. Each war head in turn contained six separate submunitions, consisting of metal slugs forged from exotic alloys that enabled them to maintain their form during the extreme heat generated by hypersonic re-entry speeds. These slugs are not explosive; rather they use the combined effects of the kinetic impact at high speed and the extreme heat absorbed by the exotic alloy to destroy their intended target on impact.

The military industrial target struck by the Oreshnik was hit by six independent warheads, each containing six submunitions. In all, the Dnipropetrovsk facility was struck be 36 separate munitions, inflicting devastating damage, including to underground production facilities used by Ukraine and its NATO allies to produce short- and intermediate-range missiles.

These facilities were destroyed.

The Russians had spoken as well.

Back to the future

If history is the judge, the Oreshnik will likely mirror in terms of operational concept a Soviet-era missile, the Skorost, which was developed beginning in 1982 to counter the planned deployment by the United States of the Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missile to West Germany. The Skorost was, like the Oreshnik, an amalgam of technologies from missiles under development at the time, including an advanced version of the SS-20 IRBM, the yet-to-be deployed SS-25 ICBM, and the still under development SS-27. The result was a road-mobile two-stage missile which could carry either a conventional or nuclear payload that used a six-axle transporter-erector-launcher, or TEL (both the RS-26 and the Oreshnik likewise use a six-axle TEL).

In 1984, as the Skorost neared completion, the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces conducted exercises where SS-20 units practiced the tactics that would be used by the Skorost equipped forces. A total of three regiments of Skorost missiles were planned to be formed, comprising a total of 36 launchers and over 100 missiles. Bases for these units were constructed in 1985.

The Skorost was never deployed; production stopped in March 1987 as the Soviet Union prepared for the realities of the INF Treaty, which would have banned the Skorost system.

The history of the Skorost is important because the operational requirements for the system—to mirror the Pershing II missiles and quickly strike them in time of war—is the same mission given to the Oreshnik missile, with the Dark Eagle replacing the Pershing II.

But the Oreshnik can also strike other targets, including logistic facilities, command and control facilities, air defense facilities (indeed, the Russians just put the new Mk. 41 Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile defense facility that was activated on Polish soil on the Oreshnik’s target list).

In short, the Oreshnik is a game-changer in every way. In his November 21 remarks, Putin chided the United States, noting that the decision by President Trump in 2019 to withdraw from the INF Treaty was foolish, made even more so by the looming deployment of the Oreshnik missile, which would have been banned under the treaty.

On November 22, Putin announced that the Oreshnik was to enter serial production. He also noted that the Russians already had a significant stockpile of Oreshnik missiles that would enable Russia to respond to any new provocations by Ukraine and its western allies, thereby dismissing the assessments of western intelligence which held that, as an experimental system, the Russians did not have the ability to repeat attacks such as the one that took place on November 21.

As a conventionally armed weapon, the Oreshnik provides Russia with the means to strike strategic targets without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. This means that if Russia were to decide to strike NATO targets because of any future Ukrainian provocation (or a direct provocation by NATO), it can do so without resorting to nuclear weapons.

Ready for a nuclear exchange

Complicating an already complicated situation is the fact that while the US and NATO try to wrestle with the re-emergence of a Russian intermediate-range missile threat that mirrors that of the SS-20, the appearance of which in the 1970’s threw the Americans and their European allies into a state of panic, Russia has, in response to the very actions which prompted the reemergence of INF weapons in Europe, issued a new nuclear doctrine which lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons by Russia.

The original nuclear deterrence doctrine was published by Russia in 2020. In September 2024, responding to the debate taking place within the US and NATO about authorizing Ukraine to use US- and British-made missiles to attack targets on Russian soil, President Putin instructed his national security council to propose revisions to the 2020 doctrine based upon new realities.

The revamped document was signed into law by Putin on November 19, the same day that Ukraine fired six US-made ATACMS missiles against targets on Russian soil.

After announcing the adoption of the new nuclear doctrine, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov was asked by reporters if a Ukrainian attack on Russia using ATACMS missiles could potentially trigger a nuclear response. Peskov noted that the doctrine’s provision allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike that raises critical threats for Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Peskov also noted that the doctrine’s new language holds that an attack by any country supported by a nuclear power would constitute a joint aggression against Russia that triggers the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in response.

