Nuclear Weapons are not a Deterrent: for Putin they are the opposite

 

What is the justification for maintaining an arsenal of nuclear weapons?  Detonation of the nuclear missiles we have today, many thousands in the United States and Russia alone, could fill the atmosphere with sun-blocking clouds, creating a ‘nuclear winter’.  In others words, elimination not only of civilization but higher life on the planet.

 

Ominously enough, the justification for maintaining a doom-bringer arsenal is referred to as MAD, that is, mutual assured destruction.  Sometimes the euphemistic and denialist “deterrence” is substituted.  But let it be said that the use of “deterrence” is absurd in itself.  Deterrence sounds innocuous, like taking a flu shot.  The truth is not inoculation.  It is annihilation.  Humanity and nature sinking in roentgens and flame into ceaseless darkness.

 

What exactly is the so-called logic behind MAD?  The premise is simple enough.  Namely, it would be self-defeating for any country to initiate a major conflict, given the threat of painful, permanent, irreversible hell.   From that grand premise, a leap occurs to the ‘logical’ conclusion:  war won’t happen.

 

I state both premise and conclusion to make absolutely clear the flawed, dangerous leap from the former to the latter.  The failure in critical thinking is absolutely stunning.

 

It is salient, not merely ironic, that the strategist who originated the term MAD in 1962 did so for the reason opposite of the current usage:  to argue that nuclear weapons should not be kept. Same premise, different conclusion.   Does it make sense, after all, to protect life by posing and priming planet-destroying weapons?

 

Advocates of nuclear proliferation assert that the inclination for war can only be stopped in its tracks by hanging the ultimate Sword of Damocles over every single human head.  And yet, wait a minute, if humans are that irrational, requiring that much threat, would a power-hungry dictator be deterred by any sort of rational argument at all? 

 

Despite the political and economic theories about ‘rational actors’, humans tend to be far more psychological.  Given the patriarchate’s lean, to react to threats of violence with more saber-rattling, a dynamic that has led time and time again to calamitous consequences--pillage, desecration, firestorm, enslavement and massacre--it is imperative to ask whether holding up an even bigger threat is going to do anything, except encourage a final macho blowout of our headstrong, bellicose species.

 

Put yourself in the shoes of a psychopathic, narcissistic tyrant.  Does such a tyrant care about the fate of the world more than their own glory?  And wouldn’t it be glorious, from their perspective, especially if they are old and about to die anyway, to take the world down with them? 

 

If this seems unconscionable, well, that’s the point.  Some people don’t have a conscience, and they tend to rise to the top.  For context, Putin is currently sixty-nine years old and not getting any younger.

 

Leaving aside human folly, there is also the justification problem.  MAD could support having no nukes.  It could support many nukes.  Maybe scariest of all, someone could use MAD as a justification to go to war.  Isn’t this what Putin is doing, believing that NATO wouldn’t dare to stop him, because the risk is unspeakable?

 

MAD itself is mad.  It won’t deter tyrants who are mad.  And the logical structures attached to it collapse into insanity. 

 

What we have now is a game of extinctive chicken, played out with stakes we have no reason to put on the table.  Humanity can survive this awful chapter in history in only one way:  pare down the nukes, till they are gone, and accept that virtue and mental health, two peas in a pod, are essential in our leaders. 

 

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