Hello and welcome back to the re-education. Today the topic is nuclear blackmail and nuclear deterrence.

My guest is Tim Morrison, currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a senior director of government relations at Boeing.

I'm having Tim on because before all of that, he served for Senator John Kyle and the House Armed Services Committee and also the National

Security Council as an advisor and expert on military and foreign policy, but specifically

a specialist on nuclear deterrence. He is an ideal guest as somebody who has been on the inside

and knows this stuff cold.

Personally, I do believe that Putin is capable of using tactical nuclear weapons.

And what we learned in Ukraine is no matter what people believe, we have to be ready. So I can tell you, at home, I have a backpack with everything needed for the

potential nuclear threat for myself and my family, because no matter what would happen,

we need to be ready. This is what we already learned hard way.

You just heard from Kira Rudik, a member of Ukraine's parliament, saying something that would seem

unthinkable a year ago. She and her family have prepared for the possibility of a nuclear

strike from Russia. There's a cruel irony to this moment in Ukrainian history. At the end of the

Cold War, Ukraine found itself in physical possession of several

Soviet nuclear weapons when it was part of the USSR. So when Ukraine became an independent state,

it was technically a nuclear power, even though the government in Kiev lacked the command

and control over the weapons on its territory. And so in 1994, America, the United Kingdom, and Russia,

offered Ukraine a deal. It's known as the Budapest memorandum. Give up your old nukes,

and in exchange, these three powers are committed to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity

and independence. For 20 years, that bargain held, more or less.

But then, after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych reneged on his campaign promises to

integrate Ukraine into the European Union, after significant threats from the Kremlin and

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