Paul Craig Roberts

Yesterday I referenced Alexander Dugin’s article explaining that Putin had failed to convince Trump and the Western World that Russian deterrence is real and deployable.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/11/02/putins-attempt-to-be-reasonable-has-failed  

Consequently, Putin’s unveiling of Russian super weapons has no impact on the rate and level of Western provocations. 

I have been of this opinion for a long time, and recently Gilbert Doctorow has come to share my and Dugin’s view.  

Below Doctorow summarizes the latest Russian TV program discussing serious issues and adds his own comments:

Poseidon and Burevestnik are the featured news on the Russian state television weekly wrap-up

Dmitry Kiselyov’s News of the Week program this evening opened with 20 minutes of reporting on the two new nuclear powered strategic weapons that Russia successfully tested in the past 10 days and trumpeted to the world. These are (1) the cruise missile Burevestnik (herald of the storm, in English) which can stay airborne for unlimited flying time and was tested on a 14,000 km mission; it is able to maneuver around known radar centers and attack from unexpected directions rendering even the ‘golden cupola’ proposed by Donald Trump and costing hundreds of millions [or is it billions] of dollars useless for defense of the continental USA, and (2) the underwater drone Poseidon that travels deep in the ocean at a speed several times that of conventional submarines and delivers a nuclear charge greater than a typical ICMB, creating tidal waves 100 and more meters high that inundate naval bases or coastal cities, destroying everything in their path and leaving behind nuclear residue which renders the site uninhabitable for several decades. Five Poseidon strikes are said to be sufficient to wipe Great Britain off the sface of the earth:

The show this evening presented extensive excerpts from the reactions of European and US print media and television to the announcement of Russia’s successful tests. The clear point of the presenters is that these new, unparalleled weapons systems raise Russia’s deterrence and will keep the country’s enemies in check for the foreseeable future. This is clearly a message coming from President Putin.

However, one may, indeed, one must, ask if Putin has really understood the notion of deterrence in the only way that counts – namely how Russia’s adversaries measure deterrence, which as Professor Glenn Diesen, an expert in the relevant political science concepts, has made crystal clear during our recent online conversations. If the wherewithal, i.e. the military hardware comes first, and Russia plainly had that even before the unveiling of Poseidon and Burevestnik, then the willingness to use the wherewithal and the communication of this readiness to adversaries are also essential.

That the second and third components of effective Russian deterrence are perceived in the West to be missing was clear as day from President Trump’s reactions to the Russians’ announcement of the latest weapons systems. Initially Trump was clumsy when he first heard of the Russian tests and said that the US would respond by restarting its own nuclear tests. However, already yesterday we all heard that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has given the Pentagon’s approval of shipping Tomahawk missiles to Kiev. We are told that the final decision rests with the President.

It is unlikely that the US will ship Tomahawks, because it appears that there are very few available for export in the foreseeable future. However, the greater point is that this shows that Washington does not believe that Putin will ever press the button and that they can cross any Russian red lines at will.

For Russia, this means that the United States and its European allies have time to mull over whether and when to [attempt] a decapitating strike on Russia. For the rest of us, it means that the world is edging that much closer to WWIII.

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https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/11/03/can-putin-become-realistic-before-it-is-too-late/