Shortly after the new Russian doctrine was made public, Ukraine attacked the territory of Russia using ATACMS missiles.

The next day Ukraine attacked the territory of Russia using Storm Shadow missiles.

Under Russia’s new nuclear doctrine, these attacks could trigger a Russian nuclear response.

The new Russian nuclear doctrine emphasizes that nuclear weapons are “a means of deterrence,” and that their use by Russia would only be as an “extreme and compelled measure.” Russia, the doctrine states, “takes all necessary efforts to reduce the nuclear threat and prevent aggravation of interstate relations that could trigger military conflicts, including nuclear ones.”

Nuclear deterrence, the doctrine declares, is aimed at safeguarding the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state,” deterring a potential aggressor, or “in case of a military conflict, preventing an escalation of hostilities and stopping them on conditions acceptable for the Russian Federation.”

Russia has decided not to invoke its nuclear doctrine at this juncture, opting instead to inject the operational use of the new Oreshnik missile as an intermediate non-nuclear deterrence measure.

The issue at this juncture is whether the United States and its allies are cognizant of the danger their precipitous actions in authorizing Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil have caused.

The answer, unfortunately, appears to be “probably not.”

Exhibit A in this regard are comments made by Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, the Director of Plans and Policy at the J5 (Strategy, Plans and Policy) for US Strategic Command, the unified combatant command responsible for deterring strategic attack (i.e., nuclear war) through a safe, secure, effective, and credible global combat capability and, when directed, to be ready to prevail in conflict. On November 20, Admiral Buchanan was the keynote speaker at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues conference in Washington, DC, where he drew upon his experience as the person responsible for turning presidential guidance into preparing and executing the nuclear war plans of the United States.

The host of the event drew upon Admiral Buchanan’s résumé when introducing him to the crowd, a tact which, on the surface, projected a sense of confidence in the nuclear warfighting establishment of the United States. The host also noted that it was fortuitous that Admiral Thomas would be speaking a day after Russia announced its new nuclear doctrine.

But when Admiral Buchanan began talking, such perceptions were quickly swept away by the reality that those responsible for the planning and implementation of America’s nuclear war doctrine were utterly clueless about what it is they are being called upon to do.

When speaking about America’s plans for nuclear war, Admiral Buchanan stated that “our plans are sufficient in terms of the actions they seek to hold the adversary to, and we are in a study of sufficiency,” noting that “the current program of record is sufficient today but may not be sufficient for the future.” He went on to articulate that this study “is underway now and will work well into the next administration, and we look forward to continuing that work and articulating how the future program could help provide the President additional options should he need them.”

In short, America’s nuclear war plans are nonsensical, which is apt, given the nonsensical reality of nuclear war.

Admiral Buchanan’s remarks are shaped by his world view which, in the case of Russia, is influenced by a NATO-centric interpretation of Russian actions and intent that is divorced from reality. “President Putin,” Admiral Buchanan declared, “has demonstrated a growing willingness to employ nuclear rhetoric to coerce the United States and our NATO allies to accept his attempt to change borders and rewrite history. This week, notwithstanding, was another one of those efforts.”

Putin, Buchanan continued, “has validated and updated his doctrine such that Russia has revised it to include the provision that nuclear retaliation against non-nuclear states would be considered if the state that supported it was supported by a nuclear state. This has serious implications for Ukraine and our NATO allies.”

Left unsaid was the fact that the current crisis over Ukraine is linked to a NATO strategy that sought to expand NATO’s boundaries up to the border of Russia despite assurances having been made that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Likewise, Buchanan was mute on the stated objective of the administration of President Biden to use the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war designed to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia.

Seen in this light, Russia’s nuclear doctrine goes from being a tool of intimidation, as articulated by Admiral Buchanan, to a tool of deterrence—mirroring the stated intent of America’s nuclear posture, but with much more clarity and purpose.

Admiral Buchanan did couch his comments by declaring from the start that, when it comes to nuclear war, “there is no winning here. Nobody wins. You know, the US is signed up to that language. Nuclear war cannot be won, must never be fought, et cetera.”

