There are any number of possible answers to that question, of course. And I’m guessing that one of them might be:

When the leaders of the world’s two greatest nuclear powers play a game of political chicken, and they’re both too pigheaded to swerve.

Which, according to recent comments from each of them, could happen at any moment.

Earlier in the week, Donald Trump had said that before agreeing to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, he would want to know how they planned to use them, because he did not want to escalate the war between Russia and Ukraine. He added, however, that he had already “sort of made a decision.” [Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters, October 12, 2025.]

The Kremlin’s response came yesterday from spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said on Russian state television:

“The topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern. Now is really a very dramatic moment in terms of the fact that tensions are escalating from all sides.” [Id.]

Peskov added that if Tomahawks were launched at Russia, Moscow would have to consider the fact that some versions of the missile are capable of carrying nuclear warheads:

“Just imagine: a long-range missile is launched and is flying and we know that it could be nuclear. What should the Russian Federation think? Just how should Russia react? Military experts overseas should understand this.” [Id.]

Putin — who either believes he is still living in the days of the Soviet Union, or simply wishes he were — continues to blame the West for what he calls the humiliation of Russia after the 1991 breakup of the USSR, and for allegedly encroaching on Moscow’s claimed sphere of influence by accepting a number of the former Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc satellite countries into NATO membership.

He warned on Sunday that delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine would represent a “completely new stage of escalation,” but claimed they would not pose a major threat to his country:

“Can Tomahawks harm us? They can. But we will shoot them down and improve our air defense system.” [RFE/RL, October 13, 2025.]

(My thought: Wouldn’t shooting them down have the same disastrous consequences as allowing them to detonate on their own? But never mind . . . )

Taking into account the time difference between Moscow and Washington, it is likely that Trump had heard Peskov’s and Putin’s comments before boarding Air Force One for his flight to the Gaza peace conference on Sunday. Yet, when asked about the possibility of providing Tomahawks to Ukraine, he replied to reporters:

“[Ukraine] would like to have Tomahawks. That’s a step up. Yeah, I might tell him [Putin] if the war is not settled, we may very well do it. We may not, but we may do it…. Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so.” [Id.]

This could, of course, be nothing more than a testosterone-fueled display of machismo consistent with the usual behavior of a pair of vicious, autocratic narcissists. Or not.

The point is, they’re not just duking it out on the playground. And all we can do is go to sleep each night hoping that neither of them has a death wish.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/13/25