 Ukrainian forces are accelerating their territorial advances into Russian-held areas. Vladimir Putin's military could be on the verge of collapse. Russian President Vladimir Putin now threatening to use nuclear weapons. Biden said the risk of nuclear Armageddon is at the highest level since 1962. President Biden has said that the world hasn't been this close to nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Vladimir Putin has issued grave threats and then backtracked. In late September, he announced in a televised address that he would use all available means to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff, he said. Then in a speech on October 27th, he said referring to nuclear weapons, there is no point in that, neither political nor military. But the New York Times reported last week that Russian military leaders recently held meetings without Putin to discuss when and how to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Anti-war.com Scott Horton, editor of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun, Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, says that we should take seriously the idea that the conflict in Ukraine could escalate to a world-ending war. From the very beginning of the war, I mean, in his declaration of war, he threatened to use nukes against any country that intervened, namely us. And then his defense minister and head of his national security, councilist, former president Medvedev, his foreign minister Lavrov as well, they've all threatened to use nuclear weapons. Since this war began at different times. Biden's stated policy is to help Ukraine no matter how long it takes to win back their territory. That logically can't be accomplished without throwing us an extraordinarily high nuclear risk. Daniel Davis, a senior fellow for defense priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, believes that despite recent setbacks, the Russian army is unlikely to back down anytime soon. I don't buy into the narrative that the Russian army writ large as trash. And I hear that all the time, or that they've been humiliated. They have made a number of significant mistakes, but they've also shown that they can learn from mistakes. And sometime in the latter part of November, the first part of December, there's an expected massive invasion, reinvasion or reoffensive coming. I think you're going to see a significant swing back in the Russian side at that point. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Volensky said in late October that his goal was to drive Russia out of all parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. The Russian military would fight to the teeth to keep that from happening. But in the event that the policy was successful, then the chance goes way up that Russia would use nuclear weapons. Because I don't think that Putin can survive if he allowed his troops, his military, his conventional forces, to be defeated and physically driven back into Russia and not use nuclear weapons. I don't think the hardliners in his country would allow him to stay in power if he didn't. And I think he knows that. What we should be doing is, hey, let's let's help Ukraine with defensive weapons so that they keep Russia from just rolling across them. At the same time, backdoor negotiations and diplomatic channels with both sides to say, hey, y'all figure this out. Figure out a way that we can bring this to an end for everybody's sake. But we should not be pursuing something that probably can't be accomplished. And if it did, it would put us in nuclear risk. Horton says that a diplomatic solution could have been reached back in April, pointing to an article co-written by Fiona Hill, a former senior director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council, stating that according to multiple former senior U.S. officials, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement. According to a Ukrainian newspaper and a press release from the British government, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Zelensky to avoid such negotiations with Russia. They had a deal in principle ready to be signed where the Russians would in the war agree to pull back to where they were on February the 23rd. So that's like, you know, just barely into the Donbass region, the very early hours of the invasion essentially. And then that would be it. They would call the truce right there, but Ukraine would have to, you know, I guess enshrine it in their constitution and give a real guarantee that they would force square any future attempt to join the NATO alliance. And then essentially force, you know, guarantee their neutrality going forward. And that would have been it. In late September, Putin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian territories that border Russia, asserting that residents of the occupied territories would be Russian citizens forever. The Kremlin warned that Ukrainian attacks against any of the annex regions would be considered aggression against Russia itself. Now you're asking me in early October after Putin has made this terrible escalation in semantics only, but it means everything. He has now claimed to have absorbed what? I don't know how many square miles of this, four huge oblasts, these provinces of eastern Ukraine