Are you scared of nuclear war? You should be.
Fear gets a bad rap. We normally try to avoid it. This is because we’ve all had traumatic experiences in our lives where this feeling was brought to the fore and we didn’t like it.
It is, though, a misunderstood emotion. Fear is an essential part of the human psyche. Our innate fight-or-flight response has kept humans alive for millennia. It helps us to avoid dangerous situations, thus protecting us.
Fear does have its limitations though. We struggle to rationalise a fear of something we have never experienced. This is the dilemma of nuclear weapons.
We all know they are “bad”. But people, not least those making decisions in Moscow and Washington, have lost sight of just how monstrous these weapons are.
Humans make mistakes
The weakest link in nuclear deterrence theory will always be humans.
We make mistakes. The systems we create are not perfect. The biggest threat in a world with nuclear weapons has always been accidents, rather than a pre-meditated strike.
While in the purely theoretical space mutually assured destruction might make sense, in the world of flawed humans, the risk of something going wrong is too great.
It feels as though those in charge have forgotten to fear nuclear weapons. I think the public has forgotten this too.
Alongside back channels and espionage, a huge source of intelligence is what leaders say out loud in public. Something has changed in the discourse in the past six months.
Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, talk of nuclear arsenals and innuendos about their use were not made so brazenly. Slowly but surely, talk of a “tactical nuclear weapons strike” on the battlefield in Ukraine has moved nuclear weapons out of the conceptual world into the realm of the possible, ratcheting up the risk of miscalculation on all sides.
During the Cold War the Government helped to ramp up fear of nuclear war to its citizenry through its public messaging. Protect And Survive played out on tellies, striking fear into living rooms across the country during the ad break for Corrie. Films like When The Wind Blows (used to illustrate this blog) and Threads helped to rationalise the horror of nuclear war not just among the public, but in the heart of government too.
Fast forward to today and there is no public messaging to speak of. For many, nuclear weapons are a faraway thing, in some ocean, bobbing along in a hidden submarine. If you’ve never had to imagine to horrors of nuclear weapons then it is hard to fear them.
We only have one reference point of nuclear weapons being used in conflict. In August 1945, America dropped two weapons on the Japanese islands of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two bombs killed over 200,000 people in a day, and many more over the subsequent months and years. The weapons available today are 10 to 100 times more powerful, at least.
Let’s just recap what would happen if you were near ground zero when the bomb dropped. The initial effects can be summed up as blast, heat, and radiation. First, you would notice a blinding flash, followed seconds later by a heatwave hotter than the surface of the sun and a shockwave stronger than any hurricane ever recorded. If you were outside the blast area you would likely still get third-degree burns miles out from the epicentre. A firestorm would ensue, burning everything in sight. Radioactive material would rain down as nuclear fallout for the next few days, with exposure leading to a slow, painful death from radiation poisoning.
If you somehow survived and managed to shelter inside for two weeks, avoiding radiation, then you would now face the bleak reality of nuclear winter, with sunlight blocked by smoke from firestorms across the world for probably a decade making farming practically impossible. There would be no security, no food and no way out. This is the reality of nuclear weapons.
It is unlikely a “tactical” strike would ever mean just one weapon being used. Tit-for-tat politics would likely lead to an escalation and possibly all-out nuclear war. Quid pro quo.
Currently, we are at a stage where we can still turn down the heat and de-escalate. This has to be the priority for all nations.
Fear of losing face
The Cuban Missile Crisis is often cited as the closest we have come to a nuclear war. Presidents Kennedy and Kruschev kept diplomatic channels open throughout this crisis. In the end, the Soviet Union backed down, withdrawing missiles from Cuba and the US covertly removed its nuclear missiles from Turkey.
The Charter of the United Nations urges nations to avoid “the scourge of war” and be “good neighbours”. Russia has failed on this front and should be punished. But this does not inevitably have to mean more blood being spilt.
Faced with the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War, the West was resolute in its opposition to Russia’s invasion of its sovereign neighbour and rightly so. The West was quick to send weapons, however, it was not as forceful with economic sanctions as it could have been. Sanctions hurt at home, whereas weapons used halfway across Europe do not.
The reason we are appalled by the invasion of Ukraine is the same reason we should hold our noses and oppose forcing regime change in Russia. We might disagree with despotic regimes, but ultimately it is not our place to impose our will on other countries. It didn’t work in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. Peaceful coexistence should be the aim of international politics and is the premise of international law.
Sending Western weapons to Ukraine has halted Russian advances but has also fanned the flames of the conflict. Russian setbacks have increased the chance of a nuclear miscalculation — the nonsense of “escalate to de-escalate”. Putin, his Kremlin cronies and his client media have ramped up the rhetoric about nuclear weapons to dangerous levels.
We should not capitulate to Putin’s threats.
But neither should we continue to dial up the tensions either. Western leaders fear that allowing these nuclear threats to lead to a favourable outcome for Russia in peace talks would embolden nuclear proliferation, with states seeking weapons in order to achieve their geopolitical aims.
But the present risk of an actual nuclear exchange, not some conceptual wargame in the future, is the greater risk and should be our focus today.
Now is the time for the international community to push for a negotiated peace settlement.
It is never too late to walk back from the brink. It is never too late to reset relations. Russia’s partners, of whom there are still many, should urge a ceasefire and immediate peace talks. Ukraine’s allies should do the same.
A de-escalation in Ukraine would mean both sides having to make sacrifices. That is the nature of negotiation and settlements. As unpalatable as that is — despite the chorus of “appeasement” from some corners — it is irrefutable that the road to peace leads through compromise. And — that it is better than the costs of war.
The only people who can reach a settlement are Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy. Kyiv and Moscow have a lot to lose in peace talks, but they stand to lose a lot more if the war continues.
Both sides fear losing face. But they should fear nuclear conflict more. The whole world should.
