Stumbling and Bumbling to Armageddon

Tuchman's history of the miscalculations
that led to World War I heavily influenced
JFK: "We are not going to bungle into war."

The insatiable news cycle currently has placed inflation, interest-rate cuts, Israel-Gaza, border control, Harris vs. Trump, and Haitians eating cats and dogs (!) at the top of the pile.

Ukraine is secondary, but it should be moved to the very top. The U.S. and NATO are making moves that could result in World War III. [bold added]

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Biden on Friday discussed allowing Ukraine to use long-range European-made cruise missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia, according to U.S. and Western officials.

Until now, Western countries supporting Ukraine have balked at allowing Kyiv to use long-range weapons, such as the British-French Storm Shadow, inside Russian territory for fear of escalating the conflict. Officials are concerned in particular that Russian President Vladimir Putin could retaliate by arming the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, who are engaged in a long-running campaign to attack ships in the Red Sea.

Putin has warned the U.S. and its allies that permitting Ukraine to use Western-made long-range missiles against Russia would mean the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s countries were “at war” with Russia.

61 years ago President Kennedy was willing to go to war to prevent Russian missiles from being installed in Cuba. The NATO missiles are already in Ukraine, minutes away from striking the Russian homeland. We seem to be counting on Vladimir Putin to be less prone to war than JFK.

What makes our foreign policy establishment, so rife with miscalculations since the Korean war, so confident that we won't blunder into World War III?