The liberals will get us nuked

Utopian interventionism courts Armageddon in Ukraine

Nuclear weapons today are hundreds of times more powerful than those used in 1945.

Bismarck prophesied in 1888 that “one day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” It came to pass in 1914 when an act of Serbian terrorism finally caused the great powers of Europe to collapse upon one another. Four years later, more than 14 million lay dead. The lessons of that war — a war which few wanted, and many struggled in vain to fend off — loomed large over the following decades. Yet they were misapplied in the 1930s to a new German threat, distinct from the Kaiser, which knew only the language of deterrence. And thus the mistakes which led to the Second World War, in turn, instilled the paradoxical orthodoxy that war is caused by the avoidance of conflict. Therefore, says the received wisdom, every potential enemy must be stood up against and every thug deposed. Confrontation, not diplomacy, is the modus operandi of modern foreign policy.

It is not that this reading of the Second World War’s causes is wrong: it is correct. The point is that this narrative — of Hitler against Churchill; and fascism against freedom — is now the only lens through which all of the West’s foreign and domestic enemies are viewed. Indeed, the term “fascist” is now a byword for a modern enemy. The neoconservatives of the post-9/11 period referred to the Islamist foes of their interventions as “Islamofascists”. The modern left uses “fascism” as a general slur to which all dissenters from its tiresome identitarianism are subject. Associating one’s enemy with Hitler is the standard means by which Western man now presents his enemy as Evil and, importantly, casts himself on the side of Good. Vitally, the Hitler Analogy, through the profound demons it conjures, implies that no compromise is negotiable. Its innermost principle is that of confrontation — the impending need to destroy the enemy, whatever the cost. It infers the very logic of Armageddon.

A nation divided: Ukraine’s civil war

It is within this paradigm that the Russo-Ukrainian War has been interpreted. Putin’s reckless escalation of the war in February 2022 brought a new, potent version of the Hitler Analogy to the fore of mainstream discourse, replacing overnight the vapid dogmas of the Covid era. The new orthodoxy told us that Putin, like Hitler, wants territory: once he has taken Ukraine, he will seize Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. Like Hitler in the 1930s, he must be confronted now to stem the expansion. Western leadership and media have echoed endlessly this notion that the Free World itself is under threat. Endless news articles have repeated the dogma that “Putin won’t stop at Ukraine!” The facts of the conflict are immaterial to the narrative. Never mind that Russia’s GDP is smaller than Italy’s. Never mind that NATO’s capacity to defeat the Russian military on the conventional battlefield is unquestionable¹. Never mind that Russia’s attempt at wholesale invasion collapsed within weeks to only a moderate expansion beyond the territories it has occupied since 2014. The idealism of the romantic fight against a new fascist imperialism persists in spite of reality.

Yet this war is de facto localised. The conflict remains entrenched in the same fundamental dynamic in which it was born: a harrowing struggle over territories in eastern Ukraine that are vital to Russia’s sense of strategic defence on its western flank, and whose peoples are torn between the competing kinships of modern Ukrainian nationalism and ancient historical allegiance to Russia. The political disharmony of the Ukrainian nation has in fact always been the foundation of this war. As Henry Kissinger — a man of profound intellect and experience — explained in a prescient essay of 2014:

“The west is largely Catholic; the east largely Russian Orthodox. The west speaks Ukrainian; the east speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other — as has been the pattern — would lead eventually to civil war or break up. To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West — especially Russia and Europe — into a cooperative international system.”

The civil war began in 2014 with the Euromaidan affair. Having attempted for years to bring Ukraine decisively into the Western orbit, the European Union urged the Russian-leaning government to agree to a closer relationship. Importantly, this followed two decades of NATO’s eastwards expansion, contrary to the explicit promises made to the Russians after the Cold War. When the elected Ukrainian government decided to reject the deal, it was overthrown in a Western-backed coup. A US-chosen government was installed in its stead. Almost immediately, the new government revoked minority language laws, relegating the Russian language of eastern Ukraine to a cultural sub-class.²