When asked about the concept of “winning” a nuclear war, Buchanan replied that “it’s certainly complex, because we go down a lot of different avenues to talk about what is the condition of the United States in a post-nuclear exchange environment. And that is a place that’s a place we’d like to avoid, right? And so when we talk about non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities, we certainly don’t want to have an exchange, right?”

Right.

It would have been best if he had just stopped here. But Admiral Buchanan continued.

“I think everybody would agree if we have to have an exchange, then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States. So it’s terms that are most acceptable to the United States that puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right? So we're largely viewed as the world leader. And do we lead the world in an area where we’ve considered loss? The answer is no, right? And so it would be to a point where we would maintain sufficient – we’d have to have sufficient capability. We’d have to have reserve capacity. You wouldn’t expend all of your resources to gain winning, right? Because then you have nothing to deter from at that point.”

Two things emerge from this statement. First is the notion that the United States believes it can fight and win a nuclear “exchange” with Russia.

Second is the idea that the United States can win a nuclear war with Russia while retaining enough strategic nuclear capacity to deter the rest of the world from engaging in a nuclear war after the nuclear war with Russia is done.

To “win” a nuclear war with Russia implies the United States has a war-winning plan.

Admiral Buchanan is the person in charge of preparing these plans. He has stated that these plans “are sufficient in terms of the actions they seek to hold the adversary to,” but this clearly is not the case—the United States has failed to deter Russia from issuing a new nuclear war doctrine and from employing in combat for the first time in history a strategic nuclear capable ballistic missile.

His plans have failed.

And he admits that “the current program of record is sufficient today but may not be sufficient for the future.”

Meaning we have no adequate plan for the future.

But we do have a plan.

One that is intended to produce a “victory” in a nuclear war Buchanan admits cannot be won and should never be fought.

One that will allow the United States to retain sufficient nuclear weapons in its arsenal to continue to “be a world leader” by sustaining its doctrine of nuclear deterrence.

A doctrine which, if the United States ever does engage in a “nuclear exchange” with Russia, would have failed.

There is only one scenario in which the United States could imagine a nuclear “exchange” with Russia which allows it to retain a meaningful nuclear weapons arsenal capable of continued deterrence.

And that scenario involves a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russia’s strategic nuclear forces designed to eliminate most of Russia’s nuclear weapons.

Such an attack can only be carried out by the Trident missiles carried aboard the Ohio-class submarines of the United States Navy.

Hold that thought.

Russia is on record as saying that the use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles by Ukraine on targets inside Russia is enough to trigger the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation under its new nuclear doctrine.

At the time of this writing, the United States and Great Britain are in discussions with Ukraine about the possibility of authorizing new attacks on Russia using the ATACMS and Storm Shadow.

France just authorized Ukraine to use the French-made SCALP missile (a cousin to the Storm Shadow) against targets inside Russia.

And there are reports that the United States Navy has just announced that it is increasing the operational readiness status of its deployed Ohio-class submarines.

It is high time for everyone, from every walk of life, to understand the path we are currently on. Left unchecked, events are propelling us down a highway to hell that leads to only one destination—a nuclear Armageddon that everyone agrees can’t be won, and yet the United States is, at this very moment, preparing to “win.”

A nuclear “exchange” with Russia, even if the United States were able to execute a surprise preemptive nuclear strike, would result in the destruction of dozens of American cities and the deaths of more than a hundred million Americans.

And this is if we “win.”

And we know that we can’t “win” a nuclear war.

And yet we are actively preparing to fight one.

This insanity must stop.

Now.

The United States just held an election where the winning candidate, President-elect Donald Trump, campaigned on a platform which sought to end the war in Ukraine and avoid a nuclear war with Russia.

And yet the administration of President Joe Biden has embarked on a policy direction which seeks to expand the conflict in Ukraine and is bringing the United States to the very brink of a nuclear war with Russia.

This is a direct affront to the notion of American democracy.

By ignoring the stated will of the people of the United States as manifested through their votes in an election where the very issue of war and peace were front and center in the campaign, is an affront to democracy.

We the people of the United States must not allow this insane rush to war to continue.

We must put the Biden administration on notice that we are opposed to any expansion of the conflict in Ukraine which brings with it the possibility of escalation that leads to a nuclear war with Russia.

