Sleepwalking into nuclear war

David Sanger’s August 20 article in the New York Times sent shivers down the spines of all my colleagues. As Sanger made clear, the 1986 to 2022 honeymoon period is over. Global nuclear arsenals shrunk from 70,000 to more than 12,000 warheads during that time. Much of the world was lulled into a false sense of complacency. Unfortunately, those days are over. All nine nuclear powers are modernizing and making their arsenals more lethal. Several, including China and Britain, are openly expanding their arsenals. Others plan to follow suit. 

Sanger’s lead of Biden “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which has been confirmed by two top administration nuclear officials, indicates that the U.S. sees a new nuclear threat environment in which Russia, the PRC, and North Korea will coordinate a potential nuclear assault and overwhelm the more limited capability of the U.S. and NATO. They point to China’s rapid enhancement of its nuclear stockpile and placing missiles in silos; North Korea’s growing stockpile and steadily improving missile capabilities along with its steadily belligerent rhetoric; Iran’s closeness to achieving one or more nuclear warheads, with a breakout time in days and weeks instead of months and years as it was under the JCPOA, and Russia’s allegedly lowered threshold for use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine and other parts of Europe. 

The latest developments in Ukraine and Russia are particularly alarming, especially with Ukraine’s August 6 incursion into the Kursk region, which Russia has been surprisingly slow to put down. Zelensky keeps pressuring the U.S. and European allies to lift all constraints upon Ukraine’s using the most advanced Western weapons to strike targets inside Russia and keeps assuring the West that Putin has no red lines that they need to avoid crossing. That kind of thinking is now pervasive among U.S. war planners. The strikes against Russian strategic early-warning radar sites and other nuclear installations, plus the threats against nuclear power plants in Zaphorizizhia and Kursk, reflect the risks if this war continues. There has been more nuclear saber-rattling coming from Russian military and political officials in response to these provocations, and the Financial Times reports that Russia’s nuclear use threshold is significantly lower than previously believed. When you combine all of this with the fact that Russia deployed nuclear weapons to Belarus and has been conducting tactical nuclear weapons drills near Ukraine and nuclear naval exercises targeting European cities, the situation becomes even more dire.

To make matters worse, the recently concluded Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, which started on a positive, even uplifting, note regarding domestic policy, ended on a hawkish, bellicose call to arms against Russia and all of America’s adversaries. I had hoped that Harris would strike a different tone and embrace diplomacy in a way that has been anathema to Biden in Ukraine and China to a lesser extent. Still, I was disappointed by her and her party’s unbridled militarism–as seen in presentations by Biden, Gallego, Panetta, and Harris herself–and her celebration of the lethality of American arms. Nor did she offer any real break with Biden over Israel and Gaza. She seems inevitably to cave to the pressure of two recent Congressional reports calling for a dramatic increase of U.S. military spending in light of America’s perceived weakness compared to its malign enemies who enhance their capabilities and envision global conquest. Some point to the US and NATO struggles to arm Ukraine despite tremendous Russian advantages in manpower and armaments.

So, I’m extremely worried about the days, weeks, and months to come, considering all of this and more.

We’re definitely in a new Cold War, and it makes as little sense as the previous one. Are there any leaders left who think in terms of the planet and not just their parochial nationalities the way Kennedy and Khrushchev did in 1963 in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Aside from Guterres, the Pope, and Lula, I don’t see them. However, the Cold War was different in some crucial respects at this time. First, it’s no longer the US vs. the USSR, with other countries serving as enablers and props. It is now the U.S. and a weakened NATO lined up against Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. India remains neutral, though it gets over 40 percent of its oil and almost 60 percent of its arms from Russia. Modi’s visit to Moscow while the NATO summit took place in DC sent the West a strong and clear message that this week’s visit to Kyiv didn’t assuage. The Global South has not gone along with sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.  Further signs of a shifting global balance include China’s Belt and Road investment program, Russia and China’s inroads in Africa and Latin America, and the alternatives to the U.S. and the growing dollar economy offered by the BRICS+ and the SCO. Biden tried to make this a battle between autocracy and democracy. The Economist remarked that to most of the world, it looked instead like a battle between autocracy and hypocrisy. I’m often reminded of one of the few intelligent comments that Samuel Huntington made when he said, “The West won the world not by the superiority of it ideas, or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” The other big difference this time is that China has emerged as the world’s number two economy and even number one by specific measures. The US and European economies dwarfed those of the Warsaw Pact nations during the previous Cold War. The EU accounts for under 15 percent of global GDP, and Asia accounts for approximately 54 percent. Asia has been driving most of the worldwide GDP growth this past decade and promises to continue. So, as the Chinese like to point out, the U.S. and the West are in decline while China and Asia are on the rise. However, we can’t forget the fact that the U.S., as it desperately clings to its fading hegemony, still has the potential to end life on the planet. 

Right now, Biden and Putin each have that capability. Xi Jinping (sadly, in my opinion) wants to join the club of people with veto power over the future existence of life on our small planet. We should and could have avoided the first Cold War. Once it had started, we squandered numerous opportunities to end it. If we make those same mistakes this time around, the chances of survival are greatly diminished.

Neither Russia nor China has shown any inclination to engage in arms control, safety, or strategic stability talks in the face of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific, with particular focus there on Taiwan and the South China Sea. I’ve given several talks about both situations and would happily go into more detail. But there is always hope for a return of sanity. Pressure is mounting globally to end the wars in both Ukraine and Gaza. To his credit, Putin has been calling for negotiations in Ukraine for months. But Biden and Zelensky hold out hopes for a Ukrainian military victory that will expel Russia from all Ukrainian territory. Most of the world sees this as the pipe dream it is and urges a diplomatic resolution. While Ukraine has made temporary inroads in the Kursk region, it is daily losing more and more territory in Donetsk and other parts of the East and South. The situation grows more and more desperate. The sooner this ends, the better for both Ukraine and Russia and the rest of the planet. China has also cut off short-lived discussions with the U.S. intended to enhance nuclear safety and security, citing U.S. military and diplomatic support for Taiwan as the reason. If these conflicts and the war in Gaza get resolved, perhaps we can get back on the path of diplomacy, nuclear and beyond,  and end this mad, frenzied race to oblivion. 

By Peter Kuznick