The handwringing has begun.
Michael Christ, writing for CNN, says (here):
“The Pentagon response [to Putin’s latest nuclear saber-rattling] appears to be an ‘extra urgency in developing a new generation of doomsday weapons that could maintain deterrence,’ according to David Ignatius in The Washington Post. And a headline for a Wall Street Journal column argued, ‘The US Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War.’ What are they thinking? If there’s one thing we know about such a conflict, it is as President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in a joint statement in 1985, ‘(A) nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.'”
Christ, who leads the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, has the best of intentions. He works tirelessly to save humanity from itself. I’m sure he’s a nice man, and I very much doubt he’s naive.
But let’s be realistic. A nuclear war can be fought, which makes whether anybody can win, or anyone survives, irrelevant.
Even worse, we presently live in a world where one man, Vladimir Putin, can kill us all. And he just might, because he happens to be a man without a conscience. Putin said, “If there’s no Russia, why does the planet need to exist?”
What’s more, there’s no checks and balances on his end of the MAD strategy (mutually assured destruction). He doesn’t have to answer to the Russian people who’ll be vaporized if he gives a launch order, or even to a governing council of equally bellicose Russian nationalists equally immune from being ejected from power if their people begin to feel afraid; Putin wields unchecked power in his country.
MAD might not work on him, we don’t know yet, because he doesn’t care any more about the lives of the millions of Russians who’d be killed in a nuclear exchange than he does about the thousands of Russian kids being slaughtered in his attempt to conquer Ukraine. We’re seeing his response to that is sending more kids. That’s currently the best insight we have into his possible nuclear intentions.
We’ve gotta be realistic here. It’s absurd to call nuclear war “unthinkable” when Putin is not only thinking and talking about it, but threatening to do it. That kind of bluster has been part of the Russian playback for ages, and shouldn’t be taken at face value. But it’s not reassuring, you know? Of course it’s thinkable. Of course it could happen, because there’s nothing to guarantee it won’t, only the hope that it won’t. When you’re dealing with human frailty, that might not be enough.
How it might happen is a matter of speculation. Some scenarios are more plausible, and higher on the scale of probability, than others. Here’s how I think it would come to pass, if it does.
Putin is losing his war in Ukraine. Russia is a land power, so its military strategy emphasize ground war, and its doctrine relies on tanks. But Russia’s tanks not only aren’t winning in Ukraine, they’re getting blown to bits, thanks to inferior design and superior Western anti-tank weaponry. In addition, the intelligence we’re providing to the Ukrainians have enabled them to kill ten of Putin’s generals (and counting).
In short, Putin’s war in Ukraine is going very badly. The man is really, really pissed. And he really doesn’t want to lose this war. So what options does he have left? Nuclear threats (he’s at that stage now), and if that doesn’t work, using his nuclear weapons. Probably just one at first, a little one, maybe on a NATO supply dump, to prove he means business.
Then what? Our choices will be to (1) respond, or (2) give in to nuclear blackmail. If we do (2), more blackmail will follow, and then our choices will be to (3) respond, or (4) surrender to a ruthless dictator and let him rule the world. I don’t really see us going with (4) or (2).
This setup doesn’t look good to Christ (and a lot of other people), and is making him (and them) nervous. It ought to. It doesn’t look good to me, either.
But it is what it is.