Bombs away

Here is a cautionary tale for those who still refuse to accept Dr Strangelove’s advice. More than half a century ago, in the eponymous 1964 film by Stanley Kubrick, he told us to “stop worrying and learn to love the Bomb”. The refuseniks are the descendants of Lenin’s “useful idiots”, the God botherers and the progressive intellectuals George Orwell so disliked. (Today they would be called Woke.)

Back in the Cold War, many were kindhearted, decent — if misguided — folk. But others who supported CND in the Swinging Sixties really wanted unilateral (in plain English, one-sided) nuclear disarmament. The one side being – of course – the wicked warmongering West, rather than the peace-loving Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The centralised Stalinist dictatorship called the USSR, was, in theory, a federal union composed of different states. (Stalin, for example, was not a Russian but a Georgian.) Georgia was a state as was Ukraine. The USSR simply collapsed when the constituent states (including Russia) got together in 1991 and declared that they were now independent. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. Gorbachev, who had ruled over the USSR, latterly as Soviet President, was thus left with a desk and an empty office. Yeltsin, who had been elected to the — till then — largely meaningless post of President of Russia, hit the jackpot. He got Russia.

Then came the job of dividing up the spoils. In particular the massive collection of Soviet nuclear weapons. Ukraine got about a third — enough to destroy the world. The world was understandably alarmed. The rules of the nuclear game were being torn up. Nuclear proliferation was seen as a bad thing, particularly by those nations who already had the Bomb. Ukraine was especially scary, as nobody knew whether it was destined to become one of the good guys or one of the bad guys.

Hence Russia (briefly one of the good guys) and the West got together and promised to protect Ukraine’s independence if it surrendered its windfall stock of nuclear weapons. Ukraine agreed. Bad move. If only Ukraine had held on to them, Russia would never have dared to attack. Instead Russia (now a bad guy once again) felt free to invade. The West could do nothing to redeem its pledge because Bomber Putin was waving his great big phallic nuclear missiles at us.

So how did the Cold War balance of nuclear terror evolve? And does it have lessons for dealing with Putin today? To answer those questions a little history is needed. In 1946, when only America had the Bomb, Bertrand Russell suggested it would be a good idea to threaten the USSR with nuclear obliteration if it did not comply with civilised democratic norms. America’s Bomb was, he pointed out, a diminishing asset. Stalin would eventually get his own. So act now. If America hit the USSR while the West still had unilateral nuclear advantage, the West would survive. The USSR would not. (To be fair to Russell, some years later he claimed that he had only advocated threatening, not dropping, the Bomb on the USSR. But that is pretty pathetic. He was surely clever enough to know that you don’t issue an ultimatum unless you are prepared to follow through.)

Fast forward to 1949 and the announcement that the USSR now had the Bomb too. Now the situation was that either side could annihilate the other. First come, first served. It was a destructive balance of power which invited each side to initiate a sudden unprovoked nuclear war. For the aggressor would by definition be the victor. At which time Russell — always a man who took logic to extreme lengths — did a U-turn. He ended up as one of the most distinguished campaigners for nuclear disarmament in the 1950s and 1960s.

Enter Herman Kahn, a brilliantly controversial military strategist at the Rand Corporation and later his own Hudson Institute. I can’t remember how I came to know him, but I did. I liked him a lot and admired his king-sized brain. He was a big, fat, jolly, roly-poly genius, fun to be with. No warmonger. He liked to call himself a peacemonger, but he took Russell-style logical thinking to new heights. Even so, he was — grossly unfairly — the model for the crippled, mad Nazi, Dr Strangelove, and also for the equally batty Bomb-lover advising the President in “Failsafe”, another great nuclear disaster film of the period.

These films were emotion fests. In contrast Kahn unemotionally worked out, for example, how many millions would be killed in a nuclear war and how many could survive and start to rebuild — if only America had adequate long term shelters. His two massive books Thinking about the Unthinkable and On Thermonuclear War went further. They paved the way for the concept of Second Strike Capability or Mutually Assured Destruction (unfortunately known as MAD).

He argued that single strike capability on both sides was a standing invitation for either to start a sneak nuclear war, as Russell had come to realise. But if both sides developed a second strike capability, the incentive for war became an incentive for peace. Simply, if the USSR attacked the USA (or vice versa) and wiped it off the map, the aggressor state would still be destroyed by a retaliatory second nuclear strike. This might involve nuclear missiles fired by submarines constantly prowling the seas, or nuclear bombs dropped from planes constantly in the air. Only a lunatic would want that.

So now both sides had an incentive not to start a nuclear war. To do so would simply leave the aggressor state open to second strike destruction. Clever when you think about it. And it worked. But it was predicated upon both sides being headed by ultimately sane, rational rulers, who did not want their own nations destroyed.

And here’s the rub. What happens when a madman, prepared to destroy his own state and potentially the world, has access to the Bomb? Well there is one case we know of where such lunacy was overruled. The Cuban missile crisis arose when Khrushchev placed nuclear missiles on Cuba. They were guarded by some 50,000 Soviet troops and technicians. As the crisis unfolded, Castro — an unhinged and unpredictable character — proposed to Khrushchev that those missiles should be fired at the eastern US. This would inevitably start World War III. Mr Khrushchev said nothing, but quietly instructed his troops to protect the missiles from Castro’s forces, whatever the cost in human lives. Above all they were to keep Castro and his cronies away from the nuclear buttons. Nikita knew the rules of the game.

The problem we face today is that, in Putin we have an unhinged, unpredictable and unstable character with his finger on the button and no interest in the rules of the game. We genuinely cannot predict if or when he might use the Bomb. Would he go for “small” battlefield strikes in Ukraine and dare us to take out Moscow in return? Or would he go for broke and hit London and Washington, or say just (just!) Helsinki and Stockholm, without warning? What would provoke this irrational, irascible man?

My conclusion is bleak. It is to remember the old joke: How do you make love to a porcupine?
Answer. Very, very carefully. And that it how we must continue to make proxy war on Putin. Not much help, I know, though so far Ukraine seems to be winning. And can you come up with a better idea?

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