In a recent speech, Dmitry Medvedev, one of the Kremlin's high-up muckety-mucks, warned the West that Russia's existence was an absolute necessity. If Russia were to collapse, he warned, there would be a half-dozen smaller struggling states in its place, all armed with nuclear weapons.*
Yeah, let's have a look a that. It already happened once: the USSR collapsed, and former constituent states of the USSR (and maybe even a few Warsaw Pact countries) were left holding a portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Most of those small countries dropped the nuclear hot potato just as soon as they could figure out who to hand it to that wasn't going to light the fuse; a few took some convincing, but the problem with a nuclear-armed nation the size of, say, Texas or smaller is that the larger nuclear powers can wipe them out with a couple of hits. Gone. Damage a big country can absorb, however painfully, removes the smaller ones from the map. There's no percentage in it.
I fret that a desperate Vladimir Putin might do something horrible. As the war in Ukraine continues to bog down, there's no telling what he might try to seize back the initiative. But threatening that the world needs Russia in order to keep the peace? Please. Russia's already broken the peace. The only question is how terribly far the Russian government is willing to go to keep it broken.
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* This is part of the ongoing official paranoid line in Russia that "the West" -- NATO, the EU, whatever -- is out to get them. Why? I don't know, but it's been an easy notion to sell there as far back as Imperial Russia. It's nonsense. One more big, screwed-up country with a lousy economy and a dispirited populace is the last thing the West, or any other part of the planet, needs. A prosperous Russia, fully engaged in world markets, duking it out over petroleum sales and technology, would be a good thing. If the current war sputters and dies (and it may), The West is going to have to run two Marshall Plans, one for Ukraine and another to rebuild Russia. Maybe they'll both do as well with it as Germany did with their second chance.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
9 comments:
Except that we're not bombing Russia, their infrastructure, at least that which the kleptocrats haven't stolen, is intact. There is nothing wrong with Russia that can't be fixed with firing parties.
Ukraine is going to need a lot of help. We (NATO nations) should not be stingy.
I can understand why a suddenly independent small nation would want to dump the leftover nukes to a responsible party.
Having them makes them part of the MAD Club (free instant sunrise with every use of your arsenal!)- but gifting someone else with canned sunshine is a bit hard.
Keeping them as a defensive measure might seem attractive, but nukes do have a limited shelf life. While most nations wouldn't like to have a fizzle in their back yard, it's not quite the same sort of deterrence. Warhead and delivery system maintenance is quite expensive, more so if you don't have the technical infrastructure like the right kind of reactors and so on.
Better to just dump the things.
Where the heck is the United Nations in all this ? Haven't heard from those jazzbos since Covid reared its ugly head. The place where international grievances were heard before people began deploying their military forces. The last I remember hearing about it was 'Climate Change' was a problem they were actively working against. Maybe I'm not listening at the right places, but this sounds like a situation where the U.N. is supposed to be front line.
I don't think Putin would light up an atomic device unless attacked. Even he recognizes the 1st one to do so would get a response and Russia's neighborhood has close range retalitation right next door. Big mistake.
Anon, I am guessing you don't follow the news much. While the UN has condemned the invasion of Ukraine, the fact the Russia is a member of the Security Council and, like the other members of it, has veto authority, has made any substantive action by that body impossible.
People forget that the only reason there was UN approval for the actions that constituted the Korean War was that the USSR was sulking, and didn't attend.
Comrade Misfit, my bet is by the time this is over, Russia will have trashed its economy and pushed much of their infrastructure to the brink of ruin. There is very little Marin and Putin doesn't appear to have planned for the country to be cut off from world markets.
Remember what a mess the former USSR was right after it collapsed? Expect that, if not worse.
I suspect that Russia will end up like North Korea- an isolated, tyrannical backwards backwater vassal of China.
Joe, I'm just not at all sure Mr. Putin is going to be able to keep 'em down on the farm not that they've seen Paree (as the old song tells us), especially after they've have the chance to return there yanked out from under them as a result of his actions.
But I don't know. It's easy to underestimate what the Russian people will endure.
One does hope Putin gets to join the Ceausescu Ex-Dictator's Club, and very soon indeed.
One should not forget that Ukraine actually gave up their nukes for security guarantees from both Russia and the US. While I completely agree with your overall points, if I was in Ukraine's shoes a second time I would give up nukes over a hot irradiated wasteland AND my dead body.
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