And we must implore the incoming Trump administration to speak out in opposition to this mad rush toward nuclear annihilation by restating publicly its position of the war in Ukraine and nuclear war with Russia—that the war must end now, and that there can be no nuclear war with Russia triggered by the war in Ukraine.

We need to say “no” to nuclear war.

I am working with other like-minded people to hold a rally in Washington, DC on the weekend of December 7-8 to say no to nuclear war.

I am encouraging Americans from all walks of life, all political persuasions, all social classes, to join and lend their voices to this cause.

Watch this space for more information about this rally.

All our lives depend on it.

#Nonuclearwar

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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz to be the next Attorney General of the United States. Many Americans are appalled and offended by this choice. I find it one of the best nominations made by Trump. Let me tell you why. And please take note—it is personal.

Let’s get the easy part over with upfront.

On paper, Matt Gaetz isn’t qualified to be the Attorney General of the United States.

His résumé is paper thin.

And he operates under a dark cloud of controversy which, under normal circumstances, would be automatically disqualifying.

And I’ll add this—if Matt Gaetz is found criminally guilty of any of the things he has been alleged to have committed, then he is, in fact, automatically disqualified.

But herein lies the rub: he has not been found guilty of anything.

And in America, you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

The House Ethics Committee is not a court of law.

It is, however, a highly politicized body fully capable of being weaponized to bring down one of the most polarizing figures in modern American political history.

There are those clamoring for the House Ethics Committee to release a report that had been prepared concerning various allegations of potentially illegal conduct on the part of Matt Gaetz.

There is no doubt that this report was prepared by the political enemies of Matt Gaetz, both Republican (remember, he single-handedly brought down a Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy) and Democrat alike.

Matt Gaetz has resigned from his seat in Congress.

The Ethics Committee no longer has jurisdiction over Matt Gaetz.

This politicized report should be consigned to the trash bin of history.

If Matt Gaetz has committed a crime, then he should be charged in criminal court.

Otherwise, sit down and shut up.

Why, one may ask, would I take such a position?

Back in August 1998 I was informed by Larry Sanchez, the CIA’s liaison to the US Mission to the United Nations, that if I resigned my position as a Chief Weapons Inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the FBI would, quote, “fuck me in the ass” for the rest of my life.

I resigned on a matter of principle, fed up with years of US interference in the disarmament work me and my fellow UNSCOM inspectors were tasked with conducting.

Larry Sanchez was not lying.

The same day I submitted my resignation, the FBI leaked to CBS News the fact that it was investigating me on charges of spying on behalf of Israel.

Left unsaid by Dan Rather, the CBS Nightly newscaster, was that the FBI investigation was related to intelligence liaison work I was conducting on behalf of UNSCOM, based upon an agreement reached between the CIA (yes, Larry Sanchez) and the UNSCOM Chairman, Rolf Ekeus, back in July 1995, and sustained by Richard Butler when he took over from Ambassador Ekeus in the summer of 1997. The FBI investigation was opened in 1996 at the behest of disgruntled CIA employees in the Iraq Operations Group (IOG) who were angry over the access to Israeli intelligence I was gaining through this cooperation. The IOG openly sabotaged cooperation between UNSCOM and the King of Jordan involving the interception of Russian guidance and control devices that I had coordinated using an intelligence tip-off from Israel, and did the same to a similar intelligence cooperation between UNSCOM and Romania, together with the British MI-6 and Israeli intelligence, to block an Iraqi attempt to covertly buy a controlling share of a Romanian aerospace company that manufactured missile components.

The FBI had been following me since 1995, shortly after the cooperation with Israel began. At the heart of the matter was film produced by American U-2 spy planes operating on behalf of UNSCOM while overflying Iraq. I was running the U-2 project for UNSCOM at the time, helping direct the flights of the U-2 and coordinating with the US regarding the interpretation of the film. The CIA, however, was unresponsive to my requests for better imagery and dedicated photographic analysts. As such, I had reached out to Israel to see if they would help with the interpretation of the film and, as a byproduct of this relationship, open their intelligence files to answer any questions that emerged from the examination of the film.

This angered the CIA’s IOG, who turned me into the FBI, claiming I was turning classified material over to Israel.

