Edging Closer to Armageddon | Opinion

If you are less than 65 years old, you probably don't remember the worried look on your mother's face during the Cuban Missile Crisis or what if felt like to crouch under your school desk during a civil defense drill. That is probably a good thing, but it has left many Americans with an inadequate fear of what a nuclear war and its aftermath would look like.

On Christmas Day, 1991, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin took control of the Soviet nuclear suitcase, the valise containing the launch codes for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. Yeltsin, whose contribution to world peace has been largely forgotten, promptly announced that the Soviet Union's vast nuclear arsenal would no longer target the West. The world breathed a deep sigh of collective relief. The threat of a strategic nuclear conflict between the East and West appeared to be over.

Until now.

Last month, President Joe Biden warned that mankind was closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We should take him seriously.

Despite decades of disarmament negotiations, Russia and the United States still possess enormous nuclear arsenals accounting for roughly 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. While the number of nuclear warheads has indeed decreased, their destructive power and deliverability has not. Russia has an enormous stockpile (some 2,000) of tactical nuclear weapons, which range in size from artillery shells to warheads mounted on cruise missiles. Moscow has likewise invested in a variety of advanced delivery systems, including the Kinzhal hypersonic air-to-surface missile, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the massive Sarmat ballistic missile named for a particularly barbaric Russian tribe, and the Poseidon nuclear torpedo, which is in fact a 70-foot-long, unmanned nuclear powered submarine. All these weapons have been developed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Comparing these modern weapons to the bombs dropped on Japan is like comparing your daughter's Tesla to your grandfather's Model T Ford. They are both cars, but that is about as far as the comparison goes. In 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped one atomic bomb equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT on Hiroshima. It destroyed nearly everything in a three-mile radius and killed 145,000 people. Today, the destructive power of atomic bombs often exceeds 1,000,000 tons of TNT. Modern delivery systems carry multiple, independently targeted warheads able to hit several cities at once. If your concept of nuclear war is the devastation of Hiroshima, you are woefully out of date.

The initial destruction caused by even a moderately powerful modern nuclear weapon is hard to grasp. Hundreds of thousands would perish in the initial burst of radiation and intense heat. The resulting fires would create multiple, simultaneous firestorms such as those which devoured Tokyo and Dresden. The overpressure from the airburst and hurricane-force winds would destroy buildings and people 20 miles from the explosion. The iconic mushroom cloud would scatter radioactive fallout for hundreds of miles. None of this is speculation or controversial.

What is surprising to many is the extraordinary environmental damage of a nuclear war. The dust, ash and soot caused by nuclear explosions would reflect the sun's heat back into space causing a rapid decline in global temperatures. The well-respected Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that a limited nuclear war such as one between India and Pakistan would create enough ash to cool the Earth by 1 degree Centigrade. A strategic nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia could lower temperatures by as much as 8 degrees Centigrade, to below the temperatures of the last Ice Age.

As the planet cooled, the impact of nuclear war would spread in countless ways. The most important result would be global famine. Colder temperatures would lead to shorter growing seasons and lower crop yields. Less heat would mean colder oceans, less evaporation, and less rain. There would be fewer ice-free ports and more frozen rivers. Solar and hydroelectric power production would decline. A nuclear war would also wreak havoc on global supply chains and cause shortages far greater than those experienced during COVID-19.

The proponents of war in Ukraine for "as long as it takes" make three dubious assumptions, each more dangerous than the last. The first is the belief that Russia will never use tactical nuclear weapons because it would provoke an overwhelming conventional response. The second is the notion that any nuclear exchange would be contained, and the third is the assumption that even a major nuclear exchange would be survivable.

In Moscow, the war is regarded as an existential struggle and a cornered snake will strike even if you hold a large stick. No Russian government, current or likely in the future, will accept outright defeat. During his speech at Moscow's Valdai Discussion Club last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that as long as nuclear weapons exist, there will always be a danger that they could be used. Dozens of nuclear war simulations, some of which we participated in, have consistently demonstrated that "limited" nuclear conflicts usually escalate into strategic exchanges. Moreover, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, predicts an immediate death toll of 27,000,000 from even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan with an all-out exchange between Russia and the United State ending the world as we know it.

The Russian withdrawal from Kherson was a tactical retreat in preparation for a major offensive once the ground freezes. Nevertheless, we still have time to end this proxy war between NATO and Russia before we stumble into a major conflict. The recent incident in Poland in which two people were killed in an explosion (which is still unfolding) shows just how easily that could happen. The proposition that Russia must withdraw from all occupied territory before negotiations can begin is a non-starter. Russian withdrawal and Ukrainian neutrality are precisely the issues that need to be negotiated. The United States is Ukraine's quartermaster. The notion that we have no say in how this conflict ends in disingenuous. It is time to call in our diplomats.

David H. Rundell is a former Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the author of Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a former Political Advisor to the U.S. Central Command. A fluent Russian speaker, he served for fifteen years in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.