We Live in a MAD World
On 30 October 2025, I was on the “Deep Dive” with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis. In addition to talking about the usual issues, we talked early in the show about President Trump’s false claims that the US has more nuclear weapons than Russia and that the Russians are testing nuclear weapons. In fact, Russia has several hundred more nuclear weapons than the US and Moscow has not tested a nuclear weapon since 1990. And there is no evidence that Russia is getting ready to do a nuclear test. The US has not tested a nuclear weapon since 1992 and there is no need to start testing now.
I also disputed the widely held belief that the new nuclear weapons that Russia is developing are going to shift the nuclear balance in a meaningful way. The fact is that both sides have so many deliverable nuclear weapons that there is no way either side can fight and win a nuclear war, even if one side adds more deliverable warheads. We live in a MAD world - a world where both Russia and the US have the capability to turn the other side into a smoking, radiating ruin, no matter who gets in the first strike. In other words, both sides have an assured destruction capability. The Russians can add all the Burevestnik cruise missiles and Poseidon drones they want to their nuclear arsenal, but that will not give them the capability to win a nuclear war. It will just make the rubble bounce higher.
Thanks for laying this out clearly. The key point that gets lost in most commentary is that the structure of the US–Russia nuclear relationship has not changed. Regardless of modernization programs, exotic delivery systems, or incremental warhead additions, the strategic balance remains governed by mutual assured destruction. Both states retain survivable second-strike capability across land, sea, and air. That’s the only metric that matters.
The political narrative about “nuclear advantage” or “closing the gap” functions more as domestic signaling and threat inflation than strategic assessment. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen since the 1950s: exaggerated claims of disparity, justification for budget expansion, escalation spiral justified in hindsight.
Meanwhile, the claims about Russia preparing to test are not evidence-based. They’re tempo management, manufacturing urgency to maintain rhetorical and funding momentum in Washington.
If anything, the proliferation of novel Russian systems underscores the opposite of what many pundits claim: they are insurance against US missile defense expansion, not credible first-strike tools that alter the stability equation.
Thanks for all your insights JOHN.
Trump is old enough, and possibly ill enough, to expire or become incapacitated in the near future. His sponsors, however, will continue onward as they have done for decades.
Trump did not attain his current position on his own. THAT is a serious problem.