By Gareth Martin

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” – WarGames, 1983

I’m a Cold War kid. I grew up with the understanding that the world might end at any moment. I lived in the suburbs of a strategically important city; one day I calculated, with the data available, the effects of a nuclear blast at my house, given the likely detonation points of a typical Soviet strike. It would break windows, knock over cars, and inflict 3rd degree burns on exposed skin. I was about 14 at the time.

It terrifies me that the Western world seems to have simply forgotten that these weapons exist. They are no longer discussed, no longer questions of political policy. But Russia has not forgotten. The danger is as present now as it ever was in the Cold War. I think we are in the midst of the most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Russia cannot permit Ukraine to join NATO under any circumstances. If it did, it would become host to American missile systems, just as Turkey, Poland, and Estonia already have. Worse, it would open a direct land route for an invasion by conventional NATO forces.

NATO apologists will no doubt object that these are “defensive” systems, Anti-Ballistic Missiles intended to intercept Russian ICBM’s. And this is true, that is what these systems are designed to do. But this argument fatally misunderstands how the balance of Mutual Assured Destruction actually works.

MAD relies on the presumption that both sides are equally vulnerable. I won’t pull the trigger on you, because I know for a fact that you will pull the trigger on me. It is this balance of terror that guarantees peace. But it only works as long as the destruction is both mutual, and assured.

An effective ABM system breaks this logic. If one side is immune from the retaliation of the other, the former has every reason to strike first. And therefore, if either side believes that the other is about to deploy an effective ABM shield, the logical response is to initiate a general exchange before such a system can come online. You have to either use it, or lose it.

Such was the thinking of then-US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara and the Pentagon strategy wonks in the mid 1960’s. Accordingly, McNamara proposed an arms limitation treaty governing ABM systems at the Glassboro Summit Conference of 1967. This was eventually agreed as the ABM Treaty of 1972.(1)

Thirty years later, in 2002, the USA unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty.

The world, or at least the Western world, seems to have forgotten that nuclear weapons exist. We have forgotten how truly horrifying they are; that some people stopped having children, because they feared they would only live to be incinerated in radioactive fire.

Although the first nuclear weapons in a general exchange will be aimed at the enemy’s ICBM bases, the real target will always be cities. These are city-killing weapons; they cannot be used without committing a crime against humanity. Their primary victims will always be civilians.

And that’s only the immediate effects. As is, or used to be, widely known, a full blown thermonuclear exchange will throw so much dust into the atmosphere that it will induce a “nuclear winter”. Sunlight will be cut off, crops will die, many millions will starve. The death and destruction will echo far beyond the immediate belligerents.

Furthermore, in the context of a general exchange, it won’t just be the enemy that is targetted. If the USA were facing the loss of most of its major cities, then even when it eventually recovered, it would have lost its place in the world. Unless, that is, it also strikes other population centres. If a general exchange breaks out between the USA and Russia, the USA will also launch its weapons aimed at China. And China will therefore launch its weapons in turn. Israel will be faced with the loss of its benefactor, and will deploy its weapons against the Arab states. India and Pakistan may well strike each other too. Nobody will be willing to leave their enemy to inherit the earth.

The strategic logic is impeccable, irrefutable. The only winning move is not to play.

As such, I simply cannot bring myself to support a “Russians out” position. If Russia cannot prevent Ukraine joining NATO, then it is compelled by the iron logic of MAD to launch its nuclear weapons while it still can. While it still has an effective deterrent. If Russia were to lose its conventional war in Ukraine, it will have no choice but to resort to its nuclear arsenal.

If this were to happen, then we have maybe one, at best two, nuclear escalations before a general exchange breaks out. The Russians have spent more than 20 years warning against these dangers. In 2008, the Russian foreign ministry said that “If an American strategic anti-missile shield starts to be deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military-technical means.” (2)

From Russia’s perspective they cannot help but conclude that NATO, and specifically the USA, is preparing for war, and wants war. NATO gave assurances in 1990 that it would expand “not one inch eastward” (3), but then broke its word. The US withdrawal from the ABM treaty strongly suggests it is now sufficiently confident in its technology that it can act with impunity.

If Russia were to resort to nuclear weapons, then it should not at all be assumed that they will be used within the territory of Ukraine. Not only would it be thoroughly foolish to use such weapons on their own border, but they consider themselves to be at war with NATO, and that NATO is the real enemy. NATO is keeping Ukraine in the war; if NATO were successfully deterred from arming Ukraine, they would win. And therefore, NATO will likely be the target of any such nuclear demonstration.

The whole world needs Russia to win the war. Because if it doesn’t, we will all be on the brink of a global thermonuclear exchange that will utterly destroy technical civilisation as it exists today.

I have been asked what we can do about this, as a movement of the working class. I think it would be a very good idea to throw our weight behind the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. CND used to be an important cultural influence, but it has waned as we all lost the habit of thinking about these doomsday devices. As we became acclimated to the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. I am strongly in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament; as mentioned above, there is no way to use such weapons without committing a crime against humanity. I am opposed to their use under any circumstances whatsoever. And if I’m not willing to use them, then there is no point in having them. All of these weapons should be decommissioned and rendered beyond use.

We must start talking about these weapons again. We must understand what they imply, rather than averting our gaze. We should demand their decommissioning as a threat to technical civilisation itself.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia-United_States_relations

(3) https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/…/nato-expansion-what…

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NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive

Western leaders gave multiple assurances against NATO expansion to Gorbachev in 1990-1991 according to declassified American, Russian, British, Germans documents