I was thinking about the dual-purpose strategies I started to talk about in the comment section of the previous article:

However, one of my underlying assumptions is that any “Armageddon plan”, even by a ruling clique in the USA, would have to be presented in such a way that it passes scrutiny by the military people who have to implement it, and they would outright refuse to comply with plans that are obviously insane. This means that a plan for nuclear war would necessarily need to be devised in non-obvious ways, for instance working with unrealistic assumptions about the Russian leadership and their expected response to something, and presenting plans as non-escalatory, stabilizing and non-nuclear, which will be approved and implemented by the Pentagon, but a combination of intentionally invalid premises and additional factors (for instance, have plans designed with several components, where the military knows of one, the CIA knows of the other, the Brits know of something else, and only the few masterminds have the whole picture) can create a two-component explosive, where each component can be inspected and found harmless, and their combination creates the blast.

This made me think along the lines of “how do you start a nuclear war by pretending to do something else”. Let’s create a scenario from the position of a powerful group inside America, or in control of America; could be an unknown combination of people in intelligence agencies, Pentagon and billionaires with agendas for the world.

The first thing you need to to is plant a picture into everybody’s mind that their geostrategic rivals are some kind of evil, Nazi-like force, which cannot possibly ever have a good agenda, needs to be opposed at every turn, everything they do is evil (if it’s not evil, it’s for propaganda purposes so it’s evil), and their leader is a Hitler-like character. This will put everybody who tries to exercise diplomacy, make a compromise or even talk to the opposite side in a ridiculous position where they are portrayed as people so stupid they would talk to Hitler, not understanding you can’t talk to “those people”. So, basically, step one if you want to start a nuclear war is to not only stop talking to the other side, but present this as an act of treason and/or disqualifying idiocy. This first step is not perceived as fatal by your side, and it even makes them feel good because they are on the right side of history and the good guys always win.

The second thing you need to do is create a serious geostrategic threat to your opponent, and draw a line in the sand guaranteeing fatal escalation of conflict if they do anything logical and expected about it. Normally, this would be the stupidest thing one could do, but if you did your homework with the first step, even your “insiders” have been propagandised to perceive the opposite side as inherently evil and nefarious, so making “strategic defensive precautions”, such as positioning advanced weapon systems on the adversary’s borders and regime-changing countries that were normally on friendly terms with the adversary, can be sold as something you are perfectly justified in doing if you want to protect yourself from some kind of an aggressive evil empire. Nobody who’s been sold the propaganda from the first step will even think from the position of “how does this look to the other side”. Of course, the other side perceives that you are pursuing an aggressive policy that threatens their security and prosperity, and potentially even existence. As is expected from a reasonable self-serving entity, they try to politely talk about it, but if the propaganda from the first step was successful, all their attempts are rebuffed and they are always put in some sort of a humiliating position if they even try to talk to you and resolve things. Eventually you destroy all normal diplomatic channels and anger the opponent to the point where they feel they have nothing to gain by talking to you, and they must prepare for war.

The third thing you have to do is create a scenario that will seemingly confirm all your propaganda from step 1. Propaganda is all nice and well, but if your adversary is a peaceful country minding its own business it’s very hard to rile people up against them. You need to provoke them by endangering them, and forcing them to defend their interests, and then spin this as an aggressive act that proves all your propaganda. Regime-changing a friendly ally of theirs into a Nazi shithole of murder and money laundering, where killing the adversary’s nationals is seen as a national sport will probably do the trick. It’s important to spin this as promoting democracy or some other politically correct thing, and never report what’s actually going on there; it must seem that the adversary’s defensive action came out of the blue and is some kind of a hitlerite aggression that must be immediately opposed by war, because you just can’t talk to Hitler.

When your adversary actually acts aggressively to defend themselves, try to fuck with them in ways that will formally obscure your participation, so that if they do the logical thing and attack you, because you’re the one who’s actually cooking it all up against them, it will seem as if it’s another unprovoked attack, a Pearl Harbour moment, and draw “red lines” on basically everything – sink my aircraft carrier, it’s nuclear war. Shoot down the satellites I’m using to guide weapons and drones at your forces, it’s nuclear war. Shoot my command centers, it’s nuclear war. Shoot at any infrastructure I’m using to wage war against you, it’s nuclear war. Shoot at my allies I’m using to wage war against you, it’s nuclear war. If that doesn’t work (because either the trap is obvious or your adversary is incredibly disinclined to escalate in any way due to their peaceful nature), state that a chemical attack or a dirty bomb will cross the line, and then do the false flag attack yourself so that you can “retaliate”. When you “retaliate”, do it in the most provocative way possible, that is guaranteed to cause total nuclear retaliatory strike in response – strike at their presidential residence, or the defense ministry, in a decapitation strike.

If you follow all the steps diligently, you can pull off killing everybody while keeping your virtuous posture intact.