There's a palpable Cuban-missile-crisis-y feel to the present moment

 I think the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is still considered the moment at which the world came closest to nuclear war. Maybe that's just because I live through it and remember grownups discussing it. I was alive for the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, which, in retrospect, was another moment when the danger level was pretty heightened, but I was an infant. We're finding out that we weren't all that far away from such a point of peril in Vietnam in 1968.

But in recent years, that hair-trigger tension level has abated:

For more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies faced no serious nuclear threats.

But no sooner do Madelyn Creedon and Franklin Miller, writing at Foreign Affairs, assert as much, than they follow it with this splash of cold water:

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been rattling his nuclear saber in a manner reminiscent of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed a dramatic buildup of China’s nuclear arsenal, a project whose size and scope the recently retired commander of U.S. Strategic Command has described as “breathtaking.” The Russian and Chinese leaders have also signed a treaty of “friendship without limits.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is supplying weapons and troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, and North Korea is improving its ability to strike both its neighbors and the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons, as it demonstrated with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launch on October 31.

Europe is particularly on edge.

The Nordic countries tell their citizens "prepare and we ain't foolin'":

On Monday, millions of pamphlets landed in Swedish homes eerily titled: "If Crisis or War Comes," while other nations issue their own chilling advice to fearful citizens.

Stockholm has warned of what they call the worsening security situation - otherwise known as Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine - and urged Swedes to prepare for conflict.

Meanwhile neighbouring Finland have published its own chilling advice online to prepare "for incidents and crises".

In a scarily detailed section on military conflict, the digital brochure describes how the government and president would respond in the event of an armed attack.

The Finnish brochure stressed that its authorities are "well prepared for self defence".

Norwegians also received a pamphlet urging residents to know how to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather - or war.

In summer, Denmark's emergency management agency put out a warning to Danish adults detailing the water, food and medicine necessary to get through three days of crisis.

Sweden and Finland recently gave up neutrality to join Nato after witnessing the atrocities Putin has unleashed in Ukraine since 2022.

Norway was a founding member of the Western defensive alliance on the other hand.

Germans, too:

Germans have been put on high alert for a potential World War 3 scenario with Russia following renewed threats of a nuclear strike from Vladimir Putin. The situation has escalated after US President Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russia, which Moscow claims has already targeted a weapons warehouse in the Bryansk region.

Putin warned in September that if Western countries allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russiawith their longer-range weapons, "it will mean that NATO countries, the US, and European countries are at war with Russia."

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has since stated that Russia poses not just a military but also a hybrid threat and that Europe needs to adopt a comprehensive approach to defence.Germany's Foreign Minister has also pledged that the country will not be "intimidated" by Putin, following revelations that Germany would serve as a NATO staging ground should the conflict escalate further.

According to a 1,000-page document titled 'Operationsplan Deutschland', Germany would host hundreds of thousands of troops from NATO countries and act as a logistics hub for dispatching military equipment, food, and medicine to the front lines. The German army is also advising civilians and businesses on how to safeguard infrastructure and prepare to defend the country against potential sabotage, drone attacks, and spying operations.

Germany is setting crisis plans into motion, assigning responsibilities for emergency actions and creating diesel stockpiles, following the lead of Scandinavian nations. Defence Minister Mr Pistorius announced on Tuesday that officials suspect sabotage caused damage to two undersea data cables in the Baltic Sea, one terminating in Germany, although evidence is yet to be found, reports the Mirror US.

Italy, Spain, Greece and the US have closed their Kyiv embassies for at least a day as Ukraine anticipates yet another brazen missile assault from Russia. 

Some bracing words from Sergey Markov:

The US has been given a chilling 'WW3 by Christmas' warning by pro-Putin spokesperson Sergey Markov.

Western allies, also including Britain and France, have taken a “big jump” towards a nuclear conflict by giving Ukraine permission to fire Western long-range missiles into Kremlin territory, Markov claims.

A regular Putin “mouthpiece”, Markov warned that the shock move by President Joe Biden could mean that Britons could be facing a Christmas in shelters.

But Putin lackeys routinely indulge in nuclear bluster, don't they?

Those in favour of the move have noted that the Kremlin and its mouthpieces in the state-controlled media and academia had threatened nuclear war every time the West had stepped up its support for Ukraine, including when it provided tanks, fighter jets and other sophisticated weapon systems.