here to get him to back down from that. I think it's going to be virtually impossible now. I would tell Blinken, I would like grab him by his ear like his angry stepmom, right? And tell him, get on the plane, go to Geneva, tell Lavrov you're sorry and you're willing to try to work this out now and find a way, dammit. Cease fire first and then see what we can do. Nobody in Ukraine and nobody in the West wants to allow Russia to keep one inch of territory that they've taken. But look, I'm just going to be blunt and just say this straight up. We have to deal with the reality that exists, not the picture that we wish existed. The picture we wish existed is that we'll just give Ukraine enough support and eventually they'll drive Russia back and they'll have all their territory. And then there'll be a full hole in democratic country. I mean, that's what we say and that's what we would desire. But we have to bank on reality because the truth is and the harsh core, hardcore reality is that to try and accomplish that objective is to almost certainly escalate the fight to a nuclear conflict. So we instead have to do what is realistically possible and what is realistically possible is to freeze the war where it's at right now before Ukraine loses any more territory. And while they have a chance to make some kind of negotiation to where they can keep the majority of their country and then have some kind of cessation of war where they can at least live next door to each other. And then there's no more threat of war for anyone, no more refugees, no more cities destroyed, no more people killed, no more soldiers lost. That's what we should be shooting for. Yale historian Timothy Snyder has written that negotiating with Putin will only make future nuclear war much more likely because the lesson for future dictators would be that all they need is a nuclear weapon and some bluster to get what they want. Nothing's changed because of this conflict. I mean, that already exists. And that's part of the reality. Russia has nuclear weapons. North Korea has nuclear weapons. You're not going to roll that back. So we need to keep that number small. But we also have to concurrently deal and I keep saying this with the reality. The reality is Russia has nuclear weapons and it can escalate. So we have to deal where we can. Now, let me also add into that that it's a myth to suggest that, oh, well, look, Russia, all they did is have to have nuclear threats. And, you know, now then they get all this stuff. Look, Russia has so badly harmed itself with all the losses that it sustained up to this point already that it's going to take decades to recover from that. A lot of these sanctions will never be rolled back, at least not in our lifetime. And so the harm that the nation of Russia has suffered already and will continue to suffer is significant and hardly a blueprint for anyone else to want to follow. Horton says the war in Ukraine shows that deterrence is too risky of a strategy and should reinvigorate the push for disarmament. That only works until it stops working. And once it stops working, then that's it. You know, it's called the doomsday machine because it's made to be used completely. I was on Fox News the other night and the liberal Democrat says, ah, come on, we have mutually assured destruction. In other words, they can't touch us so we can do whatever we want to them in Ukraine because there's no way they're going to reach out and touch us here in North America because that would be nuclear war and they would never dare to do such a thing. Well, that's just not true. That kind of thinking is the kind of thing that'll get us killed. That's the kind of thinking that Russia's nuclear arsenal is supposed to prevent and yet somehow it doesn't. There's too much casual talk about all of a sudden American forces fighting in the war against Russia on the side of Ukraine. That is ludicrous. There is nothing going on in the border dispute between Russia and Ukraine that has anything to do with American national security. So the idea that we would risk our security by involving ourselves in this potential war that could escalate up to nuclear conflict is absurd in the highest degree and we should not do it. I am afraid, John, that like it's going to come down to some absolutely horrible incident and somehow hopefully we get through that and people will recognize we got to scale back the other way. I'm not recommending that. I'm just saying I don't know what else is going to get it through to people. I'm afraid that that's what it's going to come to. And frankly, I don't believe that if one atom bomb goes off, I don't think that it can stop. I am on the most pessimistic person in the world as far as that goes. I think if anybody uses an atom bomb anywhere, America blows up the whole world, period. Henry Kissinger himself a few months ago said, hey, hey, hey, we need to find an exit ramp out of this thing now before this gets out of control. That should be all you need to know about how dangerous this is. And frankly, I wouldn't mind he would need a chaperone, but I wouldn't mind involving him in diplomacy right now. If we sent Henry Kissinger to meet with Sergey Lavrov in Geneva tomorrow, I would celebrate that as the greatest invention of peace in our time right now.