Nuclear weapons have been around for 79
years. To date, only two have been used.
During the Cold War, the USSR and the West came very close to using nuclear weapons and wiping out humanity many times, almost always owing to faulty missile detection systems.
Here are some of the accounts that we know about...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2020-03-16/false-warnings-soviet-missile-attacks-during-1979-80-led-alert-actions-us-strategic-forces#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9Cfalse%20alarm%20history%E2%80%9D%20of,Strategic%20Air%20Command%2C%20and%20elsewhere.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/10/27/23426482/cuban-missile-crisis-basilica-arkhipov-nuclear-war
Before discussing recent developments in Ukraine and the related threat of the use of nuclear weapons, we need to take a proper perspective on the last 79 years.
The proper perspective is this...
Humans have been living on borrowed time for decades. It is a miracle that we are here at all. Unless we rid ourselves of nuclear weapons, one day we won't be.
Ok! So what is happening in Ukraine?
In a stroke of brilliance, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked into Russia proper at a weak point on the Ukraine-Russia border near Kursk. They are making steady progress against disorganized and ineffective Russian opposition.
Besides witnessing the brilliance of the Ukrainian armed forces, it is worth noting that we may also have witnessed a World History First! We may have a situation where a nuclear power has threatened to use nuclear weapons if a certain situation happens, and that situation may have actually happened.
Putin has said that should Russian sovereignty and territorial integrity be
threatened, he will use nukes. See here...
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-nuclear-weapons-82ced2419d93ae733161b56fbd9b477d
Is this how Putin sees this attack into Russia itself? We don't
know, but this is a rather important question.
Regarding the use of any nukes, Putin is most likely bluffing - maybe
there is a 1% chance that they will actually do it even if he thinks
the situation is as he has warned.
However, there is also likely chaos in the Russian
government circles about what this attack actually means, and
about its implications. Chaos skews rational thought. How this is seen and
interpreted is entirely a matter of how Putin interprets it. It is actually
possible that he thinks that this is the very type of situation that he
has said would trigger the use of nukes.
This needs to be said again - Putin is likely bluffing.
But if he isn't bluffing, and if he sees this as the type of situation
about which he warned the West repeatedly, then the Russians are sorting out
how to nuke Ukraine's bridgehead into Russian territory, and likely other
areas of Ukraine, right now. And if they do that, then we will have to
sort out what the world would look like on...The Day After.
The Day After??
We have given what this may mean exactly zero thought.
Here is how it could go.
On The Day After, there would be a flurry of phone calls, and
threats and arrangements made between the Russians and the West to stop nuclear
escalation. It is at that point that the West will likely tell
Ukraine what arrangement it will have to live with regarding its land
base. The West will not risk nonexistence for the Donbas and Crimea. There
will be a ceasefire and armistice in Ukraine in about 24 hours.
That's great, but unfortunately, it will not end there.
On The Day After, Iran will start putting together a bomb as
fast as it can, realizing what Israel would be about to do - the US has
recently said that Iran can assemble a crude bomb in about a week. The
Israeli Government - and especially this Israeli Government - will not let
that happen. Israel would very likely obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities -
which cannot be destroyed by conventional munitions - with multiple nuclear
weapons within 24 hours of the use of nuclear weapons being normalized by
Russia. Given Iran's constant threat to obliterate Israel, who would blame
them?
As well, China would probably not give a hoot if Taiwan was just a
flaming hole in the ground when they reoccupy it, just as long as they can make
China whole again by taking over the island. They will learn from the situation
in Ukraine that the West will back down from a nuclear confrontation that does
not directly threaten the West, and realizing that, they will issue an
ultimatum to Taiwan...accept the CCP, or get obliterated, and they
will mean it. Taiwan would back down, and so would the West.
Seeing that the USA will not back Ukraine in a nuclear confrontation
with Russia will give Germany and Japan pause. They have always been skeptical
that the USA would place them under their nuclear umbrella, risking American
lives to protect those countries in situations where there may be no immediate
threat to the USA. With proof that the Americans will, in fact, not risk a
nuclear confrontation with Russia that puts America at risk to protect another
country, both Japan and Germany will immediately start developing nuclear
weapons. It is very likely that other countries will do so as well - certainly,
Ukraine will.
And then what?
Nukes will have been used for the first time in 79 years. The Day After
will be a world that we have never lived in before. One would hope that,
regardless of some knee-jerked nuclear proliferation on the part of Japan and
Germany and others, the use of these weapons would prompt a new round of
significant nuclear disarmament. That is probably what will happen. A better
world could likely emerge.
On the other hand, this normalization of the use of these weapons could
eventually lead to significant nuclear exchanges - India-Pakistan; Israel
versus others; China-India? No one knows how such turns of events may
come about, but these are obvious possibilities.
The 2023 UN State of the World Population report noted that the use of only
400 strategic nuclear weapons would end human life on Earth. There are
thousands of such weapons in existence.
Reality - we have probably not been this close to someone actually using nuclear weapons
before, outside of the above-noted incidents during the Cold War.
Related to this, we have never seen a situation where a country threatened to
use these weapons if certain circumstances happened, and it is possible that
they will interpret the situation and conclude that the given circumstances did actually happen.
It's "hold your breath" time.
PS - What is the real lesson from the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"?
There actually was a wolf...
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