Ultimate Violence: ‘Tactical’ Nuclear Madness

We are Closer to MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) than Ever

“I think the United States should redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Peninsula, and they ought to be made very clear to ... North Korea that we [and] the government of South Korea will use tactical nuclear weapons without hesitation” (John Bolton).

At the very time when the world is increasingly anxious about the possible use of modern nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945;

At the very time when the Doomsday Clock has been advanced closer to Nuclear Midnight than ever before;

At the same time as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in his capacity as president of the U.N. Security Council, loudly warned this week, in thinly disguised diplomatic language, that his country is being dangerously pushed and provoked as never before;

At the same time that Russia is deploying and demonstrating the latest mega-destruction “strategic” nuclear bombers, submarines, and missiles;

At this very time former U.N. Ambassador and Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton publicly declared in South Korea that the U.S. should be prepared “without hesitation” to make first use of “tactical nuclear weapons” against North Korea.

And just a few days after Bolton spoke out in this way, the U.S. president at a State Dinner for the South Korean president proclaimed that, if there is any war between the Koreas, the U.S. will totally destroy North Korea (as was done in fact in the 1950’s, a war that has never ended).  Beyond words the U.S. is deploying and demonstrating the latest American nuclear subs and bombers in Korea as had not been done since the worst days of the Cold War in the 1980’s.

Imagine the uproar if Lavrov at the U.N. had said: “Russia is now prepared without hesitation to use tactical nuclear weapons if the U.S. and NATO continue their proxy war against Russia attacking in Crimea or the new Russian-speaking republics that overwhelmingly voted to become part of Russia last year.”

Imagine the uproar if Russia or China were to deploy and demonstrate tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines in the Western Hemisphere, in Cuba or Venezuela or Panama or Nicaragua, as the Americans have done surrounding Russia with nukes in Europe and now feverishly are doing surrounding China with nukes in the Pacific.

What the U.S. should be saying not only to North Korea but to Russia, China, and beyond is that nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction must never be used and so they must be brought under control, reduced in numbers and deployments, and in fact outlawed, before use of them exterminates us all.

And with regard to Korea, what the U.S. should be saying and doing, with the assistance of Russia and China, both of whom have substantial interests and influence with North Korea, is that there must be urgent deescalation of both war preparations and rhetoric, a formal end to the Korean War after all these years, and serious steps for economic and cultural exchanges demonstrating mutual acceptance with the eventual goal of gradual Korean reunification; something in fact that has taken place in Germany, Vietnam, and elsewhere once the U.S. stopped blocking such developments.

Meanwhile, the really big story and the biggest reason the Doomsday Clock is ticking louder and faster than ever, is that China knows very well that all the American military escalation in Korea is really being done with China in mind.  Even as the State Dinner for the Korean president was taking place in the White House, the largest-ever live-fire joint U.S.-Philippines military “exercises” have been underway with more and more U.S. forces being positioned closer and closer to China.  The U.S. is racing forward as well with major new military escalation with Australia, Japan, and throughout the Pacific area.

China sees what is happening and is rightly condemning the American creation of a new Asian-Pacific NATO-like, anti-China alliance, even getting European NATO involved in the Pacific region now for the first time.

And so, understandably, China is racing ahead with its own fast-expanding military preparations and is firmly determined to prevent Taiwan from taking further steps toward even de facto independence and becoming an extension of American military power against China.  Doing so means further expansion and modernization of its own armed “conventional” forces, as well as preparations for cyber and space warfare, as well as a dramatic escalation in its own nuclear forces to deter the Americans and if it comes to war to defeat them in a quite possibly terminal World War III.

As Albert Einstein, the Man of the Century, warned in his final years, he was not sure just what weapons would be used to fight WW III, but he was quite sure that, as a result, World War IV would be fought with “sticks and stones.”

I have spoken of the sui generis dangers of our world: the sheer force and technology of our weapons proliferating, and nations that own them multiplying, but above all mentally-impaired leaders using media and social media to “infect” populations, to seize positions of power, and to continue to shape their sense of reality in order to advance their pathological ends.  Because of this, the human tendency for destructiveness—and our collective suicidality—has intensified with ever more dire urgency.

A characteristic of this collective mental health crisis, like all mental health problems, is that the greater the problem, the greater is our inclination to deny it.  When the problem becomes severe, we may even actively worsen it to hasten our demise: this is not a characteristic of health, but of disease.  The good news is that we know how to treat the disease (including distinguishing how those who are affected “project” their own ill-health onto others to deny what needs addressing in them). The moment we recognize that this is before all else a mental health matter, apply the appropriate principles of care, and create conditions that affirm life—we can not only avert World War III but generate many collateral improvements to everyone’s quality of life.