war of nukes

WAR OF NUKES


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A minion hurled a thinly veiled snarl at you ( okay, at me, but it sounds better if you all are to blame ) about how nuclear war is more of a threat than ever, mainly because no one thought it was much of a threat at all. This sarcastic rejoinder must have been prompted by my dismissal of the book Alas, Babylon as antiquated. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved the book. It just wasn’t in the top ten of my fiction picks. But since two books on Peak Oil were, I think in no small part this was merely a vicious attack on my stance on said disaster ( an aside on my fiction picks. I loved Nova’s books, but to me they were just militia fantasy, not post-apoc or really even collapse. I really enjoyed Kunstler’s novel, but it was unrealistic in its violence avoidance. Anybodies fiction picks are highly subjective ). Almost NO one likes my fixation on our oil run down, so I take no offense. I’ll give the comment its just due. We almost certainly will have a nuclear strike or exchange in the near future. But war? I don’t think so.

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We all realize now that the whole Cold War scare was pretty much just homeland citizen control. Okay, a few really, really paranoid folks think the evil commies are still out to get us and will strike at any time. But I really think those same folks were unduly frightened as school children ducking and covering under their school desk and took the scare a bit too seriously. But how realistic was the Commie Scare? Both the Soviet Union and China had in their recent experiences mass citizen casualties from World War Two. The Soviets from the German invasion ( and prior to that civil war ) and the Chinese from the Japanese occupation ( when the Japanese occupied China and tortured citizens they were horrible, horrible monsters. When the US occupies Vietnam and Iraq and tortures suspected terrorists we are bringing democracy to the world ) that went on about ten years ( and then a brutal civil war ). Even in the most brutal regimes, consent is required from the masses. Soviet propaganda was to sugarcoat the oppression and purges, to get consent, even if begrudgingly. My basic point is that with a large population just emerging from a long history of violence and turmoil, do you really believe that there would have been consent for another world war for communist domination? Communist domination was the West’s boogieman. It wasn’t the fire burning bright within the breast of the peasant or factory worker. Having said that, I’ll wager that the governments quest for a secure buffer zone was gladly embraced, as a defensive measure. High levels of centralized control, consenting to the draft and other measures, all meant that your family was given a level of security not seen for decades. For Russia to garrison Eastern Europe and the Muslim southern states, to industrialize and defend Siberia, must have been seen by the common man as difficult but needed. China occupied Tibet and had a few adventures in Vietnam and Korea, not because she was necessarily out for world domination, but merely to secure her neighborhood. We get all uppity with Russia and Cuba, but it is perfectly alright to have Turkey join NATO? Dropping our imperial ambitions camouflaged as righteous indignation over communism will allow you to see how preposterous it was for us to fear communist world domination ( which is not the same thing as saying Russia wouldn’t have attacked if she felt threatened or if there was a perception of security in that action ).

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Since the threat of nuclear war was mostly constructed by us to keep the war spending at constant levels for economic reasons, let’s conclude that a global thermonuclear exchange was a very low probability. As long as we never made too much of a credible threat to the two communist nations with nukes, as long as it was mostly grand theatre for home consumption, the nuke war had a very low probability of happening. Widespread, global nuclear war, that is. Now, limited strikes are another kettle of fish entirely. Now that we have so many players with nukes ( I’d wager that many tactical nukes were indeed “disappeared” from the former Soviet arsenal, as a very smart way of keeping the US occupied with the terrorist threat and leaving Russia alone. If I was a CIA analyst, I would have gotten the message that if we continued to screw with Russia the KGB would control an attack against us with a Muslim terrorist proxy ), and so much genuine regime threats from rioting starving masses, who is to say a nuke strike won’t happen by one of the newer governments to emerge? As instability increases, the odds of nuclear exchange go up. Not that I’d think the terrorist threat is the be all and end all. I’d wager a donut that Israel or the US will preemptively nuke strike before I’d worry too much about a nuke for Allah. But with so many bombs out there under so many different controllers, anything is possible.

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As to how this shall unfold, I would also wager another donut that the delivery means will not be a Gulf of Mexico submarine strike but rather an on site detonation. Who needs to jeopardize your expensive navy when you can get Jerry the Jihadist or Sam the Special Forces dude to smuggle a backpack nuke across the Mexican or Canadian border and plant it at the target site? That is so easy, it both gives credence to the theory that the commies were NOT out to rule the world ( or they would have already done it ), and underscores how high the probability it is that it is going to happen. A nuclear strike is most likely in our future, but the good news is that the Japanese radiation is already going to kill us, so don’t worry too much about it unless you are ground zero.

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