However, Markov, currently the Director General of Russia's Institute for Political Studies, was convinced the move was different as it would mean that Western militaries would be directly involved in the conflict for the first time - Ukraine would require their assistance to use the precision guided missile systems.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said: “My reaction [to the White House’s decision] was awful, I couldn't sleep well because I am just afraid nuclear war is coming.

“This decision of United States, Great Britain and France is not a step towards nuclear war it is a big jump to nuclear war, nuclear catastrophe."

What's the latest with Iran's nuclear ambitions? 

 Iran has defied international demands to rein in its nuclear program and has increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog seen Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said that as of Oct. 26, Iran has 182.3 kilograms (401.9 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60%, an increase of 17.6 kilograms (38.8 pounds) since the last report in August.

Uranium enriched at 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

The IAEA also estimated in its quarterly report that as of Oct. 26, Iran’s overall stockpile of enriched uranium stands at 6,604.4 kilograms (14,560 pounds), an increase of 852.6 kilograms (1,879.6 pounds) since August. Under the IAEA’s definition, around 42 kilograms (92.5 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% purity is the amount at which creating one atomic weapon is theoretically possible — if the material is enriched further, to 90%.

The reports come at a critical time as Israel and Iran have traded missile attacks in recent months after more than a year of war in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, a group supported by Iran.

It may be time to reassess the above-mentioned instances' status in the history of nuclear danger. Our present moment seems to offer enough to go around. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the threat is existential, extraordinarily brutal measures are the only moral way to go

Important David French piece at NRO today entitled "Waterboarding, Torture and American Wars."

LITD has already done a post about Kamala Harris's preening and grandstanding at Gina Haspel's confirmation hearing to be CIA chief. Such are the times we live in that Haspel couldn't give a response along the line's of French's essay.

He notes that twice in the last century and a half, the US was forced into the grimmest of decisions:

Morality in war is a complex and shifting thing. Let’s take, for example, two of the most famous and most successful operations in American military history — Sherman’s March to the Sea and Truman’s atomic-bomb strikes on Japan. Both of them involved deliberate, mass-scale targeting of civilian assets. The atomic bombings also included the deliberate mass killing of innocent men, women, and children. In ordinary times and in more “ordinary” wars, the morality of both actions is clear and unequivocal. They’re wrong. Indeed, in ordinary times and in ordinary wars, they’re more than just wrong — they’re unlawful.

And that’s the proper default position of American arms. Absent extraordinary circumstances, American forces should not deliberately target civilians or civilian assets.

That’s also the proper default position regarding enhanced interrogation. Absent extraordinary circumstances, American forces should not engage in “enhanced interrogation.” But these default presumptions should be rebuttable.

In the context of both the Civil War and World War II, American forces were engaged in an existential struggle. The Civil War was one of the first modern “total wars,” where the resources of the entire society are mobilized to wage war. The South in particular — with its smaller manpower and industrial base — had to mobilize all its resources to stay on the battlefield against the Union. And so, to defeat the South, intelligent Union generals like Grant and Sherman knew that they had to diminish Confederate resources, in both men and material. Thus, the war of attrition against Lee in Virginia. Thus, Sherman’s campaign to rip the heart out of the southern economy in Georgia.

In a very real sense, Sherman and Grant — as brutal as they were — saved lives. They cut short a war that was far bloodier than either side expected, and they ultimately ended the meat grinder of 1861-1864 — when Confederate armies stood toe-to-toe with a larger foe and bested it time and again on the battlefield. Do we condemn Sherman today?

Similarly, imagine the shock and horror in the American public had we chosen not to use the atomic bomb, fought Japan for every inch of the home islands, and then later found out that Truman sat on a war-ending weapon that could have spared the hundreds of thousands of American lives. 

Moving back to enhanced interrogation, it’s easy to imagine a very different kind of hearing than the one Haspel endured last week. Think of the hearing that would happen after a catastrophic terror strike that could have been averted through more dramatic interrogation measures. The architects of restraint would face thousands of bereaved families, each of them demanding to know why an interrogation technique (like waterboarding) — long used in training against our own soldiers — was deemed too brutal to use to avert catastrophe. The moral argument would look very different indeed.

This fallen world presents us with an endless series of tradeoffs. Sometimes they are most unsavory. At such moments, the one charged with making a decision must pray for the wisdom to discern the least unsavory.

That's what Haspel should have felt free to say to Senator Harris.