Developing
See
Ansgar Graw, Claus Christian Malzahn, Christoph B. Schiltz, Julia Smirnova, “Das unheimliche Comeback des Kalten Krieges Putin rüstet sein Atomarsenal auf, die USA liefern schwere Waffen an die Nato-Ostgrenze. Das Misstrauen war seit der Kuba-Krise nicht mehr so groß. Gerät der Ukraine-Konflikt außer Kontrolle?” Die Welt, 21. Juni 2015.
(Anspar Graw has been Die Welt’s foreign correspondent in Washington since 2009. Julia Smirnova, Die Zeit’s foreign correspondent who has been reporting from Moscow, has regularly provided some of the most penetrating reporting and analyses on developments in Russia and on the Russian war against the Ukraine).
Excerpts:
Dismantling of safeguards adopted after Cuban Missile Crisis
“Wir erleben einen Stellvertreterkrieg zwischen Ost und West”, analysiert Frank Elbe. Der 74-jährige Nuklearexperte kennt das Säbelrasseln noch aus jener Epoche, die viele schon zu den Akten gelegt hatten. Elbe, seit Jahrzehnten ein enger Vertrauter des ehemaligen Außenministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher, war in den 80er-Jahren im Auswärtigen Amt im Abrüstungsreferat tätig, später vertrat er die Interessen der Bundesrepublik als deutscher Botschafter unter anderem in der Schweiz und in Polen.
Was Elbe heute über russische Raketen und westliche Manöver in den Zeitungen lesen muss, gefällt ihm ganz und gar nicht. Sein Eindruck: Während die Supermächte im Nachgang der Kuba-Krise im Herbst 1962, als die Welt am Rande eines nuklearen Infernos stand, einen sicherheitspolitischen Puffer nach dem
anderen installierten, scheinen genau diese Sicherheitsmaßnahmen gerade wieder abgebaut zu werden. “Was wir zwischen Russland und dem Westen erleben, ist
klassisches Tit for Tat”, klagt Elbe.
Nuclear weapons as part of Putin’s hybrid war strategy
Die westliche Antwort wird nicht lange auf sich warten lassen. In der kommenden Woche wollen die Nato-Verteidigungsminister intensiv über die nukleare Strategie Russlands beraten. Grundlage der Gespräche ist ein Geheimpapier der Nato-Führung. “Wir sind in großer Sorge über die nukleare Strategie Russlands. Atomwaffen spielen in der neuen russischen Strategie der sogenannten hybriden Kriegsführung eine wichtige Rolle”, sagte ein hochrangiger Nato-Diplomat dieser Zeitung. Das Verteidigungsbündnis will nun analysieren, welche Rolle Atomwaffen für Putin in der neuen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Westen genau spielen, wie stark die nuklearen Fähigkeiten Russlands sind und welche Konsequenzen die Nato daraus ziehen soll. Das Treffen der Verteidigungsminister soll dafür Auftakt sein. Offen ist, ob die Nato langfristig eine neue kohärente Abschreckungsstrategie entwickeln wird, die konventionelle und nukleare Fähigkeiten umfasst.
Commentary
Putin’s apparent strategy against the Ukraine and the West ignores the basic principles of the United Nations Charter, including the sovereign equality of all states and the duty of non-intervention, the prohibition of the use of force, and the obligation to comply with international treaties, customary international law, and the U.N. Charter itself.
His head appears to be filled with thoughts of war and the threat or use of military force to achieve his objectives. He wants to take us back to the power politcs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the period before the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928 which outlawed the use of aggression as an instrument of national policy. Thoughts and policies of power politics like his led the world into two world wars and the “untold suffering of mankind” whose repetition the United Nations was established to prevent.
The world needs to understand what would be involved in any lasting return by Russia (to be followed by other states) to “power politics” and policies of miltary aggression and conquest.
For over 50 years Russia and the United States, with other countries, understood the terrible risks a return to such policies would entail in a world of mutual assured destruction (MAD) in which tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on each side were pointed at the opponent’s cities and civil and industrial infrastructure. The world could be destroyed in less than 30 minutes.
They understood after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 the risks of accidental nuclear war in an escalating conflict between the two leading nuclear powers. Then, they took bold steps to mitigate those risks, including the conclusion of arms control treaties, inspection regimes, and other confidence-building measures. Now, these achievements are being dismantled, as the risks of accidental nuclear war grow again at an exponential pace. The world can still be destroyed in 30 minutes.
Appeasement has not and will not work with Putin. The West and other nations must now take even more forceful actions to contain Russia and Putin’s militarism, while upholding the principles of the United Nations Charter.
With the power he has amassed within his person, and the nuclear weapons at his command, Putin has become the most dangerous man on the planet. He appears to be increasingly infused with delusions of grandeur and a willful determination to rewrite history and redraw the borders of Europe according to his own designs.
Moreover, he appears to be directly responsible for the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, the leading opposition figure and opponent of the Ukraine war prior to his murder on February 27, 2015. He is obviously not constrained by any moral scruples. Should he become terminally ill or mentally deranged, he could blow up the world. He knows we know that. It is probably part of his calculus in making nuclear threats.
To focus our minds, we need to think hard about what Adolf Hitler might have done in his bunker in April, 1945, if he had had unchallenged control over a nuclear arsenal like the one Putin today has at his command.
A new and more dangerous Cold War is underway.
As Putin challenges the West and the organizing principles of the existing international political and legal order, “containment” of Putin and Russia, while acting to reduce the risks of accidental or other nuclear war, must be our highest priority.
The Trenchant Observer
