NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Putin’s Nuclear Megaphone:

Yesterday, Putin was rattling the nuclear saber by threatening to put Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, on the Baltic, in response to the U.S. plan to put armor in the region. . . .

This week’s escalating rhetoric about nukes is a new low, and one that demonstrates how far south the relationship between Russia and the West has gone under a U.S. President who rose to fame and Nobel laureate status based on his nonproliferation chops and amid promises of a “reset” with Russia.
It’s now more than fair to call the reset an abject failure, not least because this is hardly the first time Russia has pulled out the nuclear blackmail trick. In March, the country’s ambassador to Denmark threatened nuclear strikes on Danish warships if Copenhagen signed on with a NATO missile defense shield—a move that, like this latest threat, was aimed at driving a wedge between NATO member countries. As we wrote at that time, the Kremlin is keenly aware of the billions it spends on Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal. Since Putin can’t actually use the things as weapons, and he can’t get rid of them, he can at least use them as a megaphone. That seems to be what he is doing now—but that, of course, doesn’t make the threat that nuclear standoffs pose to the world any less real.

Just 20 miles or so from my house, we’re disassembling 9 megaton B53 warheads. We could just give ’em to Poland. . . .