Trump's Acting National Security Adviser Said Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable
Source: Huffington Post
President Donald Trumps acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.
Kuppermans suggestion that the U.S. could triumph in a nuclear war went against dominant theories of mutually assured destruction and ignored the long-term destabilizing effects that such hostilities would have on the planets health and global politics.
Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war in the classical sense, and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.
Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/charles-kupperman-nuclear-war-trump-nsa_n_5d7b9809e4b03b5fc88212fd
And I thought Bolton was the insane one
C_U_L8R
(45,001 posts)Mutually assured destruction.
kimbutgar
(21,137 posts)Only death, destruction and poisoning of air and water. Only an insane ignorant person would make that comment.
But of course its on par with the MF45 administration.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)During the Bush-Cheney administration, we were told by Tom Ridge that in the event of a biological weapons release, we could use shower curtains and duct tape to save ourselves.
Grokenstein
(5,722 posts)And morons ran right out and "stocked up" on it.
We should've known we were doomed right then.
ffr
(22,669 posts)Just not for everything living today and especially not for any large living organism like a human being. The winner would be planet Earth, which would start some other species dominance in a few million years after said nuclear war, much like the K-T Event reset species dominance from reptiles to mammals.
So the answer is yes.
bucolic_frolic
(43,146 posts)as a cleansing and sanitizing event. Visit records from the period of the Black Death, when survivors lacked the manpower to bury the dead. The collateral diseases, the stench, the misery and psychological damage. Our society could handle this? Think of the looting, the gangs, and weaponry. How will they divide the remaining food supplies? No one really knows if the next growing season would be lost, or perhaps more than one. And the radioactivity, and the long term health effects.
This guy is nuts. Really nuts. A theoretician. A gambler.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)having to breathe with oxygen assistance for their 12 year life expectancy, acceptable.
House of Roberts
(5,168 posts)How reassuring.
ananda
(28,858 posts)!@#$%
mahannah
(893 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,683 posts)EX500rider
(10,842 posts)....Uh, depending on the breaks!
(Dr Strangelove quote)
htuttle
(23,738 posts)Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Jedi Guy
(3,185 posts)Sounds to me like he wants to LARP Fallout 4. Nah, I played the game. Not interested in living it. It's fun escapism for a while, but I like being able to turn the game off and go back to not living in a poisoned wasteland, thanks.
Maxheader
(4,373 posts)that he was worried the troops hadn't been blooded...
You hear stumpy say that you can bet the military is getting ready to put boots on the ground...
somewhere....
cojoel
(957 posts)the only winning move is not to play
Flaleftist
(3,473 posts)sakabatou
(42,152 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,311 posts)From HuffPost:
Actual script:
"it is necessary now to make a choice - to choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable post-war environments. One, where you got 20 million people killed, and the other, where you got 150 million people killed."
Those are the exact numbers Kupperman used. 20 years after the film.
turbinetree
(24,695 posts)what is only 20 million innocents getting vaporized.......................
PSPS
(13,594 posts)Jopin Klobe
(779 posts)LINK: [link:https://www.amazon.com/enough-shovels-reagan-bush-nuclear/dp/0436443554/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=77927890519861&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=with+enough+shovels&qid=1568418312&s=gateway&sr=8-1|
"The title comes from Edward Teller acolyte TJ Jones, who told Scheer in an interview in the early 80s that the US could survive a nuclear war if people dug a hole, put a door on top and covered the door with dirt."
... seriously ...
Bradical79
(4,490 posts)These fucking idiotic psychopaths...
brush
(53,776 posts)away in well-stocked, nuke-proof bunkers.
20 million dead was just collateral damage to his ass.
PhoenixDem
(581 posts)One has to be either a crook, demented or insane to work in the Trump white house or cabinet.
iluvtennis
(19,852 posts)McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)dchill
(38,484 posts)yellowcanine
(35,699 posts)Ugh - Seriously?
NickB79
(19,236 posts)Most of the Northern Hemisphere would be plunged into a mini-Ice Age, similar to 1815's Year Without A Summer but lasting a decade. Billions would die.
Within a year we'd be eating our surviving neighbors.
Evolve Dammit
(16,725 posts)IcyPeas
(21,865 posts)and they are smaller than "USSR"
these scenarios scare the crap out of me:
He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.
Is this really how they think?
SWBTATTReg
(22,114 posts)Javaman
(62,521 posts)We have stocked up on snow shovels!
Fucking morons