Dear colleagues, Many Americans prefer to talk about cats than to confront the reality of the grave dangers of nuclear confrontation that continue to grow. You may recall that David Sanger wrote a month ago in a front page story for the NYT about the Biden administration's new classified "Nuclear Employment Guidance" that apparently seeks to focus more on China and also warns of the prospect of intensifying nuclear rivalry with a variety of powers. That NYT article (20 Aug) shocked me with the following eery sentence: "Mr. Biden and his aides, looking at intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher." Even as I had myself been tracking such developments and warning from the Russia side, I had not considered the danger to be that outrageously high, but I didn’t have all the facts and such is the new, highly dangerous world we are living in. I reflect at length on these troubling developments, but also comment widely on both the nuclear escalation dangers in both the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula in these two hour-long podcasts with Scott Horton of Antiwar.com, and then with Defense Priorities’ own Danny Davis (U.S. Army Lt Col. Ret.) on his excellent Deep Dive show. In the latter discussion, I'm thrilled to tag-team with the exceedingly wise former Ambassador Chas Freeman. In these two podcasts, I try to articulate a coherent path forward to navigate away from these extraordinary dangers to both our country and our planet. We are all praying that "cooler heads prevail." Thanks for listening to my ideas and have a great weekend. We are again living under Cold War conditions: Lyle GoldsteinScott interviews Lyle Goldstein about the return of Cold War conditions between the U.S. and its nuclear-armed adversaries. They discuss the Biden administration’s nuclear strategy pivot, the danger of what’s happening with North Korea, the developments that brought us back to this dangerous nuclear situation and the way we can back away from the edge. Roundtable discussion hosted by Lt. Col. Daniel DavisLyle Goldstein is director of the Asia Engagement program at Defense Priorities and director of the China Initiative at Brown University. Formerly, Lyle served as research professor at U.S. Naval War College for 20 years. © 2024 Lyle Goldstein |