DARK THOUGHTS

As I lay in bed last night, I thought of writing a self – mocking post about my deep military experience 65 years ago in the Massachusetts National Guard as a lead-in to some comments about the failures of the Russian military in Ukraine, but the situation we confront is too desperately serious for such lighthearted literary amusements. Instead, I want to talk about the box the United States is in as a consequence of Russia’s possession of an enormous nuclear arsenal.

 

Stymied by the disastrous performance of his military forces, Vladimir Putin has resorted to the bombing of maternity hospitals in an effort, one presumes, to terrorize the Ukrainians into giving him the victory that he is unable to gain on the battlefield. The United States military could easily defeat Russian forces, it is my impression, but is held back from doing so by the fear that Putin, facing defeat, would launch nuclear weapons, first against the Ukrainians and quite possibly, if we took action against them, against the United States. Such an action would be disastrously self-defeating for Putin and would almost certainly result in his own death, but we are fearful that he would not be moved even by elementary self-interest to refrain from so disastrous a step.

 

Are we then to sit by and watch Ukrainians die at Putin’s hand because we are afraid that he will not act in his own rational self-interest? The answer, quite simply, is yes.

 

This is not a new thought. As soon as nuclear weapons were invented and used the one and only time in battle by the United States, it was obvious that their existence had completely changed the age-old logic of war. That is why the central concepts of offense and defense gave way to the entirely new and fundamentally nonmilitary concept of deterrence. It took very little thought and virtually no battlefield experience to recognize that a war between nuclear powers was simply unthinkable, to be avoided at all cost.

 

For three quarters of a century now the United States, Russia, and the other nuclear powers have fought local wars and proxy wars in which they avoided directly confronting one another. The problem is quite simple. If a country armed with nuclear weapons chooses to launch them against an opposing nation, there is nothing that can be done to stop it. The only thing one can do is to try to dissuade it from ever making that decision – to deter it. But there is no defense against a civilization ending nuclear attack.

 

More than 60 years ago, as a young man in his 20s, I got involved in politics because of my fear of nuclear weapons. I have lived with that fear for my entire adult life and it has not diminished one whit.  Let me be clear what we are talking about. Russia is said to have 5000 nuclear weapons. A single strategic thermonuclear weapon launched by Russia against Washington DC would completely obliterate the city and everyone in it. If Vladimir Putin were to order a full-scale nuclear attack on the United States and if the Russian military officers to whom that order was given were to obey it, probably 100 million or more Americans would die immediately and countless other millions would die of radiation poisoning not long afterward. There would be absolutely nothing that the United States could do to stop such an attack. All it could do is launch an equally destructive attack against Russia.

 

I am not a big fan of Joe Biden, needless to say, but in the present situation his preternatural caution is completely wise and admirable.