Russia immediately annexed Crimea, and backed, with increasing aggression, a vast organic separatist movement in eastern Ukraine. By 2015, the Ukrainian government claimed to be fighting 42,500 soldiers, of which it estimated only 9,000 to be Russian. The remaining 33,500 were eastern Ukrainian separatists. Indeed, the then-Chief of Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, General Muzhenko, admitted in January 2015 that the “Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army.” The separatist fighters of Donetsk, Luhansk and the Donbas have, from the start, been ideologically committed against the western Ukrainian government. According to the commanders of Donetsk, they fight for "Russky Mir” (“Russian culture”) and to rid Ukraine of “Nazis” and “fascists”. This latter aspect is a core motif of the separatists’ creed. The conflict is inherently a civil war, started and fuelled by a latent fissure between the historically distinct peoples that cohabit a single nation.

Realism vs idealism: the wisdom of Henry Kissinger

As Kissinger assesses, Putin’s folly, like ours, lies in his failure to attend to the complexity of this difference: he has attempted to impose by force the rule of the east upon the west. Like that of the eastern separatists, the spirit of western Ukrainian nationalism is a force unto itself. Indeed, many in the eastern regions share that Ukrainian nationalism. But millions do not — and US policy has repeatedly failed to address the extent of this division. Kissinger writes:

"Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going?…A wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction. Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine, have not acted on this principle. Each has made the situation worse.”

Kissinger is a realist. He understands the different actors in this war, and discerns sensible, balanced middle-grounds between the polarities. As he states, the test in such intractable conflicts as these “is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction.” This is the art of the statesman — to recognise the irreconcilable differences and shared interests, and to light a path to peace through the minefield of those nuances. By contrast, the Western liberals that dominate mainstream discourse are idealists. The subjective values of the “rules-based order” reign supreme, and the Western political lens stands as the uncompromising judge, around which nothing can be brokered. It is founded on a utopianism that neglects the way the world is in favour of a resolute vision for how it ought to be.

And thus the idealists have refracted this conflict through the lens of a simplistic morality tale: a national struggle between liberal Ukraine (the Allies) and illiberal Russia (the Axis). The real-world nuances of a nation riven with a deep geographic and cultural divide are ignored. And in the absence of intelligent statesmen grounded in the facts, the West has pursued a strategy of blunt-instrument confrontation that aggravates this very divide. We have funnelled weapons and money into the western Ukrainian wing since 2014. The extent of the support increased drastically after the invasion in February. In early October, Biden announced that the US will give another $625 million in military aid to Ukrainian forces, tweeting that the US would “never recognise” Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory. The policy, from the very start, has not even made the pretence of seeking peace. The West, led by the US, has acted through the Ukrainian military against Russia, intentionally exploiting the opportunity to kill Russian soldiers and humiliate their civilisation on the global stage. In April, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated unashamedly that Washington’s goal in the war was to “weaken” Russia. So hungry are Western policymakers to punish and corner Putin that they urged Zelensky in April to not negotiate with the Russians, even when sensible peace terms were offered.

“US experts believe that we are already well inside the modelled parameters for a nuclear exchange…The real danger lies in Russia viewing the total, or even partial, collapse of its army as the alarm bell for an existential capitulation to NATO.”

A Foreign Affairs article cited senior US officials, stating: “In April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement.” According to the draft settlement, Russia would withdraw to its former positions in Crimea and the Donbas. In return, “Ukraine would “promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.” It was Boris Johnson that convinced Zelensky to turn this deal down. I will let the reader speculate as to why he may have done that. The true human toll of this act will not be known for many years. The deliberate and cynical continuation of the war is a symptom of another of Kissinger’s astute observations: “For the West, the demonisation of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” Without a meaningful, ends-based strategy, we are left only with the shadow of a strategy — one that is cynical and seeks aggression for its own sake. Not only do the cheap politicians of the modern era lack a vision for peace; they latch on to war as if it is a moral end-state in itself. The support for Ukraine is undertaken in the name of liberal democracy and under the guise of Second World War-style heroism; and yet at its core lies a dangerous, ignorant vapidity.

