Why US-Russian nuclear saber rattles?

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OPINION

By Herbert Samuel Baligidde

At the First ever Special Session of the United Nations on Disarmament held in New York in June 1978 [which this writer, now a septuagenarian, as a young Foreign Service Officer at the age of 30 years only, attended] a pertinent question as to why the so-called “lesser” or ‘”under-developed Third world powers” were being prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, yet the five superpowers had overkill capability dubbed MAD [mutually-assured destruction] is the fear which has until today prevented the occurrence of WW III and a nuclear conflagration akin to the Biblical Armageddon.

“It’s because the countries aspiring to acquire them might in future be irresponsible and use them”, with characteristic superpower arrogance, one distinguished delegate from a major Western power replied.

On the sidelines of the main debates of the Plenary, I chanced on the Saudi Arabian Ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, His Excellency Baroody [RIP], who was one of the “other” dignitaries present when the UN Charter was promulgated at the end of WW II in 1945.

With youthful vigour of self-perceived righteousness this writer eloquently expressed disappointment at the failure of delegates from the Third World making the point that to maintain the balance of nuclear terror and to prevent superpower hegemony there was a need for North Korea, the Arab countries, India, Pakistan, Iran, Brazil and South Africa to be allowed to develop bombs of their own. “My grandson”, he replied, “I don’t blame you for your naivety …. such suggestions cannot be allowed by the victorious powers who happen to be the superpowers of today, upon whose perception of world order the UN System was built”.

A Delegate from a Latin American country came to my rescue by blaming “Grandpa” Baroody for calling “a distinguished delegate from a member country of the UN a grandson”, whereupon we all heartily laughed and the topic was dropped.

When I read President Donald Trump’s submarine deployment order from a BBC notification on my mobile phone, the conference diplomatic moment came back to my memory. The content of this article is broadly underpinned by the content of one of my International Relations Bachelor’s degree course units at Makerere University in the early 1970s on the one hand, and on the other partly based on what transpired at the First UN Special Session held a whopping fourty-seven years ago, and the prior Ministry of Foreign Affairs Library Archive research put into the assiduous preparation of the briefs for the Uganda Delegation led by Uganda’s Permanent Representative to the UN [at the time] Ambassador Younis Kinene. 

As Francis Bacon opined, Science is the labour and handicraft of the mind and poetry can only be considered its creation yet Science ought to be nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as the veteran may differ from a raw recruit, and its methods may differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which the barbaric savage wields his or her club.

But the advancement of nuclear science for modern warfare may now actually be the topography not only of existential and humanitarian ignorance but also international moral irresponsibility by hitherto respected state actors who in their relations with other states have failed or decided to ignore the principles and rules of noblesse oblige in their purported civilised leadership of the international system.

To disregard what the rest of the world thought about the monopolisation of weapons of mass destruction was not only arrogant but utterly shameless. But Edmund Burke was probably right: the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse, as the people living in the war and multiple conflict flashpoints around the world, such as Gaza, Ukraine, the Middle-East and Darfur, have tragically come to learn. British Statesman Benjamin Disraeli observed that the depository of power was always unpopular.

He was probably right because, as the world is being made to learn from the consequences of the conflict flashpoints alluded to above, unlimited superpower military capability is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.

But it’s not the so-called “irresponsible” countries alluded to by the distinguished Delegations of the Western alliance at the 1978 Disarmament conference, but the enduring superpowers, that is, the US and Russia, whose recent nuclear sabre rattles seem to be threatening to hasten a possible nuclear apocalypse now! Has the world witnessed sabre rattles before? It has, but this time round the “stakes” are higher and more dangerous than they were during the legendary Strategic Limitation Treaty talks [SALT I, II and III], and the vintage Disarmament Conferences of the past

The shows of military force of the past either presented mixed or even negative results, like the current deployments of US Nuclear Submarines near Russia and the People’s Republic of China are bound to be. President Donald Trump’s order of deployment of nuclear submarines [it is not made clear whether they were nuclear-powered or armed with nuclear missiles] near Russia may lead to a replication of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Question is, was it another of those sabre rattles which have calibrated US-Russian relations with military and old-fashioned ideological scrimmaging?  An extract from Document 31, Soviet Leader Khrushchv’s report to the Supreme Soviet concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis on the 12^th of December 1962 seems to suggest it was.

Hanak (1872) reports that in the face of an impending attack from the US, agreement was reached on a number of defensive measures, including the stationing of a couple of score of Soviet IRBMs [Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles] in Cuba with the aim of defending it against the “American imperialists” who had allegedly planned to deploy several airborne infantry and armoured divisions numbering about 100,00 men, 183 warships with 85,00 naval personnel were poised to attack Cuba and that the landing on Cuba was to be covered by several thousand military planes.

He further reported that close to 20% of all the planes of the US Strategic Air Command were kept in the air round the clock, carrying atom and hydrogen bombs and that US reservists had been called up. In the face of those intensified military preparations by the US, the Soviet Government had to take appropriate measures, Khrushchev reported.

In the same vein, albeit interestingly, President Donald Trump’s alleged current deployment of the US nuclear submarines near or within striking range of Russia which has been verified true by several credible international news media, the Soviet leader also reported that the Soviet submarine fleet, including atomic submarines, were ordered to take up assigned positions [see Hanak (1972: 125-134) Soviet Foreign Policy since the Death of Stalin].

