By Michael F. Duggan
I let down my guard. After Henry Kissinger and the Editorial Board of The New York Times embraced positions of deescalation in Ukraine last week, I posted a modestly optimistic (for me) essay yesterday. My hope was that with The Times coming to its senses, a measure of sane realism might be returning to the coverage of the war and to the polices of the war managers themselves. Strike that.
Last night I spoke with a friend who harbors no such illusions like the ones under which I briefly labored. He pointed out a powerful op-ed in The Times yesterday by Christopher Caldwell yesterday, suggesting that there is plenty of blame to go around regarding the war in Ukraine and that the United States and the nations of Europe may be heading like sleepwalkers toward a Summer of 1914-like crisis, only with nuclear weapons.1
To this I pointed out that President Biden had just announced that the United States would not be providing Ukraine with rockets that have a range greater than anything we have given them to date.2 My friend would have none of it.
Here is how it plays out: even if the U.S. does not give Ukraine these weapons, it is possible that another NATO country will. With the more-than $50 billion in military aid already supplied to Ukraine (almost the equivalent to Russia’s entire annual military spending) and with more on the way, it is possible that Ukrainian forces could hit Russia it with shorter-range rockets and other ordnance.
If rockets start raining down on Russian towns and cities, all bets are off. It will likely initiate a vast increase in Russia’s military spending, perhaps by the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars, and they will go all in. If the missiles or rockets that hit Russia were provided by NATO country, the return address for a Russian response could be that country or countries. At that point, you have a general European war—i.e. a world war. Even if the missiles used up to that point in the escalation are not nuclear-tipped, the losing side of World War III will be compelled to even the score with nukes (and it is stated Russian policy to meet a conventional attack on Russian soil with tactical nuclear weapons). Game over.
In retrospect it is clear that the historical lesson for October 1962 was not the Munich Crisis of 1938, but the August Crisis of 1914. So it is today.
In the future—assuming that there is one—when an optimistic feeling comes over me about the situation in Eastern Europe, I will just lay down and wait until it passes.
Note
- See Christopher Caldwell, “The War in Ukraine May be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame,” The New York Times, May 31, 2022.
- For the distinction between the weapons and systems in question, see Sebastien Robin, “Biden Decoded: Ukraine Will Get HIMARS Rocket Systems, But Not Longer-Range Missiles,” Forbes, May 31, 2022.