War in Ukraine: Nuclear Danger

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Tom Unterrainer

The following text is an edited transcript of a speech given to a joint public meeting of Birmingham Stop the War and West Midlands Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament on 29 March 2022.

In March 1961, Bertrand Russell addressed the Second Midlands Conference for Peace in Birmingham. Perhaps some in attendance tonight remember the meeting? Maybe not.

Anyway, I re-read what Russell had to say at this meeting this morning and was struck by its relevance for the issues we face today. It’s almost as if the world hasn’t moved on very much in the last sixty one years! In opening his argument, Russell insisted that:

Our main purpose must be to prevent a war using weapons of mass destruction – and not only to prevent it for a time by makeshift devices, but to establish such institutions in the world as shall make it reasonably certain that a war of extermination will not occur in the foreseeable future.

What were these weapons of mass destruction to which Russell refers? Why was he so concerned that they might lead to a war of extermination?

The weapons were nuclear weapons and he was concerned about the prospect of extermination of human life because once you get beyond the lies that such weapons are a “deterrence”, that they ensure “security” and that they guarantee “defence”, you must understand that nuclear weapon use means extermination. If, as is claimed, ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means’ then nuclear war points towards a politics of genocide.

I am afraid that recent events have put the prospect of such a war and such politics back on the global agenda. I will seek to explain why but in doing so, I will argue that such prospects have been very much alive for decades. If we take them seriously now, we must continue to take them seriously in all that we do and in all of our reckonings going forward.

We are gathered here because of President Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and the issue of nuclear war is on the agenda because he has quite clearly shattered the nuclear ‘taboo’: that is, whereas the leaders of most nuclear armed states think it impolite to explicitly threaten nuclear use, Mr Putin has broken with this grim charade.

First things first: we must clearly oppose Russia’s actions in Ukraine. They should never have happened in the first place and all Russian military activity should cease immediately. For the sake of humanity, if for nothing else, the killing has to stop. It is quite clear that a military ‘victory’ is unthinkable unless you are prepared to think about tens of thousands of deaths - maybe more - and the utter destruction of scores of villages, towns and cities.

Secondly, we stand squarely with the enormous mobilisation of anti-war opinion within Russia itself. One section of this movement warned that “This war will turn Ukraine into rubble and Russia into a prison.” News from Ukraine and what we’ve seen of the treatment of anti-war protestors in Russia confirms this warning.

It is absolutely right to condemn explicit nuclear threats, wherever they come from. But it is not right, as school history books and some misguided teachers tell us, that nuclear weapons have “only been used twice”: in 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The terrible truth is that nuclear weapons have been in daily use from this point onwards. Their possession and the implicit threat of use that comes with such possession have shaped global politics and continue to do so. What do I mean by ‘use’ in this context? Daniel Ellsberg, former nuclear-planner turned peace activist, puts it this way:

A gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.

Nuclear weapons are in daily use and the circumstance of their use is actually much worse than the scenario described by Dan Ellsberg. There is more than one gun. The guns keep getting more powerful. One side has dished out smaller guns to friends, they’ve formed a gang – even gave it a catchy name – and together, they have started edging towards their enemy.

What’s the name of the ‘gang’? NATO. Now, some people insist that in the present circumstances, criticism of NATO is beyond the pale. People in other circles would have you believe that NATO is nothing more than a defensive alliance. Others would kick you out of polite company for opposing this nuclear-armed alliance and for pointing out facts about its function. I’m afraid that such people are at best talking complete and utter rubbish and at worst, they are lying.

This so-called ‘defensive alliance’ was created to, in the words of Lord Ismay who became the first Secretary General of NATO in 1952, “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”, with keeping the Americans in Europe very much a priority. It is worth noting that the North Atlantic Treaty – signed in April 1949 – preceded the creation of the Organisation and an integrated military structure. Amongst the initial members of NATO were the fading colonial powers – Britain and France – and fascist Portugal, a colonial power in its own right. So far, so undemocratic. Yet we’re supposed to believe that NATO has always functioned as a defensive alliance of liberal, democratic states. More than that, we’re supposed to entertain the idea that it is a key plank in what is termed the ‘international rules based order’. More on this later.

Initially, the United States was the only nuclear armed state within the Alliance. It was soon joined by Britain in 1952 – which explains the ascendancy of Lord Ismay – and by France in 1960. By this point, NATO was very much a nuclear armed alliance and so it remains.

