“On Armageddon” Part 2: The Danger of Nuclear War

Commentary on the growing prospects of conflict between Russia, North Korea, and the United States.

[This article is the second part of a three part series. To read Part One, please click here.]

In 100 years time, these three men may be mere names in history books — mostly forgotten, and relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of political history. But there is a significant, and growing, probability that these three men — and their unmerited access to weapons of ungodly strength — will be the defining figures of our time, and will shape our society, species, and planet for centuries to come.

It may be comforting to remind oneself of Mutually Assured Destruction, the safeguard that — so far — has shielded the world from all-out nuclear war. Its fault, however, is that Mutually Assured Destruction is dependent upon rational, level-headed leaders operating within the laws of game theory to make optimal, utilitarian decisions.

But we are not living through rational times. With a neoconservative con artist as president and a long American history of using the armed forces for profit and capitalism as opposed to genuine humanitarian concern, rationality is not by any standard the only consideration on the U.S. military’s mind.

So while Mutually Assured Destruction may be our greatest chance to avoid nuclear war, no one should see it as impenetrable or foolproof. There is a serious chance of an actual nuclear war breaking out in the coming years.

The question of how to prevent such a phenomenon from occurring, then, becomes integral to the survival of our species. In the analysis below, I will break down the surging tensions between the U.S., North Korea, and Russia, and give some recommendations of potential solutions to pursue.

The U.S. and North Korea

As I mentioned above, the art of determining which actors pose the greatest threat of launching a nuclear weapon is founded upon which of them are rational and which are not. Any rational state, following any strategic geopolitical calculus, would be unlikely to fire a nuclear missile against another nuclear-armed state (or one of its allies) due to the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

So, who is more irrational — Donald Trump, or Kim Jong Un?

The perception among Americans certainly seems to be that Kim is more irrational than Trump. The predominant narrative insinuates that Kim is an irrational madman, a “crazy fat kid” who, if he happens to be in a bad mood, will launch nuclear weapons at the U.S. for no strategic reason, even if it threatens his own power and survival.

Meanwhile, when Trump exerts military force, it’s a sign of “international compliance” and “enforcing international norms.” According to Fareed Zakaria, the night that Trump dropped missiles on Syria, he “became president of the United States.”

This is quite the double standard.

While Kim is certainly an inhumane ruler, he is not necessarily irrational. In fact, practically every ruthless, heartless move he’s made has been overwhelmingly strategic, often successfully bolstering his own power and control.

Kim, who tortures his own people and runs the world’s most authoritarian government, certainly doesn’t give a hoot about his constituents — but he does care deeply about his own life and status.

Why create a police state and send your own people to labor camps? To silence political opponents and cling onto power. Why promulgate a staunchly anti-American culture in Pyongyang? To foment nationalism and discourage critical or revolutionary thought. Why constantly threaten the United States? Because it can result in tangible strategic gains. Why invest so heavily in nuclear weapons? Because it makes the U.S. less likely to launch an attack on the DPRK due to the threat of North Korean retaliation.

All of these are rational actions, perfectly reasonable through the lens of game theory. Not moral, of course, but strategic. And this matters, because it makes Kim significantly less likely to unprovokedly launch a nuclear warhead than is often propagated by the American media.

This quote from The Intercept makes it overwhelmingly obvious:

“Small, poor, weak countries tend not to start wars with gigantic, wealthy, powerful countries — especially when doing so will obviously result in their obliteration.”

In the end, the threat that Kim himself will launch a nuclear first strike on the United States out of the blue — while certainly possible —seems genuinely overhyped. But what about Trump?

While Kim appears to be rational in most senses, I’m not sure if the same can be said about Trump. According to an analysis by Nate Silver, Trump’s reactions to Hurricane Maria, his controversial condemnation of Colin Kaepernick and the NFL kneeling protests, and his obsession with 3 a.m. rage-Tweets are actively hurting his approval rating. In addition, Trump’s unprecedented “fire and fury” remarks “broke with the U.S. tradition of responding to North Korea’s threats in a measured tone, instead choosing to mirror their language.”

While these actions may indeed solidify Trump’s base, it would be a reach to say that they were concocted from any logical strategy. Instead, they appear to be symptoms of Trump’s impulsivity.

Another factor that could augment the likelihood of the U.S. military attacking the DPRK is Trump’s apparent lack of care for non-American lives — a level of apathy so high that he told Lindsey Graham that military strikes on North Korea are justifiable because “if thousands die, they’re going to die over there — they’re not going to die over here.”

Finally, we must consider that the chance of a U.S.-North Korea nuclear war will be significantly increased by the U.S. power establishment’s yearning for regime change. Given our country’s long history of enacting coups to serve the interests of multinational corporations and the military-industrial complex — desires the Trump Administration has also displayed in regards to North Korea — I would argue that imperial ambitions will make U.S. intervention in the DPRK much more likely.

A paper written by the Project for a New American Century — the prominent neoconservative think tank known for shaping much of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy — backs this up. The paper states that the U.S. “must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action”, and that “it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities.”

