How the US, not just Russia, helped bring the world closer to nuclear war

The West has effectively been challenging Russia’s right to be a hegemonic power

What if the proxy US campaign in Ukraine doesn’t lead to Russian regime downfall but instead to a desperate Putin using nuclear weapons?

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Tom Plate

Tom Plate is a university professor and a veteran columnist focused on Asia and America.

Published: 1:00am, 5 Oct 2022Updated: 2:15am, 5 Oct 2022

To lose one’s sense of decency by raising the threat of nuclear weapons just once – here we’re talking directly to you, Mr Vladimir Putin – may be dismissed as a mere unfortunate slip; but to raise it more than once can suggest mindlessness, or madness. A measure of narcissism may be acceptable as a common human foible; but as a defining characteristic of a major global political figure, it is rarely without cost to others. Indeed, for the rampant egomaniac, prolonged reflection becomes irresistible generally only when admiring oneself in a mirror.

It is very hard to imagine the full extent of an unprecedented catastrophe until the blow-up happens in front of you. The predictions of loss from a nuclear war range from regional obliteration to planetary catastrophe.

To be sure, “experts” could be dug up to downplay the worst that could happen – or even deny that it ever would happen at all. But that sort of radioactive denial was anything but the case last week in Santa Barbara, California, fortunately, where an important international Zoom seminar took place.