The problem was the IOG was wrong—the film in question, marked “Secret” by the CIA, was automatically declassified when it was turned over to UNSCOM. Thus, even thought the film was marked “Secret—Releasable to UNSCOM,’ this marking had no legal weight—the film was unclassified for the simple fact that UNSCOM personnel working with the imagery had no security clearances.

When the FBI told Larry Sanchez in the summer of 1998 that they were going to arrest me, Larry went to the CIA’s legal counsel and had a letter prepared which explained this to the FBI.

This means that when I resigned, the FBI knew that there was no legal case against me.

And yet they released the existence of the investigation to CBS News for political reasons—to “fuck me in the ass” for daring to resign against the desires of the US government.

This is not a lawful duty of the FBI, and yet it is exactly the kind of work it engages in daily across the United States—politically motivated investigations using manufactured “evidence” designed to destroy the lives of American citizens who were politically inconvenient to the powers that be.

I eventually prevailed upon the FBI to drop the charges, but not before they made gainful employment impossible for nearly three years and cost me a fortune in legal fees to hire a lawyer capable of taking on the Southern District of New York.

The FBI is in the business of destroying lives of law-abiding Americans whose exercise of free speech is found offensive by their political masters.

The FBI investigated me for making a documentary film, “In Shifting Sands,” which made the case that Iraq had been disarmed by UN weapons inspectors. Because this movie embraced a narrative which contradicted the case for war being made by the US government, I was targeted for character assassination.

It was the FBI which, in 2003, leaked to the press information about legal matters that had been dismissed by a judge and sealed by a New York court order.

The purpose of the leak was to make me “radioactive” to news organizations so that I would not be able to publicly question the case for war being made by the US government on the eve of the decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

The FBI investigated me in 2006 when I dared challenge the US government’s assertions regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The FBI is currently investigating me regarding efforts to counter the US governments efforts to promote Russophobia, accusing me of violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act simply because I traveled to Russia and returned home to report the truth of what I had witnessed to the American people.

The FBI coordinated with the State Department to seize my passport without cause, simply to prevent me from continuing to travel to Russia.

The FBI executed a search warrant on my home on August 7, 2024, based upon false statements submitted to a federal judge to sustain the premise of probable cause.

During the execution of this search warrant, the FBI seized my archive of documents from my time as an UNSCOM weapons inspector, on the grounds that documents clearly marked “Secret-Releasable to UNSCOM” were somehow classified material, despite the CIA’s letter to the FBI stating the opposite.

The FBI, together with the State Department, has coordinated with the Office of the President in Ukraine and Ukrainian intelligence to put my name on three separate “hit” lists, marking me for death.

My crime: exercising my free speech rights to be critical of US policy regarding Ukraine.

I have been labeled an “information terrorist” by the Ukrainian government through programs that are funded in full by US taxpayers and facilitated by both the State Department and the FBI.

The culprits in question within the FBI operate in the National Security Division.

This is the same National Security Division which manufactured the Russian collusion case against President Trump in 2016—Operation Crossfire Hurricane.

The same National Security Division which planted scores of plainclothes undercover agents in the crowds on January 6, 2021, leading to the storming of the capitol.

The same National Security Division which raided Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

The same National Security Division which is charged with investigating the attempt on President Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, this past July—and yet can’t yet make a finding.

The FBI’s National Security Division is responsive to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division.

The National Security Division of the DOJ oversees the persecution of the Uhuru-3 Black Nationalist Movement, using FARA as a sword to punish them for politically inconvenient free speech.

The National Security Division’s of the DOJ and FBI are the greatest domestic threats to the American people and the concept of Constitutional rule of law today.

Matt Gaetz knows this.

Matt Gaetz has eviscerated the Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, and the sitting Attorney General, Merrick Garland, during Congressional hearings.

Matt Gaetz is the only person who has the motive and ability to take on the National Security Division’s of the DOJ and FBI and get justice for the American people whose lives have been turned upside down because of their distinctly illegal activities.

In 1998, the FBI promised to “fuck me in the ass” for daring to speak out against bad US policy in Iraq.

Today, some 26 years later, the FBI is still working to carry out that promise.