This is a quite telling passage. The American military isn’t just concerned about North Korea launching an attack on the U.S. — it’s concerned about them preventing us from enacting regime change against them. These imperial ambitions increase the likelihood that our military will gravitate towards nation-building on the Korean peninsula.

This combination of apathy, impulsivity, and imperial ambitions makes the prospects of the U.S. triggering a nuclear war against North Korea increasingly likely.

And senior officials in the Trump Administration already know this — so much so that they are secretly warning that “removing one’s personal assets from S. Korea is now advisable.” In other words, the Korean peninsula is in serious, serious danger of becoming a war zone.

Such tendencies don’t necessarily mean that Trump is going to launch a nuclear first strike — although that is certainly on the table given recent reports indicating that the Trump administration is actively considering such an attack. But what seems even more likely is that the Trump Administration will quietly ramp up conventional military operations in the region.

This process is already commencing. In September, for instance, American bombers flew closer to the North Korean border than any time this century. In addition, Trump sent increased “strategic assets” to South Korea in October, which would likely include “submarines, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons or bombers.”

Although conventional warfare falls short of a direct nuclear first strike, it is hardly less dangerous. If Trump and Kim continue their game of “one-upping” one another, it could unleash a positive feedback loop of escalation — a tit-for-tat of spiraling aggression —which could easily transform itself into direct conflict.

That would be the last thing we’d want. If direct military conflict breaks out between the two nations, it could lead to an artillery assault of Seoul, likely killing over one million South Korean civilians, or even a North Korean nuclear strike against the U.S. in retaliation, which would devastate our country.

But even this framing doesn’t do justice to the horror such actions would create, as it only focuses on American and South Korean casualties. When you factor in the effect of American military strikes on the lives of innocent North Koreans themselves — people whose lives matter just as much as ours do — such operations are even more ethically disastrous.

This is a key point that practically no one is talking about. Typically, when pundits discuss the effects of America intervening militarily in North Korea, they only focus on the counter-effect that these actions would have on Americans and South Koreans. However, quite little do we ever consider the innocent North Korean lives that would be lost in the event of an American strike.

What it comes down to is this: the lives of Americans, South Koreans, and North Koreans should be weighted equally in our analysis. And as my assessment above has shown, the best way to protect the lives of all three of these groups is to reduce military engagement with North Korea.

How can we start? What you won’t often hear on mainstream media is that Kim has repeatedly offered to terminate his entire nuclear weapons program, under the one condition that the U.S. stops carrying out threatening, escalatory maneuvers in South Korea. Each and every time it’s been offered, both Obama and Trump have rejected this proposed agreement.

Now, if we were to sign such a treaty, there would obviously be no guarantee that North Korea would keep their word — nor will they have any reason to trust ours. But perhaps, ceasing our escalatory maneuvers on the peninsula can at least be a starting point in the process of easing tensions.

The more peaceful path won’t be pretty. North Korea will continue to develop nuclear warheads and oppress its civilian population. But the peaceful, diplomatic path is simply the best of many imperfect options.

The U.S. and Russia

While the potential for nuclear war between the U.S. and North Korea gets all the press — perhaps rightfully so — the threat of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia is rarely discussed. But if you look closer, it’s abundantly clear that tensions between the world’s two nuclear superpowers are escalating at a troubling rate.

The driving force of these tensions appears to be the allegations of Trump-Kremlin collusion, which have seemingly spun Democrats into a frenzied crusade of pro-NATO, anti-Putin hysteria. Earlier this year, for instance, an assortment of Democrats labeled the alleged meddling an “act of war.” Democratic consultant Paul Begala took it a step further, stating that the United States “should be debating how many sanctions we should place on Russia or whether we should blow up the KGB.”

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s coverage of the alleged Trump-Kremlin collusion serves as a case in point. Maddow has vehemently defended the placement of additional American troops on the Russian border, and insinuated that “the presidency is effectively a Russian op.” Quite disturbingly, an analysis by The Intercept found that 53% of Maddow’s coverage between February 20 and March 31 was dedicated to “Russia-focused segments,” meaning that the alleged collusion between Trump and the Kremlin took precedence over every other political issue combined, at a time when Trump’s travel ban, increased drone strikes, environmental deregulation, and attempts to replace Obamacare were in full throttle.

And this is the problem with the Democratic Party’s intense focus on the purported collusion between Trump and the Kremlin: it replaces effective criticisms of Trump’s disastrous policies with escalatory, war-inciting tirades against the Kremlin. This (a) weakens the Democratic message, (b) distracts from a golden opportunity to attack Trump on the actual policy substance, and (c) pushes us closer to the brink of conflict with a state armed with 7,000 nukes.

These escalatory anti-Russia measures are not just rhetoric — they are accompanied by a barrage of strong, bipartisan military actions against the Kremlin.

Under the guise of pacifism, Obama signed a bill pledging to spend a whopping $1 trillion over 30 years to modernize our nuclear arsenal and pursue a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, bomber aircraft, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, all the while threatening to “retaliate” against Russian “election meddling.”

