This is the Time

The Bomb

Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  the two places in the world where atomic weapons were used in war.  When the mushroom clouds bloomed over those cities, hiding hundreds of thousands of lives literally vaporized,  and warfare changed forever.  And for the last seventy-seven years the world’s nuclear powers found a way to keep from using those weapons again.  

Today nine countries in the world have “the bomb”, but two far and away have the most.  Russia and the United States each have over 6000 warheads. They range from “strategic weapons”, capable of destroying whole regions of country, to “tactical nukes” that can vaporize a tank column, or a ship.   

During the Cold War (1948-1991) an entire philosophy of strategic thinking developed around the use and avoidance of nuclear weapons.  The United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct confrontations, instead supporting “proxy” nations against each other.  It was safer:  direct confrontation meant the real possibility of escalation to nuclear conflict.

The Cold War ended on Christmas Day of 1991.  The Soviet Union collapsed, freeing many nations held against their will.  The Communist Soviet state was replaced by a nationalistic Russia.  They inherited the power, and the cost of maintaining, the nuclear burden.   The United States “won” the Cold War, and the “Communist menace” was no longer a concern. But the nuclear “balance” between the two nations remained.

Precedent

There are three ways that the two nuclear super powers can act.  The first is to accept the burden of “the bombs”, realizing that any direct military action against each other has the possibility of escalation to nuclear war.  The second is to act as if there are no nuclear weapons; and to act as a “common” nation, as if the “bombs” didn’t exist.  And the third is to use the threat of nuclear escalation as a cudgel, acting as a “rogue” state without concern for world immolation.

Russia has progressed through all three phases of super power action.  When the Russian government assumed control of the nuclear triggers, they worked in cooperation with the United States to maintain the safety and stability of the arsenal.  The biggest threat at the time was to “lose a nuke” to a non-state terrorist organization. 

But with the ascendancy of Vladimir Putin, the Russian actions became more like the old Soviet Union.  During the Cold War, they had ascendancy over Eastern Europe.  When Hungary or Czechoslovakia attempted to rise up against their Communist regimes, Soviets tanks took the streets, and the rebellions were brutally put down.  They were all within the Soviet sphere of influence. The West, specifically NATO and the United States, did nothing about it.

Sphere of Influence

So Putin learned.  He put down revolts in Chechnya and Georgia as brutally as the Soviets of old.  No one moved to stop him.  And when he sent troops into Syria to support the brutal Assad regime, the United States was on the way out of the region.  There’s no partisan split to this, both the Obama and Trump Administration let the Russians “get away” with abject cruelty to civilians in Syria.  The famous Obama “Red Line” was crossed – without retribution.  Trump seemed more than glad to withdraw US Forces from Syria, abandoning our Kurdish allies.

Putin considers Ukraine to be within his “sphere of influence”, even though it is a sovereign nation separated from the Soviet Union for over thirty years.  The Bush and Obama Administrations viewed Ukraine in much the same light, as the Ukrainian Presidency was held by Russian “puppets”.   But with the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the Russian influenced leader was thrown out, and an independent government took charge.  Putin immediately moved to send irregular forces into the eastern Ukrainian provinces of the Donbas, claiming them as “Russian peoples”. Putin also seized the Crimean Peninsula, and maintained the strategic Russian Naval Base at Sevastopol. 

What Changed?

The Obama Administration protested and levied some sanctions, but didn’t do much else.  President Trump seemed to undercut the power of NATO as much as possible.  And they too still considered Ukraine within Russia’s “influence”.  But the development of the Ukrainian government since then, and particularly with the Zelenskyy Presidency, has changed Ukraine’s status in the eyes of the United States, and the world.  But not in the eyes of Vladimir Putin.

When Putin invaded Ukraine, he was operating under the old, Soviet era rules.  But the Biden Administration made it clear that the United States, and NATO, no longer viewed Ukraine as within Russia’s “sphere of influence”. Newer NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania were all once under Soviet control, but now were protected by Article Five of the NATO Charter.  An attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.  They, and the rest of NATO, saw the Russian invasion as a threat to all.

Ukraine War

But even then, if Russia could have pulled off their “decapitation” strategy, they would have succeeded and captured Ukraine.  NATO and the West would have protested and boycotted, but a Russian fait d’accompli would have held.  It was only when Ukraine was able to resist, and slow down the Russian blitzkrieg, that the rest of the world seriously considered what they could to do help.

So here we are in phase two of the Ukraine War.  Russia has pulled back from its decapitation strike at Kyiv, and is now waging a three hundred mile long attack along Ukraine’s eastern border.  And, with a lot of material help from the West, Ukraine is defending itself.  The fighting over the next several days will be fierce, as Putin desperately tries to “finalize” Ukraine before his self-imposed May 9th deadline.  But if he can’t, if the Ukrainian forces can hold Putin to a stalemate for the next few weeks, then what happens.

Victory or What?

Putin will try to find a way to “declare victory” and leave.  He might be able to do that with a conquest of the Eastern Provinces, or by cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea.  But if the Ukrainian Army prevents him from achieving either of those things, what then?

It’s hard to see Putin withdrawing in defeat.  His next  step might be to use some battlefield armament that change the odds, and invert the situation.  What can do that?  Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – chemical and nuclear.  But if he uses either, he will risk an equal response, not from the Ukrainians, but from NATO and the United States.  

And why should the West respond to Putin’s use of WMD?  Because if we don’t respond, we normalize the its use.  We can see, after this first month in Ukraine, that the vaunted Russian Army “ain’t” what we thought it was.  The Russian Air Force cannot even maintain supremacy in the Ukrainian skies.  So it is in the West’s interest to make sure that Putin cannot “balance the scales” with WMD.

If this sounds like a recipe for direct US-Russian confrontation – it is.  But allowing Russia to use weapons of mass destruction with impunity may be a far worse choice.  Putin has made it publicly clear that his goal is to re-establish the Soviet Union under a new Russian Empire.  Ukraine is step one, Moldavia step two, but step three puts Russia in direct conflict with a NATO country. 

It’s not going to be a matter of “IF” we act, it’s going to be a matter of “when”.  This battle in Ukraine is the best time.

Essays on the Ukraine Crisis

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.