The FBI terrorizes innocent Americans daily for the “crime” of saying things their political masters object to.

Matt Gaetz was investigated by the FBI regarding the allegations that are the subject of the House Ethics Committee report.

The FBI did not press charges.

Matt Gaetz has promised to hold the FBI and Department of Justice to account for the crimes they have committed against him.

For the crimes they have committed against President Trump.

For the crimes that they have committed against the American people.

For the crimes they have committed against me.

You see, it is personal.

Not just for those who have been directly caught up in the abuses committed by the FBI and DOJ.

But for all Americans.

The FBI and DOJ, as they are currently organized and operated, are an insult to us all.

They are an affront to the Constitution.

Matt Gaetz wants to hold them to account.

And we should do everything possible to give him the chance to do just that by supporting his nomination as Attorney General.

We are in the midst of the Trump Revolution, and Matt Gaetz is as revolutionary as they come.

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The 2024 Presidential election is over. The people have spoken. And now our work really begins.

Back on September 28, I announced the commencement of what I called Operation DAWN. The name was derived from four questions designed to challenge American voters regarding how they would vote on November 5:

What would you do to save Democracy?

What would you do to save America?

What would you do to save the World?

Through your vote in November?

My goal was to compel the American voter to withhold committing to a particular candidate until which time they had articulated sound policy positions on some of the existential issues facing Americans in this election—the threat of nuclear war, the war in Ukraine, the assault on free speech, the genocide ongoing in Palestine, and the state of democracy in America today.

We followed up the Kingston event with a massive information campaign which engaged what I have come to call the “family of podcasts” to get out the word. Including Judging Freedom, with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Dialogue Works, with Nima Rostami Alkhoroshid, the eponymously named podcasts done by Garland Nixon and Danny Haiphong, and my own Ask the Inspector (together with co-host Jeff Norman).

Through the “family of podcasts,” I was able to articulate the underlying message of Operation DAWN to over a million discreet viewers a week, far outstripping mainstream media shows such as Fareed Zakharia’s GPS, which airs on CNN every Sunday and, in October 2024, averaged some 440,000 discreet viewers per week.

I tapped into the “family of podcast” concept on October 27 when, in cooperation with the Eisenhower Media Network, Operation DAWN organized three expert panels as part of a brunch gathering at the Tudor City Steakhouse in New York City that covered the policy areas of focus—nuclear war, free speech, and saving democracy.

Operation DAWN also undertook to bring attention to the issue of free speech on Ask the Inspector, hosting Richard Medhurst, the UK journalist and host of a popular podcast who was arrested by British authorities for online posts he made critical of Israel, Mary Kostakidis, the Australian journalist placed under investigation for her posts about Israel, Kim Dotcom, the German-born New Zealander prosecuted by the US government for posting material on the internet the US found objectionable, and the Uhuru 3, a Black nationalist movement whose leader, Omali Yeshitela, along with two followers, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, were arrested and tried in federal court for engaging in speech deemed by the government to violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). (The Uhuru 3 were found innocent of being Russian agents, but guilty of conspiracy. They await sentencing, currently scheduled for December 16, and are actively appealing their conviction.)

Operation DAWN also worked in ways that were not always visible to the online audience. Over the past two years, I have been in frequent contact with Robert Kennedy Jr., discussing the war in Ukraine, its origins, and possible outcomes and solutions. These conversations played a role on Mr. Kennedy’s understanding of the Ukraine conflict and its impact on the US-Russian relationship. Through these conversations, and others had with experts such as retired US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, Mr. Kennedy’s views on the Ukraine conflict galvanized around a realistic understanding of its roots, what it would take to bring the fighting to an end, and what the consequences of a US-Russian conflict over Ukraine would be. On September 17, Mr. Kennedy, together with Donald Trump, Jr., authored an opinion piece published in the online magazine, The Hill, which argued that the current policies being pursued by the administration of President Joe Biden “put the world at greater risk of nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.”

I made a series of concerted efforts to get the Green Party Candidate, Jill Stein, to appear on my podcast, but to no avail. The Harris campaign did not respond to my efforts at outreach. As such, the conversations I had with Mr. Kennedy—who, unlike Stein and Harris, was a guest on our Ask the Inspector podcast—manifested themselves into the only major articulation on the part of any campaign about the danger of the war in Ukraine escalating into a nuclear war.

