Will the End of Putin Bring the End of the World?

By JASON SIBERT

If the Russians lose Crimea, it would be “the end of Putin,” says the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Malcolm Davis.

Davis said a real test will come in the spring, because the Ukrainians might try to recapture Crimea. He also said this will be a time of risk because this might be a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin feels cornered and uses tactical nuclear weapons. On Oct. 6, President Joe Biden warned us that the threat of Armageddon was at its highest since the Cuban Missile Crises of 1962. What would a nuclear war look like? Science, a way of skeptically interrogating reality, as stated by the former astronomer Carl Sagan, gives us a sneak peek.

“Recent reports coauthored by Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in the department of environmental sciences at Rutgers University, painted portrait of a post-nuclear war world that is colder, darker and hungrier than is usually described in nuclear reporting,” as stated by writer Martin Pope in his story “Scientists warn Nuclear War Would Make the World Colder, Darker, Hungrier.” The report stated that nuclear weapons could cause firestorms that would release smoke, soot, and pollutants into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and causing a sudden cooling effect long known as “nuclear winter.”

Such a disturbance would impact the world’s oceans and dramatically undermine food security, potentially causing a large-scale collapse of agriculture that could lead to global famine. In the journal “AGU Advances,” scientists report that global cooling caused by a nuclear war could disturb ocean and sea ice ecology for decades or even centuries, killing off marine life and disrupting natural systems.

A second report published in “Nature Food” illustrates how nuclear weapons, like enormous wildfires, would unleash soot into the stratosphere that could persist for years. Under a range of nuclear war scenarios, multiple nuclear detonations between 15 to 100 kilotons could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in a matter of hours or days. US non-strategic nuclear warheads range from 0.3 kilotons to 170 kilotons. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were approximately 15 and 21 kilotons. A major nuclear war between Russia and the United States, a resulting nuclear winter, could cause as many as 5.3 billion people to die of starvation within two years of such a war. With sunlight blocked, staple crops like wheat, maize, rice, and soybeans would rapidly fail, leaving the world suddenly short of enough food.

In the 1980’s, Robock and his collogues and their Russian counterparts presented their findings to American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The US and Russian leaders declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The same declaration was repeated by the UN Security Council’s five permanent members with nuclear weapons (Russia, US, China, France, and the UK) last January, but their subsequent rhetoric and actions call their commitment to not using nuclear weapons into question. Unlike the 1980’s, when large demonstrations lead to demonstrations around the world pressured world leaders to reduce arsenals, today’s realities have not sparked demonstrations.

One of the reasons why demonstrations have not appeared is Putin’s lawbreaking ways. The rise of authoritarian movements all over the world could be another reason; dissent is increasingly limited. Russia losing its war in Ukraine is a good thing, but we must ask ourselves what comes next. If the tides of authoritarianism can be turned back, might a citizen-based 80’s style movement for nuclear arms control movement appear?

Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis, Mo. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2022

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