No Nukes, Please, Putin

President Trump’s threat to impose 50 percent tariffs on the European Union sends a message to Russian President Putin that the United States has had it with the Russian-led war against Ukraine. Europe has supported the embattled Ukrainians since the war began and now Trump, embarrassed that he could neither end the war in 24 hours before he was sworn in as President nor at any other 24-hour period in the more than 100 days since he’s been in office, wants to stick it to Europe and thus the ridiculous tariffs. (We’ve seen a version of this before: Trump announces a Wall Street-rattling economic policy, we watch the markets nosedive, his billionaire buddies buy low, and then he says he’s easing off on any restrictions to allow for negotiations. Markets go back up and it’s ka-ching, ka-ching time.)

With the Trump administration apparently having lost interest in any Ukraine/Russian peace negotiations, it appears the war is now Europe’s problem and that’s a scary situation. I’ve had a disturbing thought almost since the war’s beginning but given how crazy things are these days, perhaps my idea has merit; at the same time I hope it doesn’t come to pass.

With Ukraine and Russian at a near stalemate on the battlefield and Putin’s avowed threat to bring his opponent to heel, I fear Vlad the Invader will drop a hydrogen bomb on Kyiv. Russia has several hundred ICBMs in its inventory and one armed with a 50 kiloton bomb to provide an airburst over Kyiv would wipe out the city and heavily damage the surrounding suburbs. 

According to Alex Wellerstein’s NUKEMAP (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) such an explosion would kill more than 87,000 Ukrainians and injure some 364,00 more. It would also wipe out most of the Ukrainian government and probably lay waste to a sizable chunk of the country’s electrical grid, among many other nasty consequences. That most of the radiation might drift southeast toward Ukrainian as well as Russian forces would be of no concern to the mad man who has sent hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to their deaths. In the wake of such destruction and the threat of more, Ukraine would have little choice but to capitulate.

What would Trump do in the face of such a catastrophe? He would most likely side with his autocratic buddy and say the Ukrainians had it coming, one, for starting the war (not true) and, two, for not negotiating in good faith to end the war, no doubt on Russia’s terms (also false). In Trump’s view this could pave the way for renewed economic relations between the U.S. and Russia, something Putin badly needs.

Europe would be hard-pressed to retaliate following a nuke attack on Ukraine. Neither the UK nor France, the region’s two nuclear-armed powers, would be willing to risk a nuclear war by responding in kind to the Russian attack. For his part, however, Putin could threaten a similar nuclear fate to any European country attempting to respond to his actions, such as European boots on the ground in Ukraine. Russia is already fairly isolated from most of the world economically so any additional sanctions from Europe are of little concern, especially if the U.S. opens its door to trade.

As far fetched as my concern may be, history shows that humans very rarely develop a weapon that they don’t eventually use. Nuclear weapons are no exception, as the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan nearly 80 years ago to bring World War Two to a close clearly show. As frightening as it may be to think of Putin employing a single nuke to get his way, more chilling is the message that would send to his dictator pals in China and North Korea.

I hope I’m wrong.

One final note: In the Audio Books “The Fermi Paradox: The History and Legacy of the Famous Debate over the Existence of Aliens” (Charles River Editors), it surmises that alien civilizations that discover the power of the atom destroy themselves within a hundred years. Let’s see: We’ve had nuclear weapons for eighty years; nine countries have them. The next twenty years should be very interesting, indeed.