The Next War

- Jeremy Agar

With the US of A being presided over by an impulsive, ignorant and stupid oaf, it’s not surprising that the rest of the world worries about the chances of nuclear war. The tweeted insults to his Little Rocket Man counterpart in North Korea, himself a tyrant with even fewer restraints on his behaviour, are the obvious concern, along with Trump’s hostility to anyone and anything that doesn’t grovel before him in loving submission.

North Korea

In any internal discussion over US policy, opinion usually ranges from the “hawkish” to the “dovish”, but when it comes to North Korea, all are agreed. War is not an option. That’s because the North has a vast array of weapons pointed at the South, whose capital, Seoul, with its huge population, is just a few kilometres from the border.

Nuclear or conventional, any war would most probably extinguish millions of lives. US threats and international sanctions have not moderated Kim Jong Un’s antics and are not likely to. On the contrary: a cornered dictator, desperate to hold on, typically plays the victim, with the role of the ugly American bully being played to perfection by Trump. In depriving his subjects of information about the outside world, Kim sees his only choice as being to parade ever more rockets, symbols of his potency.

In his early campaigning musings, when Trump was proclaiming that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was obsolete, he added as an afterthought that South Korea and Japan should do more to share the costs of their defence by getting themselves their own nukes. This would have done nothing to ensure their security. One sure aftermath would have been an even more determined North Korean arms programme. Another certainty would have been a massive response from China. Which would have led Taiwan to ask Uncle Sam for more…

Iran

Next on Trump‘s enemy list is Iran. A few years ago, Iran was getting close to deploying its own nukes, but an agreement to ease sanctions in return for a pause was endorsed by the world’s major powers, including Russia. Trump, of course, hates the deal, partly because it was negotiated when Obama was President, partly because Israel hates the deal too, and partly because it’s another opportunity to be perverse.

If the US were to renounce the agreement, it would do so alone. The immediate result would be that nothing would change, except that Russia, China, the Islamic world and NATO would become even more distrustful and uncertain about the US. That might or might not come to matter. What would matter is that in reaction to this renewed US hostility a future yet unknown development would make it more likely that Iran would resume its drive to get its own nukes and thereby start an Asian arms race. 

Pakistan

Third on Trump’s enemy list, both in terms of time and importance, is his recent tilt at Pakistan by cutting aid money. He accuses Pakistan of playing a double game as a US ally which doubles as an instigator of terrorism in Afghanistan. Here, at least, Trump’s assumptions are accurate but his response, like his responses to North Korea and Iran, will worsen relations, in this instance by encouraging Pakistan to enhanced ambiguity.

Venezuela

A similar venting, now forgotten, came from Michael Flynn, since fired as National Security Adviser because he lied about some insecure contacts with Russians. Days into his job, the White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, announced that Venezuela had been “put on notice” to behave. When it comes to how a superpower should conduct itself the famous and most quoted Presidential advice was Teddy Roosevelt’s suggestion that he would speak softly but carry a big stick. Trump’s lot shout out bluffs that can be called.

No-one was saying that Venezuela was a military or security threat, so by including it on its hit list the White House made it known that US force was not necessarily deployed to deter military assaults. Trumpist hostility, never subtle, was all about Venezuela’s Leftist policy and oil reserves. Traditionally Washington has claimed to be the world’s kind big brother, oozing sympathy for democracy and decency. Yet in waving his imaginary big stick, Kelly did not care that he was putting not Venezuela but the planet “on notice” that US policy was all about protecting US profits.

It Might Be A Mad MAD World Again

During the Cold War, when there were two superpowers, the logic that was supposed to justify nuclear weapons was that they were so powerful that they could never be used. They called it “deterrence”. If the Americans or the Soviets attacked each other, the result would be “mutually assured destruction” – MAD. Nukes, that is, were said to keep the peace between the big boys.

The other aspect of deterrence theory was that the rest of the world couldn’t risk troubling the super powers lest they be obliterated. The only likely wars would break out in smaller countries which the Americans or the Russians didn’t care about. These conflicts would be those in which nukes couldn’t help, those where guerrilla or terrorist tactics were adopted.

Well, the world did manage to get through those 50 years without a direct US-USSR* confrontation - though NATO’s and the Warsaw Pact’s armies were deterrent enough - but the “peace” was maintained at the cost of a corrupted planet as international relations were strained by the need for everyone else to bow to the will of the superpowers. How many of the corrupt governments and repressed peoples were the result, directly or indirectly, of nuclear brinksmanship? *USSR = the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Ed.

Now that there is only one superpower and no Red Peril to worry about everyone could begin to abandon nuclearism. Surely the US and Russia or China could reassure each other that they no longer need their unusable arsenals and Trump’s hissy fits might be passing indiscretions. Not so fast. Trump’s lust for seeing life as a series of one-off deals might lead us to suppose that there is no specific policy informing his erratic relationships with regimes he doesn’t like, but, in fact, there’s an ominous pattern.

Both the President and his military chief have stated that America needs more nukes, that they need to “modernise” the arsenal. As both the US and Russia still have many times more bombs than would be needed to blow up the planet this might seem totally MAD. Trump’s complaint is that this is the problem: his existing weapons are too big to use. He wants smaller bombs.

