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\u2019s nuclear powers found a way to keep from using those weapons again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today nine countries in the world have \u201cthe bomb\u201d, but two far and away have the most. Russia and the United States each have over 6000 warheads. They range from \u201cstrategic weapons\u201d, capable of destroying whole regions of country, to \u201ctactical nukes\u201d that can vaporize a tank column, or a ship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the Cold War (1948-1991) an entire philosophy of strategic thinking developed around the use and avoidance of nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00a0The United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct confrontations, instead supporting \u201cproxy\u201d nations against each other.\u00a0\u00a0It was safer:\u00a0\u00a0direct confrontation meant the real possibility of escalation to nuclear conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cold War ended on Christmas Day of 1991.\u00a0\u00a0The Soviet Union collapsed, freeing many nations held against their will.\u00a0\u00a0The Communist Soviet state was replaced by a nationalistic Russia.\u00a0\u00a0They inherited the power, and the cost of maintaining, the nuclear burden.\u00a0\u00a0 The United States \u201cwon\u201d the Cold War, and the \u201cCommunist menace\u201d was no longer a concern. But the nuclear \u201cbalance\u201d between the two nations remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are three ways that the two nuclear super powers can act. The first is to accept the burden of \u201cthe bombs\u201d, 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 \u201ccommon\u201d nation, as if the \u201cbombs\u201d didn\u2019t exist. And the third is to use the threat of nuclear escalation as a cudgel, acting as a \u201crogue\u201d state without concern for world immolation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201close a nuke\u201d to a non-state terrorist organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But with the ascendancy of Vladimir Putin, the Russian actions became more like the old Soviet Union.\u00a0\u00a0During the Cold War, they had ascendancy over Eastern Europe.\u00a0\u00a0When Hungary or Czechoslovakia attempted to rise up against their Communist regimes, Soviets tanks took the streets, and the rebellions were brutally put down.\u00a0\u00a0They were all within the Soviet sphere of influence. The West, specifically NATO and the United States, did nothing about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s no partisan split to this, both the Obama and Trump Administration let the Russians \u201cget away\u201d with abject cruelty to civilians in Syria. The famous Obama \u201cRed Line\u201d was crossed \u2013 without retribution. Trump seemed more than glad to withdraw US Forces from Syria, abandoning our Kurdish allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin considers Ukraine to be within his \u201csphere of influence\u201d, even though it is a sovereign nation separated from the Soviet Union for over thirty years.\u00a0\u00a0The Bush and Obama Administrations viewed Ukraine in much the same light, as the Ukrainian Presidency was held by Russian \u201cpuppets\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But with the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the Russian influenced leader was thrown out, and an independent government took charge.\u00a0\u00a0Putin immediately moved to send irregular forces into the eastern Ukrainian provinces of the Donbas, claiming them as \u201cRussian peoples\u201d. Putin also seized the Crimean Peninsula, and maintained the strategic Russian Naval Base at Sevastopol.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Obama Administration protested and levied some sanctions, but didn\u2019t do much else. President Trump seemed to undercut the power of NATO as much as possible. And they too still considered Ukraine within Russia\u2019s \u201cinfluence\u201d. But the development of the Ukrainian government since then, and particularly with the Zelenskyy Presidency, has changed Ukraine\u2019s status in the eyes of the United States, and the world. But not in the eyes of Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s \u201csphere of influence\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even then, if Russia could have pulled off their \u201cdecapitation\u201d strategy, they would have succeeded and captured Ukraine. NATO and the West would have protested and boycotted, but a Russian fait d\u2019accompli 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s 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 \u201cfinalize\u201d Ukraine before his self-imposed May 9th deadline. But if he can\u2019t, if the Ukrainian forces can hold Putin to a stalemate for the next few weeks, then what happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin will try to find a way to \u201cdeclare victory\u201d 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s 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) \u2013 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And why should the West respond to Putin\u2019s use of WMD? Because if we don\u2019t respond, we normalize the its use. We can see, after this first month in Ukraine, that the vaunted Russian Army \u201cain\u2019t\u201d what we thought it was. The Russian Air Force cannot even maintain supremacy in the Ukrainian skies. So it is in the West\u2019s interest to make sure that Putin cannot \u201cbalance the scales\u201d with WMD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If this sounds like a recipe for direct US-Russian confrontation \u2013 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s not going to be a matter of \u201cIF\u201d we act, it\u2019s going to be a matter of \u201cwhen\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0This battle in Ukraine is the best time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n