Post by Born2BBruin on Apr 26, 2022 21:01:40 GMT -8
Link: Why the War in Ukraine Won’t Go Nuclear
The linked article is from "Foreign Affairs" and was written by Gideon Rose, a Distinguished Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and former editor of "Foreign Affairs".
Excerpts:
"Early analyses of the war in Ukraine emphasized several unique, case-specific factors such as the region’s complex history, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s complex psychology, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s charismatic leadership. The conflict seemed shockingly new and scarily unpredictable, the end of one era and the start of another, with contours yet unknown.
As the fighting grinds on, however, the war is looking more familiar and increasingly resembles many other conflicts over the last seven decades. This suggests that general, structural features of the situation are imposing themselves on the belligerents, guiding their choices into surprisingly well-worn grooves. Ukraine, in short, is following the pattern of limited war in the nuclear age, echoing a script written in Korea and copied many times since. This is not a new era, only a new phase in the old one. And even the new phase is playing by the same old rules—with significant implications for the remainder of the war and beyond."
"...the Cuban missile crisis reinforced the growing taboo against nuclear use and left the parties still more risk averse. Then Vietnam followed the same pattern as Korea. None of the nuclear powers, now including China, used nuclear weapons. None attacked another nuclear power’s territory or regime. And beyond that, anything went. The same rules held in the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Soviet and American wars in Afghanistan. They held for conflicts involving nuclear powers elsewhere (apart from some minor skirmishing)."
"Russia’s plan A was to conquer Ukraine quickly, install a friendly government, and present the world with a fait accompli. When that was blocked by determined military resistance, Moscow turned to plan B, pounding cities from a distance and trying to crush Ukrainian morale. When that didn’t work either, the Kremlin turned to plan C, abandoning the attempt to seize the whole country and refocusing on trying to capture and hold a swath of territory in the east and south."
"Whatever some interpretations of Russian military doctrine might suggest, Moscow will not use nuclear weapons during the conflict. Since 1945, every leader of a nuclear power, from homespun politicians such as U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson to mass-murdering sociopaths such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, has rejected the use of nuclear weapons in battle for excellent reasons. Putin will be no exception, acting not from a soft heart but a hard head. He knows that extraordinary retaliation and universal opprobrium would follow, with no remotely comparable strategic upsides to justify them—not to mention the fact that the radioactive fallout from such use might easily blow back onto Russia itself."
I read several of Rose's articles when he was editor and I always found them cogent and well grounded. We can only hope he's right.
The linked article is from "Foreign Affairs" and was written by Gideon Rose, a Distinguished Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and former editor of "Foreign Affairs".
Excerpts:
"Early analyses of the war in Ukraine emphasized several unique, case-specific factors such as the region’s complex history, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s complex psychology, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s charismatic leadership. The conflict seemed shockingly new and scarily unpredictable, the end of one era and the start of another, with contours yet unknown.
As the fighting grinds on, however, the war is looking more familiar and increasingly resembles many other conflicts over the last seven decades. This suggests that general, structural features of the situation are imposing themselves on the belligerents, guiding their choices into surprisingly well-worn grooves. Ukraine, in short, is following the pattern of limited war in the nuclear age, echoing a script written in Korea and copied many times since. This is not a new era, only a new phase in the old one. And even the new phase is playing by the same old rules—with significant implications for the remainder of the war and beyond."
"...the Cuban missile crisis reinforced the growing taboo against nuclear use and left the parties still more risk averse. Then Vietnam followed the same pattern as Korea. None of the nuclear powers, now including China, used nuclear weapons. None attacked another nuclear power’s territory or regime. And beyond that, anything went. The same rules held in the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Soviet and American wars in Afghanistan. They held for conflicts involving nuclear powers elsewhere (apart from some minor skirmishing)."
"Russia’s plan A was to conquer Ukraine quickly, install a friendly government, and present the world with a fait accompli. When that was blocked by determined military resistance, Moscow turned to plan B, pounding cities from a distance and trying to crush Ukrainian morale. When that didn’t work either, the Kremlin turned to plan C, abandoning the attempt to seize the whole country and refocusing on trying to capture and hold a swath of territory in the east and south."
"Whatever some interpretations of Russian military doctrine might suggest, Moscow will not use nuclear weapons during the conflict. Since 1945, every leader of a nuclear power, from homespun politicians such as U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson to mass-murdering sociopaths such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, has rejected the use of nuclear weapons in battle for excellent reasons. Putin will be no exception, acting not from a soft heart but a hard head. He knows that extraordinary retaliation and universal opprobrium would follow, with no remotely comparable strategic upsides to justify them—not to mention the fact that the radioactive fallout from such use might easily blow back onto Russia itself."
I read several of Rose's articles when he was editor and I always found them cogent and well grounded. We can only hope he's right.