And this was the winning campaign.

In retrospect, Operation DAWN has been a tremendous success, helping inform a broad spectrum of the voting public about the existential issues of the day—nuclear war, genocide, and free speech, and helping inject critical policy points into the mainstream presidential campaign.

But we are not going to rest on our laurels.

A critical aspect of American democracy is the concept of holding those whom we, the people elect to govern in our name, accountable for their actions.

Donald Trump has won an election which, by any standard, was decisive enough to invoke the concept of a people’s mandate to govern. In this, he should be given sufficient latitude to proceed with the policies he believes best position him to fulfill the promise of change he made to the American people, along with a pledge to keep our nation out of war, and to protect the free speech rights of all Americans.

Operation DAWN 2.0 will continue in the spirit of Operation DAWN, serving as a vehicle of informational empowerment for its audience, which we hope to expand by maintaining existing collaborative relationships, and forging new ones.

In the coming year, Operation DAWN will expand its collaboration with the “family of podcasts,” as well as other partners such as Gerald Celente, Randy Credico, and the Eisenhower Media Network, as well as begin new collaborations with independent journalists such as Anya Parampil and Rachel Blevins. We will also be reaching out to powerful voices in the struggle for a free Palestine, such as Miko Peled and the Muslim Congress.

I will be continuing to warn about the danger of nuclear war and will be publishing a new book in early 2025 with Clarity Press titled Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, 2015-2024 that details the danger of nuclear war and the failure of successive US presidential administrations to implement policies designed to avoid such a catastrophe. I will also continue to promote my most recent book, Covering Ukraine, which I co-authored with Ania K. Operation DAWN hopes to be able to organize a book tour in January 2025 which would take Ania K and me to several cities across the United States where we will discuss the war in Ukraine and how the Trump administration plans on bringing it to an end.

2025 will be a year of opportunity and change. Operation DAWN does not intend to be a passive observer of these events, but rather an active participant in a broad national dialogue about the policies being put into place, and whether these policies match the expectations and needs of the American people. I invite everyone who played a role in Operation DAWN to date to join us in this new endeavor as we continue our fight to prevent a nuclear war, stop a genocide, defend free speech, and save democracy in America.

If you would like to support Operation DAWN financially, you can do by purchasing an Operation DAWN challenge coin, or by donating at ScottRitter.com.

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There is a one in 14 million chance we can save ourselves—if Ironman and Dr. Strange can be believed. It all comes down to who we vote for today.

America is screwed

We have two choices—Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—who aren’t qualified to be dog catcher, let alone President of the United States.

Neither could run for Mayor in a small town and win, because neither is competent enough to articulate in an informed fashion about issues that matter.

It’s come down to praying for a miraculous outcome.

It reminds me of the scene in Avengers: Infinity War, where Dr. Strange evaluates 14 million possibilities to defeat Thanos, and can only come up with one possibility.

Anytime a nation allows itself to be put in a scenario where it has a one-in-14 million shot at survival, there is a problem.

America, we have a problem.

A vote for Jill Stein opens the slim possibility that the Green Party can break through the 5% threshold that would open up federal funding in the next election, creating the much needed possibility of a viable third party candidacy.

But she is not going to be President under any scenario.

That leaves us with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

When I run the numbers on Kamala Harris, the outcome is always dire—the real possibility that America will be in a nuclear conflict sometime during her first year in office.

She has no strategy for ending the conflict in Ukraine beyond continuing the current policy.

She has called Iran the greatest adversary to America today.

She will get America boxed into a corner where the only exit strategy involves the use of nuclear weapons.

Trump is not better.

And yet…

He has articulated about the danger of nuclear war.

Harris has not.

He has talked about ending the Ukraine war.

Harris has not.

He has opined on the possibility of lifting sanctions against Iran.

Harris has not.

Like Dr. Strange, I have run the numbers on a Trump presidency.

It doesn’t look good.

The odds are 14 million to one that Trump keeps us out of a nuclear war.

But as Avengers: Endgame showed us, sometimes, if you fight hard enough, the odds will end in your favor.

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