14.10.2026, Moscow.
A nuclear conflict is not something inconceivable; it is a possibility, and the scenario for its escalation is thoroughly worked out, political scientist, philosopher, and the leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan stated on October 2 during the Conversation with a Sage program on the Zvezda radio.
Discussing the threat of nuclear strike, Kurginyan emphasized, “This is such an important topic, I think one could talk about it for hours. But who would listen? The most alarming thing in the world is that no one is listening.”
The political scientist noted that “certain stereotypes dominate” the discourse on nuclear issues; some are inherited from the Soviet era, others were acquired later. These stereotypes “have nothing to do with the actual military reality of the matter.”
“People who were actually involved in dealing with this issue lived in one reality, while others, who read newspapers, watched television, and even discussed it among themselves lived in a absolutely different reality that had no connection to the actual military reality,” the analyst stressed.
Kurginyan recounted an incident from the late 1970s when he was in a bunker with his supervisor and they learned that the Chinese army had entered Vietnam. “We looked at each other, and my supervisor said, ‘Well, if we’re still alive, then everything is fine,'” the political scientist recalled. Later, the analyst learned that Hanoi had asked Moscow not to intervene in the conflict, and, indeed, China was defeated quite quickly.
“Those who came into contact with the matter of nuclear strike, in one way or another, always knew that there were distinct stages in the development of a nuclear conflict. It was once called ’44-Step Escalation Ladder,'” the political scientist said, referring to a concept introduced by Western nuclear analyst Herman Kahn in his monograph “On Escalation”.
“It was a complex scheme in which our adversary never ruled out escalation; they understood that this escalation proceeded in stages, that it could be carried through to the end or halted midway, and that it involved intricate branching out in different directions,” the philosopher emphasized.
Kurginyan noted that in the USSR, Western books on this subject were circulated either under “restricted use” status or as classified material.
“And do you think that all the Soviet Union was doing can be described by a phrase said was, ‘Yes, yes, yes to shining sun; no, no, no to a nuclear world’? Of course, the Soviet Union was preparing for the very same thing. It is always a symmetrical process,” the political scientist commented on the Soviet response to these Western concepts.
Kurginyan emphasized that the global system is structured in such a way that “nuclear conflict is not the irrational insanity of some odd individuals, something that is unlikely to take place given humanity’s rationality, but it is an actual algorithm.”
Everyone is aware of this algorithm, every aspect of it has been worked out, and those whose duty it is to do so monitor exactly which stage the process has reached, the analyst noted.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
