{"id":48051,"date":"2022-05-09T21:05:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T04:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=48051"},"modified":"2022-05-09T21:05:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T04:05:45","slug":"a-world-we-have-not-seen-ukraine-war-raises-threat-of-nuclear-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=48051","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018World We Have Not Seen\u2019 \u2014 Ukraine War Raises Threat of Nuclear Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Peter Schurmann<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Additional reporting by Jenny Manrique<\/em><\/p>\n

The world is confronting the threat of nuclear armed conflict the likes of which has not been seen since the end of the Cold War. And while war in Ukraine has escalated the threat, its antecedents can be traced to a shift in U.S. military posture years earlier.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the consensus of a group of experts who spoke recently during a\u00a0briefing for ethnic media<\/a>\u00a0organized by Ethnic Media Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow real is the threat of nuclear war,\u201d asked Daryl Kimball, executive director of the non-partisan\u00a0Arms Control Association<\/a>\u00a0and publisher and contributor for the organization\u2019s monthly journal,\u00a0Arms Control Today<\/a>. \u201cIt is all too real.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Kimball, Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s recent rhetoric highlights the grave risks associated with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Describing Putin\u2019s statements as \u201cunprecedented\u201d\u2014including a Feb. 24 warning that interference by outside powers in Ukraine would invite \u201cconsequences\u2026 such as you have never seen in your entire history\u201d\u2014Kimball notes this marks the first time that the former Cold War adversary has made explicit nuclear threats since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

And while some have interpreted Putin\u2019s words as bluster intended to stave off direct U.S. and NATO involvement in Ukraine, Kimball says both Russian and U.S. military doctrine leave open the option to deploy nuclear weapons against non-nuclear targets.<\/p>\n

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What does that mean in practice? From the purview of Moscow, if the tide of war appears to be turning against Russia, tactical, short-range nuclear weapons could become an increasingly attractive option to gain back the upper hand. And, says Kimball, \u201cOnce nukes are used, there is no guarantee that the other side won\u2019t respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kimball is quick to point out that to date U.S. intelligence has seen no signs that Russia\u2014which maintains an arsenal of some 100 tactical nuclear warheads\u2014has begun to prepare such an attack. Observers also took note of Putin\u2019s\u00a0Victory Day speech<\/a>, delivered in Moscow on May 9 to commemorate Russia\u2019s defeat of Nazi Germany, which left out any such escalatory threats.<\/p>\n

But with the war in Ukraine now stretching into its third month, Kimball warns that its continuation increases the danger of nuclear conflagration. \u201cThe longer the Ukraine conflict continues,\u201d he says, \u201cthe higher the risk. We are in a heightened state of danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Klare is professor emeritus and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College. According to him, the current threat of nuclear war dates to a decisive shift in U.S. military posture in 2018 that turned away from the War on Terror to focus instead on what its authors described as \u201cGreat Power competition<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under this new strategy, articulated by former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, America\u2019s armed forces would turn away from small-scale conflicts in the global South that defined much of the War on Terror to focus on larger wars with \u201cnear-peer powers,\u201d namely Russia and China.<\/p>\n

For leaders in Moscow and Beijing, that shift brought with it a heightened and unacceptable threat from newly deployed U.S. conventional weapons targeting their countries\u2019 respective military capabilities and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Whether this was the driving factor in Putin\u2019s decision to invade Ukraine is something for \u201cfuture historians to decide,\u201d says Klare, adding however that the resulting situation has \u201ctriggered anxiety\u201d in both Russia and China, prompting the latter to expand its nuclear capabilities.<\/p>\n

As for what comes after Ukraine, both Klare and Kimball agree the picture remains decidedly precarious.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the war in Ukraine, this process of all three powers building capabilities for conventional and nuclear war is bound to accelerate,\u201d says Klare.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Europe, after the war\u2026 we\u2019re going to see a new Iron Curtain, except this line will lie closer to Russia than the one during the Cold War,\u201d with both Finland and Sweden now considering NATO membership. In the Asia Pacific, potential confrontation over Taiwan\u2014which U.S. leaders have sworn to prevent from becoming \u201canother Ukraine\u201d\u2014again points to the possible deployment of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

The \u201cnuclear fire break,\u201d says Klare, \u201cbecomes much narrower, increasingly to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Andrew Nynka, editor-in-chief of the U.S.-based\u00a0Ukrainian Weekly<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In the meantime, fighting continues in Ukraine, with Russia\u2019s war aims remaining vague, from what began ostensibly as an effort to topple the current government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to more recent proclamations of taking control over eastern, Russian-speaking portions of the country.<\/p>\n

For Andrew Nynka, editor-in-chief of the U.S.-based\u00a0Ukrainian Weekly<\/a>\u00a0newspaper, Putin\u2019s nuclear threats are part of the broader information war being waged over Ukraine. \u201cPutin is using the question of nuclear war to divide his enemies,\u201d says Nynka, adding that absent this threat the situation in Ukraine would look very different. \u201cThe only thing stopping Western aid is the threat of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even Nynka acknowledges that getting into the mind of Putin, a \u201cmaster of misinformation and disinformation,\u201d is a fool\u2019s errand.<\/p>\n

And that uncertainty has defined much of Russia\u2019s strategy\u2014or apparent lack thereof\u2014for much of the war, according to Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hern\u00e1ndez, research associate at the Arms Control Association. \u201cYou have broad and unclear aims\u2026 Russia is uncertain of what it is trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosa Hern\u00e1ndez notes that whatever its current goals, the use of nuclear weapons by Russia is just as likely to push those aims farther out of reach, hardening resistance both in Ukraine and in the international community. Which suggests the fighting could continue with no clear end in sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not see a ceasefire any time soon,\u201d says Rosa.<\/p>\n

Both Kimball and Klare agree that communication and a tamping down of escalatory rhetoric are critical and that both Russia and the U.S. need to return to the disarmament table prior to the expiration in 2026 of the\u00a0New START Treaty<\/a>\u00a0which called for both nations to draw down their nuclear stockpiles.<\/p>\n

But with tensions at historic levels, a return to such talks appears unlikely, says Kimball.<\/p>\n

At which point, he warns, we will be \u201cLiving in a world with no restrictions on the world\u2019s largest nuclear arsenals. This is a world we have not seen in some five decades.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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