With the media now beating the war drums against Russia, and U.S. troops on high alert for deployment to Europe, the reality that the world is on the edge of war is finally reaching into American homes. Likewise, several articles published in the last week warn that this talk of “war in Europe” could unleash nuclear war. The authors lack solutions, some are geopolitical in outlook, but they raise well-justified fears. Among those articles:
Ira Helfand, co-Founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, warned in a Jan. 18 piece posted on the Just Security website titled “The U.S.-Russia Crisis Over Ukraine: All Options Should Not Be on the Table":
“In the nuclear age, `all options on the table’ in a conflict involving nuclear powers could be understood to mean the potential use of nuclear weapons…. U.S. and Russian leaders must consider the use of such weapons off the table — there are no winners in a nuclear war. Once nuclear weapons are used in a conflict involving nuclear-armed adversaries, even on a so-called ‘limited scale’ involving a handful of ‘smaller’ Hiroshima-sized bombs, there is no guarantee the conflict would not escalate and become a global nuclear conflagration.” The authors cited Air Force General John Hyten, then-head of U.S. Strategic Command who said in 2018 after the annual Global Thunder wargame: “It ends bad. And the bad meaning it ends with global nuclear war.”
