January 3, 2016

The Doomsday Clock
Last year, on January 22, 2015 to be precise, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the Doomsday Clock to 3 minutes before midnight, a metaphor to indicate how close our species is to extinction. Among other things, the scientists are (correctly) concerned with climate change and the budding three-way nuclear arms race involving mainly, but not exclusively, the United States, Russia and China. The reasons for this antagonistic animosity are numerous and complex regarding how these nations value their core interests, particularly oil. We have already discussed the situation in the South China Sea, pitting China against some of its surrounding neighbors supported by the U.S. Now it’s time to focus on the Eastern or Southwestern Front, depending on one’s point of view.

Historical Facts
Hitler’s failed Operation Barbarossa, the main purpose of which was to conquer living space and natural resources –particularly oil- for Germany, left the Soviet Union in ruins. At its height in November 1942, the front stretched from Leningrad on the Baltic Sea to Rostov-on-the Don, about 943 miles (1517 km) as the crow flies. The Germans occupied, exploited and leveled all of Byelorussia, most of the Ukraine, and a small portion of western Russia proper, including the Crimea, which at that time was part of Russia, not the Ukraine. As for Soviet casualties, the numbers are truly eye popping: 11 millions soldiers (killed or missing) and somewhere between 7 million and 20 million civilians dead. In comparison, the United States lost 139,380 soldiers (killed and missing) fighting Germany, and virtually no civilians. In 1941, when they went to war against Germany, the populations of Russia and the U.S. were about the same, 130 million. The difference is that for every American soldier killed, the Russians lost eighty, all with primitive weapons by today’s standards. Even General Eisenhower was appalled at what he saw when he visited Russia after the war, and wrote:

“When we flew into Russia, in 1945, I did not see a house standing between the western borders of the country and the area around Moscow. Through this overrun region, Marshal Zhukov told me, so many numbers of women, children and old men had been killed that the Russian Government would never be able to estimate the total.”

Cold War 2
Practically every Russian family lost someone during the war, so it’s not difficult to understand why so many ordinary Russians and leaders reflexively view NATO’s possible expansion to the Ukraine as an existential threat. After all, they paid for their victory over Germany’s invasion with abundant Russian blood, and they’re not about to desecrate or squander that legacy.

Secondly, the distance from Shostka in northeast Ukraine –about 114 miles (184 km) west-northwest of Kursk, site of the biggest tank battle in history- to Moscow is about 317 miles (511 km). This is just a few minutes flight time for any number of short-range nuclear missiles, the equivalent of putting a loaded, cocked 12-gauge shotgun on a person’s head. As to how the Russian government would react should that happen, there’s a good historical example. In 1962 President Kennedy was willing to go to war because the Soviets had deployed antique (by today’s standards) medium range missiles in Cuba, 1,134 miles (1,826 km) from Washington D.C. –almost four times the distance from Shostka to Moscow.

As if to reinforce Secretary Hagel’s statement on the subject, the U.S. will spend as much as $1 trillion (it is a mystery where the money will come from) over the next thirty years modernizing America’s nuclear weapons. Under the circumstances, President Putin, who is also renovating and expanding his country’s armed forces, including the navy, for the first time explicitly named the U.S. a threat to Russia’s national security.

These are not esoteric or classified facts, therefore the ruling civilian and military elites are well aware of the high risk these policies entail. Which begs the question: what reward could possibly be big enough to justify taking a risk of that magnitude? Perhaps some believe that Russia, coerced and paralyzed by economic/financial pressures, would capitulate without a fight. In that case, they apparently hope, the subsequent internal turmoil would cause the entire Russian Federation to collapse, just like the Soviet Union did, and the surviving remnants –along with their oil and gas- would be absorbed as de facto vassals of the west. Further extrapolating, the ripple effect would spread to China: unable to access oil not controlled or owned outright by western energy multinationals, and hemmed in by a potential naval blockade, it would capitulate and accept western dominance as well.

The problem with this line of thinking is that both Russia and China might stand and fight, a terminal event for our species. All this over oil, which along with coal and gas are the main cause of anthropogenic climate change. Ironically then, it appears that for the foreseeable future the three powers will struggle to control carbon deposits they well know must be left in the ground -if we’re to survive. There’s too much money (and power) at stake.

Stopping The Madness
Already there have been numerous close calls over the years that could have resulted in all-out nuclear war. President Eisenhower, no stranger to the horrors of war, warned us in his Farewell Speech of the urgent need to disarm; the Treaty On The Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons requires nuclear armed signatory nations to ultimately eliminate them completely. Instead, the great powers are moving in the opposite direction.

The best way to put an end to the ominous antagonism is to replace fossil fuels with solar, hydrogen and gravity to generate the world’s electricity. They are free, constant, abundant and cannot be hoarded by anyone. Economy of scale from competitive mass production of hydrogen would eventually lower its price for mobile applications and make oil obsolete. All that’s required is a statement from China and India, the two most populous countries, to the effect that they would be willing to gradually convert their coal-fired plants to hydrogen and the whole world would scramble to meet their needs.