This threatens us all because he’s talking about using them. At a White House briefing in February 2018, the Defense Secretary, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, explained that “one” enemy – Russia was not named - was about to threaten the US and its allies with small nukes, to which NATO’s big nukes could not respond in a way that could be justified. Gattis quoted Henry Kissinger, America’s favourite warrior, to the effect that this would mean that the US would thus have to choose between “suicide and surrender”. It could escape this trap by deploying smaller, “tactical” nukes which could be used without bringing about a nuclear apocalypse.

So, deterrence theory is being reinvented. MAD was said to make nuclear exchanges “unthinkable”. Trump says that Russia is about to make it thinkable by developing battlefield nukes. Washington is talking up “low yield” nukes. With conventional weapons becoming more powerful, standard weapons are acquiring nuclear characteristics. Thus, the line between the “thinkable” and the “unthinkable” is blurred, with the ironic result that as nukes become less destructive they become more of a threat to global peace.

A Deterrent To Russia?

Why would Putin unleash his own “battlefield” nukes on Europe? It would end in tears for everyone. More likely is a US attack on Iran or Pakistan, or even North Korea. Or on Syria - which could well bring in Russia after all. Or on Afghanistan, where the non-nuclear stalemate threatens to never end. The pretext for a “small” nuke could be in response to a massive non-nuclear attack, like a cyber-attack on US or Russian superstructure.

Trump’s petulance and his need for pomp and flattery, added to his often-declared policy not to signal his moves, suggest that anything might happen. In three years the treaty between the US and Russia, under which they had agreed to gradually reduce their stockpiles, expires. Trump has shown no interest in renewing it and almost certainly will not do so. A new nuclear arms race between those two old foes looks likely. This might seem MAD but in fact it’s not unprecedented. Throughout the nuclear era the US has lied about its weapons, habitually exaggerating the number of Russian – and before that, Soviet – forces and understating its own arsenal.

Neither is it true that policy has always been guided by the notion that a nuclear exchange would be suicidal and thus unthinkable. Since 1945, and the two atomic bombs dropped on japan, the US tried, first, to maintain a monopoly of nuclear capacity, and once the USSR started to build its own nukes, to maintain an advantage. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan talked of the need to achieve a “first strike” capability – the antithesis of “deterrence”.

His Star Wars scheme, which sought to intercept Soviet missiles in space, led inevitably to increased Soviet nukes as Moscow hoped to overwhelm Reagan’s defences through sheer numbers. Cruise missiles, which were touted to have “house address” accuracy, were also an aspect of a first strike stance, the accuracy being needed not for a MAD retaliation but to take out the other guy’s missiles while they were still in their silos.

In this context Trump’s war on his own State’s institutions becomes alarming. The State Department is deliberately understaffed. Key ambassadorships are unfilled. Trump wants no expertise or knowledge to get in his way. Perhaps the most likely trigger for a nuclear strike would be if Trump looks like being impeached or losing the next election. Wars against demonised enemies are the usual trick pulled by insecure autocrats.

In March 2018 we heard that Putin now has nukes so good that he’s “invincible”. This is probably intended for a domestic audience, the strong man wanting to flex his muscles before an election. But if Trump gets to hear about it, he’ll want to divert huge sums to the US military. Then we’d have a repeat of the Cold War and the most dangerous and stupid arms race of all time.

Is This Trump’s “Nixon Goes To China” Moment?

And then, within days of that, came an even later breaking news story. South Korean officials announced – in the White House - that Kim Jong Un has offered to freeze his nuke testing and agree to work for a de-nuclearised Korean peninsula. He also invited Trump to Pyongyang. Trump accepted, vowing to visit Kim by May 2018. This all happened within hours, though the prologue took place with the two Koreas chatting during the February Winter Olympics.

Is this a Nixon-goes-to-China moment – so named because domestic American opinion held that only an avowed anti-communist hawk could make overtures to Red China? Trump seems to have decided to buddy up with Kim all on his own without the conventional preparatory talks through lesser officials. The South Korean announcement took pains to praise Trump, ascribing the breakthrough to him. Both Koreas know that flattery and personal meetings are the way to appeal to Trump, who wouldn’t have thought through his response. Meeting the (former?) Rocket Man would be a great photo-op.

Trump will feel that, left to himself, freed from State Department minders, he can cut a deal. A sensible approach would be to offer an on-going withdrawal of US troops and a staged withdrawal of his nukes in return for a continued verifiable North Korean freeze. The two Koreas could then agree to mutual troop reductions over time. They could sign a peace treaty (it has been only a ceasefire since 1953).

The former option is unlikely: Trump won’t want to offer to downsize his bigger button. But we could be seeing the start of something good. The risk is that with Trump continuing to shed staff and eschew advice it could be very bad. He’d be wise to check out what the Japanese and Chinese think – but even if he does nod to such a consultation, he won’t listen to what they advise. If the talks get toxic, if Trump gets impulsive or feels slighted, there won’t be a reasonable prospect of a second chance of a relaxation of tensions for years to come.


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