Danger close: the nuclear exchange

But where does it all lead, this refusal to abide the very notion of diplomacy? The answer is that it leads quite easily to nuclear war. We have already taken several important steps down that road. Zelensky, urged on by his Western backers, has repeatedly rejected Putin’s offers of peace. It is clear that Putin in fact wants an end to this war, and has done since the true consequences of his strategic errors became apparent in March this year. But now, with Russian lines having partially collapsed around Kherson Oblast and even in western Luhansk, the war enters a new and extremely dangerous phase.

The possibility of a grinding, attritional Russian withdrawal eastwards presents Putin — and the West — with two interconnected problems. First, Putin’s grip on domestic power depends on his not losing the war. Contrary to the claims of Western media, the war is astoundingly popular in Russia, and Putin has maintained approval ratings around 85%. The West’s provision of immense material and political support to the Ukrainian government, along with the sanctions against Russia, have only hardened that support further. The Russian people, especially the working class, now idealise the war as a spiritual struggle between Orthodox Russia and the expanding power of imperial Western liberalism. Putin’s survival is thus dependent on his ability to maintain a territorial buffer in eastern Ukraine. Second, the true domestic political pressure on Putin comes not from the anti-war camp, but from the Russian nationalist right. Adamant that the struggle in Ukraine is existential for Russia, this faction increasingly implores Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Hence we now see increasingly that Putin’s calls for negotiation are infused with not-so-veiled threats of nuclear escalation. In mid-October he warned of a “global catastrophe” if the West tries to “push him into a corner”. These threats should be seen as pragmatic, serious warnings of a course of action that is integral to the Russian planning calculus. The motive for using nuclear weapons would be to prevent the total collapse of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine, and thereby prevent the dethroning of Putin. And that logic of defensive nuclear action is spurred on ever harder by some of the most influential political voices in Russia.

Indeed, US experts believe that we are already well inside the modelled parameters for a nuclear exchange. As Elbridge Colby, a former lead official in the US Defense Department and co-founder of the Marathon Initiative, states:

“This is redolent of the kind of scenarios I have participated in over the years where Russia does use a nuclear weapon….The Russians have something in the order of 5,000 or more nuclear weapons³, as Putin himself pointed out. In many respects they are more modern than our own [US and British nuclear weapons]."

The Russians invested significantly in refurbishing their nuclear deterrent from the 2000s onwards. Importantly, it has developed low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons that can destroy a town, but which inflict deliberately reduced damage in support of limited military aims. They are designed to act as an intermediary between conventional force and nuclear Armageddon. Colby explains that the real danger lies in Russia viewing the total, or even partial, collapse of its army as the alarm bell for an existential capitulation to NATO. As we have seen, this is not merely to do with Putin’s individual “mindset”. Competing political influences — and the zeitgeist of the Russian nation as a whole — are vital to his calculations and actions. One particular modelled scenario sees Russia dropping a tactical nuclear weapon onto a small civilian target in Ukraine, or a major pan-NATO base in Eastern Europe. The human toll would be devastating, with the loss of tens of thousands. But the equally important point is what happens next. Does the US then drop its own nuclear weapons on Russian military targets in retaliation? And what type of Russian response does this beget in turn?

To not retaliate would be to admit defeat to Russian nuclear aggression. To respond in kind could, with terrifying speed and ease, lead to the destruction of New York, Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, and any other city you can think of, within hours and even minutes of each other. The weapon that destroyed Hiroshima killed 140,000 people. Modern nuclear armaments are literally hundreds of times more powerful than this. Dropping only a few of them will kill hundreds of millions; and dozens of them — a probable scenario in the chaos and fog of nuclear war — will end life on Earth.

Blind man’s bluff

We keep getting told by vacuous talkshow hosts and deeply unimpressive politicians that we should “call Putin’s bluff”. Veli-Pekka Kivimäki, a senior analyst to the Finnish government, captured the spirit of this narrative on Twitter:

“Repeating nuclear scare talk is the same as amplifying Russia’s coercive messaging. Support Ukraine and move on.”

“Move on” to what, exactly? Blue-tick Twitter abounds with this strangely reckless attitude to global destruction. The head of GCHQ, the British cyber intelligence agency, claimed recently that we should not be worried since no evidence has been seen of the Russians moving nuclear launchers forward. Well, what a relief, indeed! The point, surely, is not whether intelligence points towards the imminent deployment of nuclear weapons, but that the situation generally is deteriorating at pace. As Orwell told us, the direction of travel is what truly counts.

