Ukraine Battles Fuel Elite Chatter About Nuclear War

Advocates and national security wonks are chattering about the possibility of nuclear war starting in Ukraine.

“In the fog of war, it isn’t hard to imagine an accident or miscommunication that triggers a World War III-like scenario,” said a March 8 New York Times article.

“The longer this war continues, the more dangerous it will become,” David Ignatius wrote in the March 17 Washington Post.  He continued:

Russia will bleed out, in the corpses of its invaders and the ruin of its economy. The world will cheer. But as this process continues, a desperate Putin may become more likely to escalate this crisis toward a world war. A combination of military pressure and diplomacy that presses Putin toward a settlement is in everyone’s interest. Compromises will be anguishing but necessary.

On March 22, a New York Times op-ed warned:

Concern about these smaller [nuclear] weapons has skyrocketed now that, in the context of the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of his nuclear power, put his atomic forces on alert and instructed his Army to carry out dangerous attacks against nuclear plants. The fear is that if Putin feels cornered in the conflict, he could decide to detonate one of his less powerful nuclear weapons (which would break the taboo set 76 years ago after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

“As Russia Digs In, What’s the Risk of Nuclear War? ‘It’s Not Zero,'” said the headline of another New York Times article.

Amid the drama, emotion, and risks, President Joe Biden’s team has both escalated and de-escalated the conflict over Ukraine’s Russian-populated provinces.

It refused to enforce the post-Cold War U.S. commitment to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Once Russia attacked, it provided Javelin missiles to destroy the Russian tanks. When Russia has switched to greater use of artillery fire, the U.S. is providing long-range missiles that can destroy Russian artillery. It is also imposing an economic blockade on Russi and is describing Russian officials are war criminals.

But Biden’s team is also blocking the transfer of Polish MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine, rejecting demands to enforce a no-fly zone, and downplaying European demands for more action.

The conflict is over the political status of Ukraine.

Progressive advocates in the West demand the country be free to join NATO and buy foreign weapons. Russian officials insist that Ukraine is a historic province of the Russian homeland, that an independent Ukraine should be kept out of alliances, and that Russian-populated districts in Ukraine should be returned to Russia. The Russian invasion began after Western governments repeatedly hinted that Ukraine could join NATO and need not accept Russia’s political terms.

It is unclear if Biden’s team is pushing Ukraine to compromise with Russia, for example, to forego alliances and to allow independence by the Russian-majority eastern provinces.

Yet opponents of Putin are urging the U.S. government to escalate the U.S. pushback against Putin. For example, one long-standing opponent of Trump and Putin, Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic magazine:

Putin and his propagandists are dropping hints about chemical and nuclear weapons for the same reason. They want outsiders, and especially Americans, to fear the consequences of helping Ukraine. The use of hypersonic weaponry; the threats of nuclear war made on Russian television; even the habit, established a few years back, of practicing the use of nuclear weapons during military exercises, sometimes to simulate a hit on Warsaw, sometimes to simulate a bomb exploding in the air—all of that has a purpose …

There is only one rule: We cannot be afraid. Russia wants us to be afraid—so afraid that we are crippled by fear, that we cannot make decisions, that we withdraw altogether, leaving the way open for a Russian conquest of Ukraine, and eventually of Poland or even further into Europe. Putin remembers very well an era when Soviet troops controlled the eastern half of Germany. But the threat to those countries will not decrease if Russia carries out massacres in Ukraine. It will grow.

Instead of fear, we should focus on a Ukrainian victory. Once we understand that this is the goal, then we can think about how to achieve it, whether through temporary boycotts of Russian gas, oil, and coal; military exercises elsewhere in the world that will distract Russian troops; humanitarian airlifts on the scale of 1948 Berlin; or more and better weapons.

Applebaum’s bellicose article prompted criticism, but there are other bellicose calls for action, despite the threat of nuclear war.

Former President Donald Trump suggested on March 21 the U.S. federal government tout its force of nuclear-missile submarines to counter any Russian threats to use nuclear weapons if their invasion of Ukraine is being blocked.

“I listened to him constantly using the N-word,” Trump told Fox News, likely referring to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He continued:

That’s the N-word. And he’s constantly using it, the nuclear word … We say “Oh, he’s a nuclear power.” But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines, the world’s most powerful machines ever built, and got built under me. Most powerful machines ever built and nobody knows where they are. And you should say, “Look, you mention that word one more time, we’re gonna send them over, we’ll be coasting back and forth, up and down your coast.’

“We have brand new stuff that’s immensely powerful and hope to God you’ll never have to use because it would be that would be the tragedy of all tragedies. But if we didn’t have it, we couldn’t talk,” Trump said.

Trump’s nuclear threat came as he urged more military aid:

He’s killing thousands and thousands of people … What he’s doing is a human tragedy. There’s not been anything like this, in a sense, maybe ever, but certainly since World War Two. When you look at it, but there’s never been anything like this … You can’t let this tragedy continue. You can’t let these thousands of people die. It’s going to be hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of people by the time it ends.

Trump also urged more military aid to Ukraine, even though Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons may be spurring Russian officials mention of nuclear weapons:

We have drones that are just as effective as just about anything in the air, anything you can do with the air. And you can do drones plus they give back tremendous amounts of information and the information leads missiles right to whatever the hell target they are from Ukraine, so therefore you’re being neutral. It’s so ridiculous.

Ob March 22, a Russian official hinted at the use of nuclear weapons if Ukraine’s government does not give up its Russian-majority eastern districts, CNN reported:

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, [spokesman] Dmitry Peskov repeatedly refused to rule out that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons against what Moscow saw as an “existential threat.” When asked under what conditions [Vladimir] Putin would use Russia’s nuclear capability, Peskov replied, “if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be.”

The United States condemned Peskov’s “dangerous” comments. “It’s not the way a responsible nuclear power should act,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.

But there is also a growing number of people speaking out against escalatory actions that cause a catastrophic nuclear war over the political status of Ukraine’s little-known Eastern provinces.

A demonstrator holds a placard while taking part in a rally in Trafalgar square in central London, on March 5, 2022, to show support for Ukraine and to protest against Russia’s invasion of the country. (BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)

“The Russian military is a paper tiger: poor supply, poor equipment, and poor training compared to its Western opponents,” said an article on substack.com. “The application of nuclear threat provides Russia with leverage in a liberal world order it can not keep up with … Russia’s nuclear arsenal is its trump card,” it said, adding:

Current reporting on the crisis in Ukraine frames the aggression as stemming from pure irrationality, despite over a decade of international political developments that have foreshadowed Russian strategy against Western expansion. Ukraine is a strategic buffer between Russia and the West. The existence of a pro-West Ukraine poses a significant security threat to Russia.

“Western caricatures explicitly liken Putin to Adolf Hitler. And you don’t negotiate with Nazis. The consequences are dire. Anyone alive during the Cold War or with any knowledge of the nuclear stakes should be wary of ratcheting up conflicts,” said a May 22 article in CompactMag.com.

“While conflicts indeed involve great acts of sacrifice and heroism, and certainly a great deal of evil, such stories simplify a complex reality and militate against caution. We can become too easily convinced that dangerous wars are just and necessary and even large death tolls are a worthwhile sacrifice,” the essay said.