People in the west who have access to classified information are acting like the think Russia’s nukes work. We also know that at the fall of the soviet union the people who lead the nuke programs got more power. As such I think Russia has working nukes - if there is any decay in the program it would have started at most 2 years ago - not long enough for there to be many failures.
That is different from sabre rattling - they get plenty of propaganda value from a threat that they are unlikely to use. They are well aware that launching a nuke means they and all their loved ones die (it is unlikely more than a few thousand humans would survive the result), so they are unlikely to use their nukes, but reminding everyone they have them is helpful. And they have a few deranged people (likely everyone) that we can’t assume they won’t.
The decay in their institutions started much earlier than 2 years ago. At my most generous, it started immediately after the fall of the USSR. But the truth is that a culture of grift has existed in Russian culture for centuries. The Soviets were just as guilty of it as the Czars were and the current oligarchy is now.
Decay is always lumpy. In general you are correct, but this topic isn’t the general state of Russia, but the state of their nuclear program. By all reports that program has done much better than the typical program.
People in the west who have access to classified information are acting like the think Russia’s nukes work. We also know that at the fall of the soviet union the people who lead the nuke programs got more power. As such I think Russia has working nukes - if there is any decay in the program it would have started at most 2 years ago - not long enough for there to be many failures.
That is different from sabre rattling - they get plenty of propaganda value from a threat that they are unlikely to use. They are well aware that launching a nuke means they and all their loved ones die (it is unlikely more than a few thousand humans would survive the result), so they are unlikely to use their nukes, but reminding everyone they have them is helpful. And they have a few deranged people (likely everyone) that we can’t assume they won’t.
The decay in their institutions started much earlier than 2 years ago. At my most generous, it started immediately after the fall of the USSR. But the truth is that a culture of grift has existed in Russian culture for centuries. The Soviets were just as guilty of it as the Czars were and the current oligarchy is now.
Decay is always lumpy. In general you are correct, but this topic isn’t the general state of Russia, but the state of their nuclear program. By all reports that program has done much better than the typical program.