With America very firmly in Europe and West Germany integrated into NATO by 1955, Ismay’s characterization of the nuclear alliance needed updating. The prime function of NATO was to maintain US influence in Europe, thereby ‘containing’ the Soviet Union, with member-states under the US dominated ‘nuclear umbrella’.

You simply cannot remove nuclear weapons from your understanding of NATO. Neither can you remove American imperialism from the NATO equation.

Why do these things matter? Because unless you understand these things, the whole history of the last thirty years in Europe is utterly incomprehensible.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact offered the chance for a real security order in Europe. Such an order would have meant disbanding NATO, which – we were told – existed to defend Europe from the Soviets. At the time, people were writing articles with titles such as “Europe without an Enemy” which called for a system of common security based on the entirely rational notion that security is for everyone or it is for none of us. Trade Union leaders in the UK, like Ron Todd of the TGWU, were grappling with the notion of a ‘peace dividend’ – that is, what would happen to arms manufacturing now that huge arsenals were no longer required. Such work revived ideas pioneered during the days of the Lucas Plan and foreshadow much of the work done today on green transition and similar.

The peace and anti-war movements were all calling for similar. But what happened? NATO did not disband, it steadily expanded. The nuclear-armed states did not disarm. The stockpiles remained and US nuclear bombs remain in Europe to this day.

By 1999, the lie that NATO is purely a defensive alliance should have been shattered once and for all. Between March 24 and June 20 1999, NATO unleashed an aerial bombardment on what was then Yugoslavia. NATO called its mission ‘Operation Allied Force’. Thirty-eight thousand sorties were launched, of which almost ten and a half thousand were actual air strikes. ‘Authority’ for this bombardment was assumed by NATO alone. The United Nations was not consulted. The bombardment ratified pure power politics in Europe and removed any pretence to a constitutional international order.

This is important to understand. When we hear appeals for adherence to a ‘rules based order’ from politicians and states people in NATO member states, then know that they are appealing to for the rights of America, Britain, France and the rest to break the supposed norms of this order at will. Geopolitics has three strands: economic, legal and military. They all interact in the course of usual function but properly understood – that is, understood from the viewpoint of historical fact and material reality – the economic and military ultimately usurp the supposed legal leg of the framework. Rules are broken without consequence and, especially in terms of military matters and questions of war, they are broken without sanction, without embarrassment and they are usually broken with a good dose of treachery and deceit mixed in.

We are supposed to believe that the USA – yes, the same USA responsible to war crimes in Vietnam, Guantanamo Bay, the invasion of Iraq and the rest, the same USA over which Donald Trump presided and may well preside again – is the ultimate guarantor of this rules-based order. The world is supposed to believe it. We are supposed to accept the nuclear status of NATO member states and accept their collective efforts to destroy the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons whilst at the same time believing that they are upholding an international rules-based order? Give us a break.

You see, NATO didn’t just expand geographically – in terms of membership – after the collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the Warsaw pact – although this was bad enough. NATO also expanded its field of operations: its perceived sphere of influence. We now have ‘global NATO’, with an ‘area of operations’ that extends to the Asia-Pacific region: a long way from the Atlantic. NATO also inflated its overall posture, and continues to do so. Rather than lay the foundations for security, military means are asserted. Lastly, it has continued to modify its nuclear capabilities which are now to include ‘useable’ nuclear weapons: something President Biden called a ‘bad idea’ during the election but which he signed-off on in the last Pentagon budget (signed into law by Biden two days after Christmas 2021).

There is much else to say, but I will finish on these point: There can be no excuse for Putin’s war against Ukraine. He has chosen a course of action all by himself. Yet the peace and anti-war movement have been warning of the consequences of continuing on the same course with respect to war, NATO and nuclear weapons for decades. We have argued that so-called defence should be replaced with genuine efforts for security. We were ignored.

Our work begins once more and it starts in the most dangerous of moments: when the prospect of nuclear war is on the agenda and when war rages in Ukraine.

We must dedicate ourselves to arguing for the end of this war, towards preventing its spread and to alerting the world to the acute dangers presented by nuclear threats.

If the dull hum of a nuclear warhead ever mutates into a deafening and life-ending roar of a nuclear explosion, humanity will be extinguished. We cannot and will not let this happen.