This morning a read a long and fascinating essay in the New York Times titled The Secret Pentagon War Game That ​Offers a Stark​ Warning for Our Times: The devastating outcome of the 1983 game reveals that nuclear escalation inevitably spirals out of control.

Day 7 of nuclear war in Europe per 1983 war game.

33 Questions About Ame... Thomas E. Woods Best Price: $2.91 Buy New $9.99 (as of 07:05 UTC - Details) The writer, William Langewiesche—who is also the author of The Atomic Bazaar: Dispatches From the Underground World of Nuclear Trafficking—provides a detailed exposition of what I have been worrying about since the U.S. government sent Kamala Harris to the Munich Security Conference in February 2022 to represent the U.S. in talks about the rapidly escalating tension between Russia and Ukraine.

The essay concludes by quoting Paul Bracken, a Yale international relations professor who recently wrote a book titled The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics.

Bracken flagged what he called the “transcendental madness” of the whole enterprise. He said: “Sometimes the only way to deal with it is with humor. ‘Dr. Strangelove’ started out as a serious movie about nuclear war, and Kubrick just couldn’t do it. So he turned it into a dark comedy.” But Bracken is not laughing. He believes that the nuclear modernization currently underway is necessary but misguided. He said, for instance: “Building a harder command-and-control system using blockchain so we can get the ‘go’ code to the missile forces is an improvement on one of the most fantastically unlikely scenarios that anyone can dream up. I’m at least looking at real-world threats and dangerous pathways to nuclear war. I don’t think a bolt from the blue is one of those. So I’m looking at the right problems, with inadequate skills perhaps, but the Pentagon is applying high levels of skills to the wrong problem.”

History shows that deterrence often fails and that countries can maneuver themselves into corners where they have no choice but to enter into wars they cannot win, wars of assured self-destruction. Now we are entering an era where nuclear arms control is an open question, nonproliferation has failed, conventional conflicts are spreading, overwrought nationalism is on the rise, the use of small nuclear weapons again seems possible, deterrence is weakening and fools dream of managing nuclear escalation in the midst of battle. Nuclear war in some form seems to be coming to the neighborhood. There is little sign that changes are being pursued to lower the risk. There is no reason to panic, but Katie, bar the door.

Bracken states what I have long known to be the case. Time and again throughout history, fallible men in positions of power have grossly overestimated the amount of foresight and control they possess. Embarking on the path of escalation always triggers an unpredictable train of actions and reactions with an uncertain outcome.

Economy, Society, and ... Hoppe, Hans-Hermann Buy New $11.95 (as of 10:01 UTC - Details) If the last 25 years have taught us anything, it’s that the hyper-aggressive control freaks in Washington who meddle in the affairs of mankind NEVER know the outcomes of their adventures. Consider that the U.S. government beat a hasty and chaotic retreat from Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation—leaving the Taliban in control—just a few months before it sent Kamala Harris to Munich to confound and bait the Russian Bear into taking aggressive action in Ukraine.

Consider as well the the U.S. government continues to avoid pursuing a final and consequential investigation of how U.S. biotechnology—supplied by Professor Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill—played a key role in developing SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19.

I implore the incoming Trump administration to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and to seek an Austrian-style neutrality deal for that country. The American people have no dog in this fight between Russia and Ukraine, which ultimately came about when Ukrainian billionaire oligarchs made the catastrophic mistake of getting into bed with the CIA and the Clinton and Biden crime families. The security of the poor Ukrainian people and the American people have never been a consideration for the madmen who have sought to maintain a state of enmity with Russia since 1993.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.