A Time for War

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3, ESV

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In the whole of human history, nothing has been more certain than suffering. Suffering caused by nature has been with us since the beginning, with the elements being our constant enemy. We have struggled, through technology, to allay the suffering caused by nature, and for a larger percentage of people than ever before, we have been victorious. But for nearly as long as we have struggled with our environment, we have struggled even more with suffering caused by our own race. Humanity, more than any other living things, is truly deadly toward itself, with the breadth of human history being a monument to war. We cannot seem to shed that tendency toward destruction, and no matter how enlightened we become, the specter of conflict is always with us. The aftermaths of the various human conflicts are usually a sobering experiencing for all, once the thrill of victory wears off, and we can see the lengths of suffering we endured to win. Justifications always follow, and the losers are most often afforded little in the discussion. Much later, the reasons for said wars are examined in earnest, but the further away from the outbreak of war we get, the cloudier those reasons become.

More than ever in this writer’s life, it feels as though the world is on the edge of eruption, and it may not be presumptuous to assert that we are closer to massive conflict then we have been since the Cold War. It must be truly frustrating to those that lived through that decades long conflict to imagine that we have seemingly learned nothing from the experience apart from distrust of Russia. The terrible irony of a potential conflict with the Former Soviet Union tempts the analytical mind to draw parallels between days past and our current troubles. And in some ways, such parallels might be appropriate. We are once again sparing over influence and territory, fighting a proxy war in a foreign land and threatening each other with nuclear annihilation. The peoples of an at least undeserving nation are serving as host to yet another scrapping match between the US and Russia, with too many innocents paying the ultimate price for one nation’s aggression. What are we, as yet bystanders, meant to think of this conflict? The answer depends surely on who you ask. On the one hand, as a nation we have always been lovers of freedom, and have asserted ourselves as the defenders of liberty across the globe. Our position in the current conflict appears cut and dry by that metric, with the aggression and vitriol of Russia casting them as almost comically villainous. They are the ones trying to take away Ukraine’s freedom, so the answer is simple.

No answer is simple when one chooses to tackle the massive cataclysm of war. Even World War II, the most “justifiable” war was not taken lightly by those that committed to the fight. For our part, it took a direct attack on our soil to draw us into the fight. The tens of millions of deaths caused by our last world war ought to make us think twice about committing to any conflict, much less one with an aggressive former world power. Indeed, weakened as they are from their former strength, Russia is still a dangerous nation capable of causing a horrifying amount of death, destruction, and instability. With every childish pot shot taken by idiot pundits about Russia “losing” the war, the world inches closer to total death. It would behoove these excitable internet junkies to consider what Russia might do when backed into a corner. Will they fold their hands and accept defeat gracefully, even as Ukraine’s leaders threaten to invade Russia in retaliation? The hollowness of such threats notwithstanding, Russia has much to fear if they lose this fight, and there is one thing that all of these utter imbeciles that thirst for vengeance do not seem to consider.

At the end of the Cold War, the USSR had roughly 45,000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and now, it is estimated they have 5,977. A sharp decline, to be sure, owed mostly to treaties over the post war years and loss due to entropy. Many of the same dimwits mentioned above like to point to the half-life of fissile materials and the notoriously poor workmanship of Russian military tech as reasons not to fear Russia’s nuclear threats. Their dubious logic reads like a victim staring down the barrel of a gun, laughing maniacally because only half the magazine is loaded. These laughing fools ought to remember that one 15 kiloton bomb killed as much as 126,000 people, and that Russia’s ICBM fleet consists of MIRV’d rockets carrying as many as 12 warheads with yields measured in megatons. For those brilliant thinkers laughing at Russia’s losses, a megaton is one thousand time bigger than a kiloton. This means that, if even half of Russia’s nukes work, and each warhead averaged one megaton in yield, we would face a terrified, embarrassed state with three thousand megatons of world ending power at its merest whims. Next, those analysts might count the number of major cities there are amongst NATO countries, and then consider digging a fallout shelter.

Then should our stance be one of acquiescence and fear in the face of international bully politics? Of course not. The begrudging detente created by the mere existence of nuclear weapons is as alive today as it was during the mad days of the Cold War. Mutually Assured Destruction still carries weight, and allows the west to project influence over its enemies in the east for as long as the threat remains clear. But the Russia of the cold war had something to lose back then, with a vast land empire and resources to match. The Russia of today is a pale, ultra-corrupt shadow of even the might it had as the USSR, and though many might argue how strong she actually was then, it is a moot point. Russia has less to lose now than ever, and we toy with disaster when we threaten what little stability they have left. Because of our missteps in diplomacy and insistence on the perpetuation of the NATO military alliance, we have surely contributed to the unease in the east, nearly as much as Russia’s own corrupt leadership. And who can tell if our defensive posture was justifiably preventative or excessive? Now, it seems, that question is of little value; whatever the reasons, we are stuck in this situation as a nation along with NATO, and whatever decisions our leaders make now might shake the foundations of society as we know it.

With most of human history being a manual for warfare, one might think we can reach to our forebearers for guidance in these times. That is certainly a mark of a prudent leader and thinker during crises, and this writer, more than most, would applaud remembrance of history. But we are potentially facing an absolutely unprecedented circumstance with Russia; a conventional war between nuclear powers. Even the history of the Cold War can only tell us how such a thing might be avoided through diplomacy or sheer luck, and we would do well to consult such sagas if we hope to survive this one. If we continue touting this bullheaded attitude of ashewing and even subverting efforts toward negotiation, we will surely see escalation before calming. An escalating conflict will lead us somewhere, and perhaps that could mean total war, but inevitably, it will lead us toward an end. We in the west, with the power to vote and the power to make our voices heard, must ponder what this end might look like. If Russia wins, then the whole of Ukraine might be absorbed into the Russian Federation, barring NATO intervention. Are we willing to risk nuclear war to prevent such an outcome? If the Ukraine wins, it must necessarily mean Russia loses, and this loss can only come from forfeiture or coercion. Will Russia forfeit? If history is a judge, the answer is most assuredly no. Will they be coerced? Perhaps, but what will they be willing to do before such an eventuality? The possibilities are truly horrendous, and if our leaders have any sense, they must consider what victory actually looks like in this conflict.

Humans are experts at killing each other. We have a thirst for it; an instinct for it. Over time, we have become more efficient at destruction, able to deliver wholesale death to the entire world in as little as fifteen minutes. Total victory for either side is NOT the only conceivable outcome in this current conflict, no matter what our leaders, the media, or even or senses of vain “principle” tell us. This is a point so tired now that it barely merits being repeated, but Russia was indeed “wrong” to invade Ukraine, and most sensible people would agree that aggressive colonialism is no longer acceptable in today’s global community. If there was a button that could reverse the invasion and slap Putin on the wrist for what “he” did, then who would not push it? But we do not live in such a world, and what’s done, as the old saying goes, is done. All we are responsible for now is how we resolve this conflict and pick up the pieces. In one hundred years, when the peoples of earth reckon the reasons behind our next move, will they be studying a mere scuffle in the historical drama, or the prelude to the third world war?