23A026 Anyone for Nukes? by Jim Davies, 6/27/2023

Decisions in D.C. tend to be taken in secret, in the recesses of the Department of State, Health, etc, then passed to the compliant Media with directions to allow no contrary viewpoint. If they need to be announced publicly Joe Biden may then be wound up, set on a podium and told to prattle.

It's quite refreshingly different in Moscow these days. Putin has assembled a team of advisors with freedom to think and to disagree (politely) with each other, sometimes openly in public; and then a choice is made. One such is Sergey Karaganov and on June 14th he suggested that Russia wage nuclear war on the USA.

You can (should!) read his argument for yourself, here; my summary is that the "West" (meaning, the USGov-led NATO) has for very many years been harassing Russia to submit to its club of cooperating nations and forego its independence, and will continue to do so regardless of how the Ukraine conflict is settled. Therefore, it's better to administer a short sharp shock right now, to cause it to cease and desist. Take out Boston, for example, he suggests. Here's what it might then resemble:

He reasons that the short-term devastation of human life would in the long run (of half a century, say) be compensated by a much larger, net saving.

I see a couple of flaws in Mr Karaganov's argument. One, it's not clear how the "short, sharp shock" could possibly be limited to a single exchange. Once one ICBM flies, they may all fly; every combatant country would be laid waste and any surviving humans would have to begin civilizing all over again.

Then secondly, the use of even one nuclear bomb is utterly immoral, not just by the supreme, anarchist standard of self-ownership (which justifies violence only in self-defense) but under every moral system yet devised; for it kills thousands of innocent people for every one who is guilty. Unlike handguns and automatic rifles, nukes can never be used only for defense. That several governments have made and preserved great arsenals of these weapons is, on its own, a sufficient reason to terminate the era of government.

The irony of the nuclear age is that once they are used, the known world will end; therefore, they cannot be used. Zap your enemy, zap yourself. Yet if they are not available, conventional wars will become more and more brutal. The era is quite well named, as that of mutually assured destruction.

I've been re-reading Patrick Buchanan's extraordinarily fine book on the "Unnecessary War" - that is, WW2. Except for its final week, all of that war was non-nuclear. He says that Winston Churchill heard - and ususally took - advice daily from his close friend Prof. Fredrick Lindemann, the scientist whose counsel on bombing was first offered in 1942:

It must be directed especially against German working-class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space around them, and so are bound to waste bombs... given a total concentration of effort on the production and use of bombing aircraft, it would be possible, in all the larger towns of Germany, to destroy fifty percent of all houses.

Near-daily carpet bombing was then carried out, by both the RAF and USAAF. Late in the War, Churchill ordered the destruction of Dresden. Many regard him as one of the best of all government leaders. Maybe they are right. If so, can there be any doubt at all about the urgent need to end the bloodthirsty existence of all of them?