Nuclear war threat?
The New Cold War
Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and threat to Ukraine are causing damage he perhaps did not anticipate: disorientation of the US and profound division in Europe, especially in Germany, and in Nato. A real risk of war.
American Secretary of State John Kerry has given an interview to The Wall Street Journal stating that the American government and administration are “fully aware” that this confrontation with Russia could lead to nuclear war. He made an angry attack on the Russian television international service, Russia Today, for declaring that he had threatened Nato war if Russia laid a finger “on a single inch” of Nato territory. President Obama himself has used harsh words about his Russian opponents, but not comparable to this.
At the same time there is near-silence from the Pentagon and from Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and senior commanders, including General Martin Dempsey, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This might be interpreted as prudence on the part of the military men who would bear the price of a war that civilian officials brandish as if only words were the weapons.
\An echo to Mr Kerry’s belligerence has come from Nato, where the Deputy Secretary General, Alexander Vershbow, a former US ambassador to Russia, accused President Putin of compelling Nato to treat the Russians as “enemies.”
This agitation in Washington finds little counterpart in Nato Europe, to the dismay and sometimes anger of Washington officials and commentators, who put it down to Europeans’ material and moral weaknesses. Of all the European countries, only Britain and France possess forces (including nuclear forces) which are capable of independent national action in all the dimensions of warfare. The other Nato members provide essentially add-on military functions to the American army, navy and air force, spending little on defence themselves in part because they don’t like wars, especially America’s interventionist wars in various parts of the world.
Ukraine now has a provisional government in Kiev of extreme weakness and utterly confused goals and expectations. Its police are incompetent and corrupt and its army obsolete in equipment, with troops of dubious competence, divided by the same forces that divide society. It is incapable of imposing order.
It is inconceivable that a re-united and pro-western Ukraine will come out of this. The country is already divided. Realism says: so be it. Let the regions vote. If the Russian-speakers want a referendum, let them have it – as free, impartial, and competently supervised as the international community can manage.
Would Russia co-operate? It offers a way to get what it wants without fighting for it. Would the people accept the outcome? Not every Russian-speaker wants to be a Russian. A nation permanently divided? Let everyone find out. Would there be a Yugoslav-style civil war? If one began after a referendum, the international community might be able to intervene and halt it. Russia would have an interest in stopping it because of its possible ramifications inside Russia itself. Wars are uncontrollable. Russia might be on the verge of finding that out. Russia watcher
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