The desire to continue this cornering act against Putin is also predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why a nuclear exchange would unfold. The Russians would not use a tactical nuclear weapon in order to bring on Armageddon. They do not want this. Rather, such a weapon would be employed as part of a rational military scheme with limited and specific ends. It would be intended to relieve pressure on the Russian army by shocking and intimidating Ukraine and its Western backers. Indeed, such a strategy might actually work. But it could just as easily turn into a nightmare. A core lesson from the Cold War was the potential for miscalculation and human error, with several near-misses courting doom. Just as Putin appallingly misjudged the assault on Kiev in February, so too could he misjudge the Western response to a low-yield nuclear strike. The drastically weakened calibre of Western leadership is also a vital consideration in all of this. Putin has told us explicitly that he is “not bluffing”. It is only hubristic Western popinjays that keep insisting he is. Many of our own experts are adamant that he is not bluffing, and it is wise to treat these threats with the utmost sincerity.

Revolution and utopia

But Western reason is blinded here by a whole arsenal of new political orthodoxies. Zelensky has acquired rockstar status: the great and the good of the Western nations clamour for his attention. Those that urge a policy of peace are dismissed childishly as “appeasers” and “apologists”. Across the West, the Ukrainian flag adorns street corners, painted faces and Twitter handles. Close your eyes, and that symbol could be replaced quite easily with any other emblem of the modern left: the EU flag; the Pride colours; or the BLM fist. They all signal the same tedious shibboleths of the liberal creed. The West stumbles from one compulsory cause of phoney solidarity to another, each more obscure — and more dangerous — than the last.

Indeed, this is but the latest manifestation of a deeper political trend among Western liberals. As the British author Peter Hitchens observes, “the left has found a new source of utopian hope” in liberal interventions. For the generation of 1960s Trotskyists, of which Anthony Blair was part, the thwarted utopianism of revolutionary Marxism has now been transposed onto modern liberalism. The ideals of revolutionary change in foreign lands have found expression in every modern intervention, from Kosovo, to Iraq, to Libya. The explicit aim in each of these has been the deposition of some “illiberal” order and the imposition of a liberal one.⁴ And this utopianism is propelled by sweeping, simplistic moral narratives that treat fact itself as malleable. Nowhere have these interventions successfully implemented the ideals on which they were launched.

In Ukraine, too, the facts have been distorted and censored by the idealists to fit a self-congratulatory narrative. The conflict’s complex origins, founded in a civil war, are hidden behind the simplistic vanity of the Hitler Analogy, which not only obscures the true nature of one’s enemy, but casts oneself as unquestionably on The Right Side of History. It is from this false pedestal that the idealists pursue a policy of war and death in which peace settlements are actively scorned, and the price is paid in other people’s blood. As ever, the final answers to the great questions of war and peace lie only with the realist, who obeys the natural laws of fact, human nature, pragmatism, and good sense. He draws his conclusions from the way world is, not how he wishes it to be. The idealist, forever in search of utopia, is frustrated to find that the world will not accommodate his moral sensibilities. Hence Henry Kissinger warns:

“In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.”

Bismarck, too, understood this principle: that war gathers an inexorable momentum that escalates independently of the moral ideals on which it was started. It was a damned foolish thing to blunder into a terrible European war in August 1914. And it would be a damned foolish thing to blunder into a nuclear war a hundred years later, in a land not so far from where Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke and his wife on that fateful June day.

1. The historian Victor Davis Hanson argues that NATO would easily defeat Russia outside of her borders, but that NATO would be defeated inside her borders by the immense spiritual and material resources of the Russian nation.

2. Even recently, new laws have tightened restrictions on the public and institutional use of the Russian language.

3. Russia is estimated elsewhere to have an arsenal of more than 6,000 nuclear weapons.

4. Regime-change in Russia is in fact the ultimate end of US policy in Ukraine. The danger, as many analysts recognise and which recent history elsewhere has shown, is the usurpation of Putin by even darker forces inside Russia.