The Imminence of Nuclear War

I am seeing more and more people on all ends of the political spectrum openly saying they aren’t worried about a nuclear war. On the contrary, we are closer to nuclear war than ever before and here’s why.

Consider this new article by David Adelman for CNN:

The vast store of goodwill accumulated among the forces of democracy for Ukraine and its courageous and utterly unorthodox president may be running dry.

That is the clearest and most present danger to the security of Europe and the entire Western alliance. It is surely also the fervent hope on which Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to pursue his carnage and the reason he has chanced his whole presidency on what once seemed like a sure bet, and is instead turning into a morass of quicksand and violence with no easy exit…

What can America and the West do? The simple answer is, stand firm with Ukraine. It may not be easy, especially in the face of polls that show more than half of voters oppose any more aid to Ukraine. Fortunately, there are still some leaders who will continue to lead. “American support for Ukraine is not charity,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. “It’s an investment in our own direct interests. Degrading Russia’s military power helps to deter our primary strategic adversary, China.”…

“When the hard right-wingers attempt in Congress to block renewed aid to Ukraine, they do Putin’s work,” Robert I. Rotberg, founding director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, wrote this week. “As such, they are Putin enablers.”

The same could equally be said for an all-too-rapidly expanding collection of leaders abroad.

All parties, more than ever, need to act like allies and continue singing from the same songbook.

This is not even simple propaganda. It is pure, unhinged hysteria. Perhaps the most dangerous characteristic of this CNN article is its excessive fixation on the enemy. “I should do this because it benefits me” is selfish and can backfire, but at least it’s logical and rooted in pragmatism. On the other hand, “I should do this because my enemy wouldn’t like it” is hysteria and will get you in trouble really quickly. There are many problems with this idea of running around doing the opposite of what you think the “enemy” wants, but the biggest issue is that such a tactic is rooted in the assumption that you are in a closed space with your enemy and there are no other players present.

If you at least realize that there are multiple players with different agendas, then you must also realize that the effort required to hurt one other player can also hurt you, and give a third or more players an advantage you wouldn’t like. I’m sure there are at least several other world and regional powers who would be more than happy than to see the USA break its teeth on a few Russian villages of less than 50 people.

Ultimately, road rage makes you a worse driver, not a better one. Crashing your car into someone who made you angry isn’t a sensible thing to do. Even if you don’t do something quite so dramatic, road rage is still dangerous. If another motorist cuts you off and you obsess with how you can “get back at him,” that can lead to unsafe driving and a collision. If you start driving angrily, that might make the other person angry too, now you’re both escalating the situation.

Americans and their allies have spent the last seven decades masturbating to fantasies of “sticking it to the Russians.” Several generations of Americans have been inundated with that propaganda. Am I supposed to believe that, after all of this, the USA will accept a very clear military defeat at the hands of Russia? Maybe, but I doubt it. If we walk away from Operation Ukrainian Freedom, this will absolutely be a defeat and there’s no other way to paint it. By the end of this calendar year, Ukrainians will have all of the USA’s best weapons. HIMARS, Bradleys, Abrams MBTs, ATACMS, F-16s, Patriots, they will have every single conventional American weapon that matters. And most likely, all of those weapons won’t make a damn bit of difference.

Our elites will have a choice. Sit back and watch Ukrainian lines inevitably collapse under the weight of continued Russian bombardment, or they’ll escalate further. My money is on the USA escalating. That leaves the question of exactly how they’ll escalate. More weapons? Maybe. NATO troops? Maybe. If I had to guess, I would say more terrorism. Bigger and bloodier attacks on civilian targets. Do something outrageous enough that it provokes a Russian response directly against NATO targets.

What I don’t see happening is the USA walking away from the table with a clear defeat on their hands. There is this long-standing assumption that Russia has the “second best” military and the American military is better. But even while accepting that narrative everybody, whether they admit it or not, that Ukrainians and Russians aren’t worse soldiers than Americans. The only tangible difference that makes Americans (allegedly) superior is the weapons. So if ethnic Russians from eastern Ukraine go into battle with American weapons and clearly lose, that means Americans would also lose. I think that’s too bitter a pill to swallow.

It would be the worse humiliation ever. I think it is so humiliating, the small, hyper-emotional people controlling our government would embrace nuclear war rather than suffer such humiliation.

Ian Kummer

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