Hanak, a scholar in the 1970s at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and University College London, is one of the most acclaimed institutions in the Western heartland of the academic world. The reliability of his account of the Khrushchev report is verifiable.

Why would a superpower like the USSR at that time go into so much background support military preparations back at home merely for the purpose of a mere saber-rattle [lethal show of force] if it did not have the intention of triggering a nuclear war against the US, its cold war adversary is a pertinent question which like the US deployment of nuclear submarines near Russia and China at a time like this when the geostrategic tectonic plates of Eurasia are uncontrollably shifting.

Ironically, though, the physical tectonic plates underneath Russia seem to have conspired with the geostrategic ones to cause a volcanic eruption out of a mountain that has been lying dormant for decades! Never mind that in my part of the world, the people believe in omens. The volcanic eruptions in Russia and undersea seismic movements, which have caused tsunamis near Hawaii, may be “bad omens” for world peace and stability if the two superpowers do not assiduously find some zone of possible agreement [ZOPA] in their multifarious military, international diplomatic and bilateral trading ecosystem domains.

Suffice to reiterate the view by some foreign policy and weapons diplomacy analysts that while the US seems to be prioritising transactional and direct military diplomacy in its relations with the rest of the world, for its part, Russian sabre-rattling and direct military were in the past considerably more aggressive than those of the US.

Soviet forces were reportedly involved in at least 32 incidents stretching from Bulgaria to West Africa to India in the 60s and 70s, for example! In 1969, they began building a submarine base at Cienfuegos in Cuba. The construction works were stopped when Russia was warned that the activities were in violation of the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev agreements that put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

According to Western diplomatic sources reportedly continued sending Soviet submarines on “friendship and cooperation” visits to Cuba. However, although the Middle East remained the Soviet main focus of overseas military operations in the 70s, while maintaining some presence in the region, Russia seems to have shifted its focus to Eastern Europe and, more recently, to West Africa.

Sabre rattles and weapons diplomacy, among other strategies, sometimes involving limited proxy wars by the so-called “irresponsible” lesser powers, are likely to continue in both the Trump era and Putin epoch. As the international community waits to see what comes out of the ‘Situation Rooms’ of the militaries of the two biggest nuclear superpowers, the world is on tenterhooks like it was in the 1962 Cuban Crisis.

During the Khrushchev-Kennedy standoff that ensued, the older Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev blinked first; against the backdrop of Trump being rather egocentric but less ideologically oriented and Putin being more doctrinaire and ideologically grounded but both leaders apparently toying with transboundary pseudo-imperialism, who will blink first this time round when the ecosystems of military and foreign policy decision-making have been so much entropized by an exponential proliferation of armaments, development of war-related sciences which have increased the risks of accidental nuclear war and unprincipled escalations of disdainful and belligerent rhetoric.

If forward defence systems were ignored during the inconclusive SALT I talks, it was partly because the United States’ and Russia’s first line of defence was not the European glacis but the superpowers’ nuclear triads.

In the past, US nuclear submarines could conveniently be based in the American mainland naval ports abroad; not anymore. Hypersonic missiles, neutron bombs [at the time regarded as immoral weapons because they were designed to destroy biological life while leaving physical equipment like MBTs and buildings intact] have failed to stop the humanitarian catastrophe of death by starvation when the bombs do not do the grizzly job of genocide-like extermination in Gaza and Darfur, which have invariably perforated the so-called ideas of international morality which in the past were insusceptible to ideological perforation.

As James Anthony Froude perhaps correctly observed, the moral system of the universe is like a document written in alternate ciphers, which change from line to line but do not perforate the argument by Samuel Butler the Younger that the foundations of morality are like all other foundations; if you dig too much about them, the superstructure comes tumbling down. In the field of worldwide policy, though, the US and Russia might be better off if they dedicate their great Nations to the policy of the good neighbour. American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it, didn’t he? Then, and only then, will the world respect them and accept their leadership of the international system.

Coupled with the envisioned improved delivery, communication and weapon delivery systems, which the Delegates to the UN Special Session on Disarmament talked about in the future tense, are nigh.

The past has indeed now fused with the future, hasn’t it? Moreover, drone technology, which is now the preferred first line of attack which bludgeons enemy positions and buildings with deadly payloads of ordinance, including the potential of the so-called limited theatre surgical munition, has with morbid consequences completely changed the order of battle.

Besides, the usual protocols and modes of diplomatic state communication have also radically changed; thanks to the ICT revolution proved not to be maladaptive to political manipulation, a domain where ideas can be effectively bludgeoned, and scintillating officialese communicated. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the “Hotline” [a telex cable running at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean] between Washington and Moscow, which had been dormant for some time, was activated.

As tension engulfed the world, it reportedly transmitted mutually deprecating proverbs at hourly intervals to keep it open. This time round, President of the Russian Security Council/former President of the Russian Praesidium His Excellency Medvedev and President Trump exchanged belligerent messages on the Social Media platform; a stepson of the ICT Revolution!

The seemingly undiplomatic exchange, dubbed “The Spat” by international media actors, that ensued triggered the present crisis. Apart from Russian Foreign Minister H.E. Amb. Lavrov, who was Russia’s Permanent Representative at the UN when the Special Session on Disarmament was held in June 1978 in New York, the Russian President has not joined the fray.

This writer is a Septuagenarian former Diplomat who attended the First UN Special Session on Disarmament held in June 1978 at the UN Headquarters, New York-USA