Also during the Obama administration, NATO placed troops into “four major battle groups” on Russia’s border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, an operation that has been expanded under Trump. In response, Russia countered by sending ships armed with long-range cruise missiles to the region.

If this isn’t asking for war, I don’t know what is.

NATO troops stationed on the Russian border.

I’m serious. There is an actual threat of a renewed Cold War between the United States and Russia — with no full guarantee that it will actually stay cold.

The rationale for such escalation goes something like this: “the Kremlin is directly trying to undermine American democracy.”

But the extent to which this statement is true is heavily disputable.

The main evidence cited by the U.S. intelligence community of the Kremlin “undermining American democracy” is that Russian cyber espionage group FancyBear used malware to hack the servers of the DNC to damage the Democratic platform and help Trump win.

However, although the FBI, CIA, and NSA have claimed that the Kremlin was behind the DNC leaks, none of these agencies have ever looked at the raw data themselves. In fact, when James Comey asked the DNC if the FBI could examine its servers for evidence of a potential Russian hack, the DNC suspiciously denied him access.

So, if the U.S. government has never actually reviewed the raw evidence, who did? CrowdStrike, a private firm that is the only entity to ever review the data from the DNC leaks.

Unfortunately, CrowdStrike has shown a quite low level of honesty, accuracy, and integrity in their reporting on FancyBear-related matters. In December of 2016, for instance, they announced that FancyBear hacked a Ukrainian artillery app to aid Russia. However, it was later discovered that this story was completely fallacious — the “evidence” had been entirely fabricated by CrowdStrike.

Think Tank: Cyber Firm at Center of Russian Hacking Charges Misread Data

In addition to its poor track record, CrowdStrike is steeped in conflicts of interest. The company has strong economic ties to the DNC, and its CTO is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, whose donors include NATO and military contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. The Atlantic Council is also staunchly anti-Russia, stating in November that “Russia has declared war on the entire west” and that NATO should be compelled “to have the debate it needs to have on the role of nuclear weapons.”

This is really important: the main piece of evidence of Trump-Kremlin collusion rests on highly shaky ground.

What we’re left with are a variety of small bits of evidence that genuinely seem to be reliable and accurate. These include:

• Cold, hard evidence of a fruitless meeting between Jared Kushner and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer without direct ties to the Kremlin.
• Proof that Michael Flynn contacted Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak — along with every other member of the U.N. Security Council, including representatives from Egypt and the U.K.
• The Internet Research Agency, a firm loosely connected to the Kremlin, bought $100,000 of pro-Trump Facebook ads in a $6.8 billion election — 56% of which were purchased after the election was already over.

In the end, there was clearly some form of collusion between some Russians and some members of Trump’s team. But to say that it was a direct, concerted effort by Putin himself or the Kremlin itself to “undermine American democracy” seems to be an unwarranted extrapolation of the facts.

See, the Trump-Kremlin collusion narrative is like a dot painting. The narrative seems to signify a major conspiracy when viewed from afar, but the closer you zoom in, the more fragmented the argument becomes.

So, while it is certainly entirely possible that Putin and the Kremlin themselves led a direct, all-out influence campaign to hand the election to Trump, we simply don’t seem to have the evidence as of now to back up such a brash, extreme claim. At the very least, we should wait until the Mueller investigation reaches a conclusion before brazenly alleging that the Kremlin is actively trying to topple American democracy.

It is also hypocritical to espouse such a bold, sensationalist statement when similar events have occurred in recent years without so much hyperbole. In the 2016 election, for instance, Hillary Clinton engaged in somewhat similar activity with Ukraine and Russian nuclear power company Rosatom, and in 1996, the U.S. blatantly undermined the Russian electoral process to fraudulently place Boris Yeltsin — a man with a 6% approval rating — as president over his significantly more popular Communist challenger. In each of these instances, there was significantly less public outcry.

What does all this mean? It means that the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and America as a whole should seriously tone down their anti-Russia crusade. Not only is such brazen hysteria often inaccurate, hypocritical, and exaggerated, but it is perhaps the largest contributor to our growing tensions with Russia, a nuclear superpower with catastrophic firepower.

If we continue down this path and ramp up our military operations on the Russian border, it is not all that unlikely that some form of conflict will break out, whether nuclear or conventional. This is especially possible given the de facto proxy wars we’ve witnessed between America and Russia, including those in Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and other countries. Instead, we must pursue peace, diplomacy, and a reduction in nuclear arms stockpiles.

The Bottom Line

Instead of escalating with North Korea and Russia, we should attempt to ease tensions. The potential geopolitical gains are simply not worth the monumental human costs.

Where should we start? I’d recommend that we begin by curtailing hawkish anti-Russia and anti-North Korea rhetoric, signing new START treaties, reducing nuclear arms stockpiles, and removing troops from the Russian border and the Korean peninsula.

Only with war abandoned and diplomacy pursued can we minimize suffering and pursue a saner and safer world.

[This article is the second part of a three part series. To read Part Three, please click here.]