Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment.

Today's episode is incredibly straightforward. I'm speaking with John Walshneau

about nuclear weapons and nuclear policy as we move deeper and deeper into the Ukraine, Russia.

Crisis falling Russia's invasion of the country. So many big things today here,

we engage on everything from the history of the US nuclear weapons policies,

whether or not the invasions of Iraq and the overthrow of Gaddafi and Libya have made it more,

not less likely for regimes to refuse to go up the nuclear weapons. And what this all means,

going forward for how we should consider even think about nuclear disarmament, that's something

we can even achieve. Lots of great stuff here. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Quick note, as I said before, Saga's making his tramphot return. Later today, so if you have any

questions, topics, comments, etc. First to go over, be sure to write into relimapod at gmo.com.

Leave a comment on YouTube, reply to the substack, read us a five-star review, whatever fits your

preferences. Lots of great stuff, as I said. Huge thanks to the link in the episode.

John Wolfstahl, welcome to the re-alignment. Thanks for having me.

We're going to start with a very basic question you've been asked a billion times, but it's the

number one question people are thinking considering the episode, given this stage of the

Confucian Ukraine, how concerned are you about nuclear escalation? I worry about nuclear weapons

all the time. I have my entire adult life. Before I give you my answer, a recognition that

it's not as if nuclear dangers re-emerged a month and a half ago. The United States has lived

with the threat of nuclear weapons since we no longer had a monopoly on those weapons back in

1949. That changed a lot after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s and most of the 2000s.

I think the threat was relatively low. We worried a little bit about escalation or mistakes,

...