“One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”
Otto von Bismarck, former Chancellor of the German Empire (1888)
My friend Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings has some somber thoughts about the possibility of nuclear war:
For the first time since the Wall fell, nuclear horror is weighing on my mind.
I have no idea how many read this or know who I am, but for the uninformed: I grew up during the latter days of the Cold War.
Part of my mental architecture from those years are these pop culture markers:
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Gamma World, World War III (the NBC miniseries), The Day After, Threads, Hackett’s Third World War, Alas Babylon, On The Beach, The Last Ship, 99 Luftballons, The Horseclans, Snowbrother, Down to a Sunless Sea (very underrated), Testament, The Pelbar Cycle, The Survivalist, Miracle Mile, This Is The Way The World Ends…
[References to the above can be found on this solid list here.]
And they have remained there, despite receding quite a bit in the wind of change.
But now those old feelings are back. I’m not sure what the strategy is behind this sort of tough-guy posturing, especially with the repeated hints regarding the grim change in Putin’s headspace. The latter of which seems to be borne out by his speeches and forced resettlement of Ukrainians.
But sure, why not?
In the meantime, I’ve carefully avoided any use of the N[uclear]-word around the children. The pandemic already left enough to deal with.
And yet, I’m going to have to address it sooner or later. What a time to be alive.
Go here to read the comments. Dale wrote the above on March 29 of this year.
I have long thought that if nuclear war occurs it will not be the result of some careful plan, but rather due to a matter of impulse and miscalculation in a situation that suddenly careens out of control. With Russia and the US we have two nuclear powers led by men who manifestly are in mental decline. Putin through his spokesmen has been threatening nuclear war. The US has been boasting of how it has helped the Ukrainians take out Russian generals and the Moskva. At a time when calculation and caution should be the watchwords on both sides, we seem to be absentmindedly stumbling towards Armageddon. Sixty years ago Kennedy and Khrushchev were serious men and stepped back from the brink. Their successors are fools. We will be lucky to get out of this without a world shaking catastrophe.
Quick correct. I would note that Biden has a grossly incompetent and inept military staff and Putin has a throwback to the Stalin years in Lavrov. A recipe for mutual disaster.
I wouldn’t trust our woke generals to manage a latrine detail.
Kennedy had grotesque flaws as a human being. But he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis to near-perfection, the ideal blend of firmness and “here’s your off-ramp” diplomacy.
But, as you say, neither man currently at the top is of their caliber. Both men need prayers, and I have begun to dread who might follow Putin, given the demons state media have unleashed.
And thank you for the hat-tip. It’s oddly-comforting to know I’m not the only one worrying.
I tend to be an optimist Dale, but if a nuclear exchange occurs optimism would likely go out the window for several generations.
I would note that Biden has a grossly incompetent and inept military staff and Putin has a throwback to the Stalin years in Lavrov.
Lavrov strikes me more as a comical Baghdad Bob type.
The recent video of Putin suggests his problem might be Parkinson’s. Sometimes dementia is appended to Parkinson’s and sometimes it is not. In some cases, you can continue to function for decades after a Parkinson’s diagnosis and it typically takes only 5-10% off your life expectancy. (Michael J. Fox still has an occasional screen credit, 30 years after his Parkinson’s appeared).
As for Biden, he’s not making the decisions. We just do not know who is.
A country would be condemned more for a nuclear attack that killed 50,000 than a war that killed a million. I don’t see the calculations that would lead to nuclear action, at least not from any of the largest powers. The small ones, maybe, but that worry is always there.
and I have begun to dread who might follow Putin, given the demons state media have unleashed.
As far as I can tell, the cabinet consists of technocrats, about 2/3 of whom are under the age of 55. Lavrov is the only minister older than Putin himself. The showman of Russian politics was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died last month.
don’t see the calculations that would lead to nuclear action
I think that calculation has thus far been in short supply in the Ukraine War.
Nicolai Patrushev has been identified as a close–and hawkish–ally in the line of succession. Age 70.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/02/nikolai-patrushev-could-be-in-charge-of-russia-should-putin-be-sidelined/
Formally, the position Patrushev holds is analogous to the position Jacob Sullivan holds at the White House. Not sure what the substance of the position is.