One of the more important books in my library is “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign policy” by Henry Kissinger. It’s not the only book I have dealing with the horrible threat of mutual destruction by nuclear weapons. The threat is real. It can happen on purpose or through miscalculation. And it’s the reason the US government is being so cautious when dealing with the current Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I’ve mentioned before that I did the US Navy course on nuclear weapons. I’ve also spent a lot of time since then keeping up with problems raised by that book when it was published in 1957. I followed the great debate on doctrines of massive retaliation, first strike capability, assured mutual destruction, and the nth country problem. All of those are theoretical questions dealing with how countries can act while living with the threat of usage of nuclear weapons. Countries possessing such weapons tried to solve the nth country problem by limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. So far, it hasn’t got a very good list of results. Starting from the five major powers with veto in the UN security council nuclear weapons have moved to India, Pakistan, and North Korea, (and also, reportedly, Israel). The ongoing negotiations with Iran are focused mainly on how to keep them out of the “club”. So far, no one has been able to solve the problem of having a country simply lie about its’ intentions and achievements. And just to make matters worse, almost every example of proliferation leads to a situation where one country, for reasons of instability or whatever, will eventually opt to actually use such a weapon. Are you scared yet? I am.
When the former USSR broke apart there were nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Ukraine voluntarily gave them up in order to help contain the spread of such weapons. If they had not done so, one could easily speculate that Putin would not have embarked on his current war. Another avenue of speculation is that a nuclear club member might engage in sabre rattling or bomb threats to achieve some political objective. Carl von Clausewitz noted that War is just the continuation of political discourse by means other than diplomacy. That point is often accompanied by the caveat that when you choose to use force to achieve your objectives, the results are not always easy to foresee.
That brings us to the next subject. Poland has some older Russian made aircraft that remained in the Polish air force when the Warsaw pact, The USSR counter to NATO, collapsed. They raised the possibility of “donating” them to Ukraine. The Ukrainian pilots would then, probably, require only a short time to learn to operate them (unlike other modern Western warplanes, which would require a much longer period to learn). When the idea first hit the Western Press, Russia (i.e. Vladimir Putin) was quick to warn that such action would be equivalent to intervening in the current conflict and result in a wider war. Russian military doctrine, it should be noted, is built on the idea that nuclear weapons are likely to be used in warfare. The threat of a wider war was enough to make the US veto the idea very quickly. But Ukrainian President continued to call for more help, and especially aircraft, or a NATO enforced “no fly zone”. When Poland renewed the offer with a plan to send the planes to an American base in Germany for further delivery to Ukraine, the US was, once again, forced to publicly put down the idea in order to keep the war limited. Otherwise the world might descend into a potential nuclear chaos.
At this stage, we are left with a dilemma; is Putin so involved in this war that he would choose to expand the war? is NATO (or anyone else) concerned enough about Russia conquering Ukraine (or other potential follow up actions like invading Moldava or the Baltic states) that they are willing to take the risk of confronting the Russian dictator and forcing him to back down?
I haven’t seen such a scary scenario since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who blinks first? Is there a possibility for behind the scenes diplomacy to solve this without using military might? And even if there is, will it have enough impact to prevent the Chinese from trying a similar maneuver against Taiwan, or preventing Iran from using a nuclear bomb against Israel? According to some nth country scenarios, sooner or later someone is going to use a nuclear bomb, and the aftermath may be catastrophic.
I hope reading this doesn’t disturb your sleep tonight.
Wetherhorn 