Editor, Commonwealth:
After months denying it to be his intention, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin is a 70-year-old dictator who was “elected” to the presidency in a disputed election in 2012. Last year in a sham, old Soviet-style referendum, he was given authority to hold that office until 2036.
On an increasing number of occasions, Putin has implied an intention to use nuclear weapons in his country’s present conflict. His threat has been largely interpreted to deter U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from direct involvement in the Ukraine war. Although some have called his threats “veiled,” from the start Putin’s warning was clear that any country or alliance that interfered militarily would be met with a response “such as you have never seen in your entire history.”
If he uses nuclear weapons, Putin’s intentions are taken to mean that they will be tactical nuclear weapons, as opposed to strategic ones. This really means nothing.
Nuclear weapons are measured by explosive force, or yield. Tactical nuclear weapons are those having the force of 1 to 100 kilotons. One kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of conventional TNT. Strategic nukes carry up to 1,000 kilotons. Compared with strategic nuclear warheads, the destruction and radiation fallout from tactical ones is considered “limited.”
The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima was “tactical” — 15 kilotons.
There has been talk of appeasement by letting Russia have the regions that it already occupies and seeks to annex. Great Britain tried appeasement before World War II. Just as that cowardly device failed, appeasing Putin will fail and only strengthen his position and increase his power in Russia and with other tyrants in the world. In his familiar analogy about dealing with dangerous beasts and dangerous tyrants, Winston Churchill said: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
During my lifetime (75 years), the civilized world has feared the use of nuclear weapons for the risk of an escalation into World War III. In “The Gathering Storm,” one of the books in his history treatise on World War II, Churchill wrote: “There can hardly ever have been a war more easy to prevent than this second Armageddon.” Had France, Great Britain, and the United States used “ordinary consistency and common sense usual in decent households (and) in righteous causes,” what escalated into World War II could have been stopped early on. Instead, France and Great Britain appeased Hitler, and the U.S. tried to stay neutral. Cowering and procrastinating bought several months of peace but ended up in World War II. Churchill argued that free and just nations should “always (be) ready to use force in order to defy tyranny or ward off ruin.” His words apply today more than ever because of the tools used, or available for use, in war.
In an earlier historical work, Churchill observed: “Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination.” Those words were written in 1929 when nuclear power and weaponry were only a theory.
Only God knows what will happen before the Ukraine conflict is resolved. But if the irrational tyrant in Russia, not unlike the irrational tyrant in Germany 90 years ago, isn’t stopped now, before he carries out his threat to use nuclear weapons, what is preventable today will be lost tomorrow. If Russia does use a tactical nuclear weapon, by design or miscalculation, what is only a regional conflict could turn into unimaginable disaster across the globe.
No one wants an escalation of the war in Ukraine, and certainly not one that escalates worldwide. But if appeasement is allowed with Russian annexation of the southeastern regions, it will be a temporary resolution. Sooner or later, Putin, recovered from his losses in the present conflict, will return to complete his original intention to take all of Ukraine. But by then Ukraine will have joined NATO. And under that treaty a broader war will result, to include Western Europe and the United States. Whereas, at this point in time when Putin’s army has taken embarrassing losses, the West can still confront the tyrant and enforce the terms of a lasting conclusion. Those terms should be that Russian forces withdraw from all of Ukraine, recognizing Ukraine’s sovereignty, and include building peaceful economic relations between Russia and the West.
Chip Williams
Jackson
