The standoff between Ukraine and Russia came to a head last week Monday, February 21, 2022, when Russian President, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree recognising the rebel-held territories of Luhansk and Donetsk as ‘independent republics,’ no longer part of the hitherto sovereign territories of Ukraine. For close to 10 years, beforehand, those regions (with heavy Russian-speaking populations), had been at odds with mainland Ukraine over their autonomous status. It must be said, very quickly, that much of the trouble involving the rebels and the Ukrainian government had been fomented by Russian mercenaries over the years. Putin is a convinced irredentist. He has never seen Ukraine as having any legitimate claim to sovereign statehood because of the long cultural and historical ties between the two countries. He laments the breakup of the old USSR, in which Ukraine was a prominent member. NATO, on the other hand, has kept open the possibility of Ukraine’s membership at some point in the future. The West also sees the country as being of immense strategic value to its mission of liberal democracy from West to East. Putin did not want to take the chance on Ukraine suddenly being given the membership of NATO and its ‘nuclear umbrella.’ So, why not find a pretext for an invasion now, when the risk is minuscule. The West cannot, and would not, confront a nuclear-armed Russia for fear of triggering an Armageddon. So, a full invasion of Ukraine began a couple of days after signing the decree. Russian forces are now at the doorstep of the capital, Kyiv.
Nuclear weapons are at the front and centre of what is happening in Ukraine. A decision to invade or not, attack or not, negotiate or not, has everything to do with the possession and consequences of a nuclear war. The world is cursed with a combined total of 10,000 (military grade) warheads; The USA (5,550), Russia (6,257), UK (225), France (290), China (350), Pakistan (165), India (156), Israel (90), North-Korea (40-50), according to www.armscontrol.org. Only two hundred of these are considered sufficient to obliterate the earth. Aside from the immediate levelling down of cities by nuclear blasts through thermal and ionising radiation, the aftermath of a nuclear war includes the firestorms of nuclear winter, widespread radiation across borders that would make covid-19 look like a kindergarten party. Consequently, there would be no territorial borders, no quick flights to safe countries, no mass hospitalisations, no quick scientific rush for a vaccine, no effective face coverings, no self-isolation; only instant death in thousands and rapidly in millions. This is what makes a nuclear confrontation an unfathomable human madness. It would herald the end of civilisation as we know it. Every nuclear-armed state knows this. The use of it by one against another is a guaranteed ‘mutual-assured destruction’. As it happens, no nuclear state would dare launch a direct military attack on another. That is why the West and NATO can only talk of “severe economic consequences” for Russia. That said, NATO’s Article V doctrine—attack on one is attack on all—is only a military obligation. That may need to be interpreted liberally to cover cyberattack, which a desperate Putin would order against the Western alliance. Cyberattack is notoriously difficult to prove, however. That is where things could take an extremely dangerous turn for all.
Countries acquire or seek to acquire nuclear weapons not only to deter others from launching an attack against them, but more significantly, to avoid being bullied or blackmailed by a rogue state. This is precisely the nightmare(ish) scenario the West is now faced with in Ukraine. What happens if a nuclear-armed state launches an audacious attack (invasion if you like) on an ally of another nuclear-armed state? Having a stockpile of nuclear weapons does not shield you from a nuclear blackmail as the world can now see. The only reason Russia is turning up the heat on Ukraine is nuclear weapons. And, the only reason NATO and the US feel somewhat impotent to act, forcefully, is also nuclear weapons. The leadership of the so-called ‘independent republics’ will soon emerge and be paraded on TV in the coming days. They will then formally appeal to Russia to reinforce its troops for ‘peacekeeping’ operations and to guard against attack by the Ukrainian armed forces trying to exert sovereignty. A prolonged proxy war between Russia and NATO is inevitable. Putin will do everything to destabilise and eventually overthrow the government in Kiev. On their part, NATO would do all it can to thwart Russia by dragging it into a costly (both human and material) quagmire for decades to come. But, first, unless Russia’s takeover of Kiev is swift and decisive, Putin would bear a personal cost sooner than later.
The conflict in Ukraine will soon become the new normal in the region and beyond. “In order to ensure prompt action by the United Nations, its members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”; (Chapter V, Article 24, UN Charter). Its five permanent members (UK, USA, China, France and Russia) have a veto each. What happens when one of them, (Russia), is the one threatening the same world peace they have all pledged to guarantee? Who will police the police? Students of international relations all over the world will now have to re-examine the building blocks of their received wisdom. Furthermore, the stale debate about the possession and use of nuclear weapons must also be re-ignited. Had Ukraine kept its own massive nuclear arsenal when the USSR broke up in 1990/91, Russia would not be in a position to roll its tanks onto its territory today. Similarly, under pressure from the West, Libya had its own advanced nuclear programme, which the late strongman, Mu’ammar Gaddafi, surrendered to the international community, which then attacked and toppled him in 2011. All sorts of foreign powers then found cause to intervene for strategic reasons: Turkey, Qatar, Italy, Russia, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia all flooded Libya with weapons despite a subsisting UN arms embargo. What happened in Libya and the fate of its erstwhile leader did not go unnoticed by Kim Jong Un, a fellow strongman and maximum ruler in North Korea, with a super ambition for long-range nuclear weapons that could directly hit the United States.
In the final analysis, there is no advantage, no incentive for abandoning nuclear weapons, if history is anything to go by nuclear weapons and the threats of their use will never go away unless, and until, a superior weapon system capable of nullifying their effects has been invented. And, whichever country arrives at that first, would have the others eating out of its hand. However, it stands to reason that embarking on an effective antidote to nuclear weapons would trigger a new arms race with devastating consequences for the world. Otherwise, it would be curtains for whichever nuclear-armed state that refuses to join. The late US President, Ronald Reagan (1981-89), announced the Strategic Defence Initiative, aka “Star Wars Programme” in 1983. It was aimed at protecting the US from attack by Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. In plain language, it was intended to render nuclear weapons obsolete. The idea gained currency in the US for a while but came under severe international condemnation. It was abandoned. The notion of a single country, alone, having access to a system that could cripple all other nuclear weapons except its own, was not thought desirable for the maintenance of world peace. International efforts have thus been focused on preventing other countries from joining the exclusive club of nuclear-armed states and have, more or less, succeeded for the last 40 years. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed the calculus for good.
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