By Edwin Cooney
About ten days ago, I heard somewhere that Vladimir Putin suggested that perhaps around Friday, February 24th, which will mark the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he might use at least tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine's European and American allies.
The most immediate and compelling reaction to that threat is the question: what practical or worldly sense would the launching of tactical nuclear weapons make? Who would gain politically, socially, economically, or environmentally to any type of nuclear exchange?
Ever since President Ronald Reagan was introduced to the likelihood of a nuclear winter through Carl Sagan's documentary sometime around 1984 — thus ending Reagan’s "star wars" scheme — nuclear war strategy in most nations (with North Korea and Iran being notable exceptions) has been about the control or management of atomic destruction. Even in India and Pakistan, two nations that despise each other, there has been restraint.
Here I pause in response to my own question with a notable historic review. On Monday, October 22,1962, during his radio and television response to Nikita Khrushchev's missiles in Castro's Cuba, President Kennedy asserted that "...even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth." Additionally, knowledge of the damage of what just one nuclear explosion would do (especially considering the vulnerability of today's environment) has to be some kind of message to any world leader with future ambitions for his national constituency be he named Biden, China's Xi, North Korea's Kim, Turkey's Erdogan or even Russia's Putin! One of the world's deepest sighs of relief was when the 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl (which ironically is part of the Ukraine) turned out to be manageable.
As the cold war came to an end in 1991, some theorized that the reason "the Communists" gave in was because their beliefs were materialistic rather than spiritual. Hence, their nuclear demise wouldn't take them to any Valhalla. Next came the observation that total nuclear war with a spiritually-oriented society such as an Islamic, Judaic, or even a Christian society, due to their faith in a hereafter, would be absolutely deadly!
Now, back to the overall question as to what sense or advantage could there be in the threat of a total or merely a tactical nuclear exchange by Vladimir Putin? The primary obligation of every world leader's job is that of maximum control of every strategic international situation. Thus, control being the most vital factor in the management of international crisis, the threat of the most drastic response can keep the strongest of international opponents at bay.
The bottom line is that neither you nor I have any control over Putin or even Joe Biden in a kinetic part of war-making!
As frightening as all these factors are, it's vital to realize that no one will gain in the slightest should Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, or the United States of America use their maximum military might.
Past efforts to outlaw war such as the League of Nations in 1919, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the birth of the U.N. in 1945, and the treaties with the Soviet Union beginning with the efforts of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Bush have generally modified the threat of war.
From here on in, let's stop hoping what leaders will do to prevent war and start advising world leaders as follows:
Choose practicality over national vanity; select reason over ideological or religious resentment; remember, since the Almighty never intervened to stop Hitler's holocaust, you can't expect that He would prevent humanity's holocaust; keep in mind that only the living reap the benefit of any existing fruits; political or idealistic dominance can never feed a victorious nation and people surrounded on all sides by a radioactive polluted world.
Of course, nuclear war makes less sense than any war in the history of humankind! It can only be continuously stayed by the application of arduously prevailing wisdom!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
No comments:
Post a Comment