In the campaign. After chasing down the apparent nuke carrier around Paris only to find the case empty, you see the nuke going off far off into the distance. You suddenly realize the plan was to lure you away from the stock exchange all along in order to get your jammer out of range. Not only did 80,000 lives vanish in that instant, the life of your teammate could've been saved if you stayed in the stock exchange building in the first place (or left an extra jammer in there while you go on the chase).
Once you boot up multiplayer and realize the Americans and the Russians are fighting each other, comes the horrific realization: Everything you've done as Sgt. Blackburn and Dima were futile. The Russo-American War is now underway.
Now not only does Dima have radiation poisoning and may have killed himself after the final scene, the fate of Sgt. Blackburn is also no better. Under the American federal law, he would be charged and will either be sentenced to life or death unless he has a presidential pardon. Since the Russo-American War is underway in the multiplayer, Sgt. Blackburn, the Russians, and everyone else involved most likely became scapegoats for politicians to start that war. In other words, so much for that pardon. Even though the nuke failed to detonate in Times Square, in this game The Bad Guy Wins indeed.
Well, at least the novel showed Dima did not shoot himself, and the newspaper he was reading had the headline "Marine Hero Cleared of All Charges" so Blackburn probably escaped punishment.
Also, Multiplayer component does not necessarily have anything to do with the Singleplayer canon. It can, but it can also possibly be an alternate storyline that's there just for the sake of pitting an American team against a Russian team because someone in the dev team thinks that Russian uniforms look cooler than PLR ones.
