When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
InterNations
FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Russia Flirts With The End Of "Mutually Assured Destruction"

Retired Major-General Alexander Vladimirov wrote the Russian “war bible.” His words have weight. Now he has declared that the use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine is inevitable, citing a justification that consigns the principle of deterrence to the history books.

Russia Flirts With The End Of "Mutually Assured Destruction"

Rehearsal for the Victory Day parade on May 7, 2023, in Moscow, a Russian MIRV-equipped thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile.

Vlad Karkov/SOPA Images via ZUMA
Slavoj Žižek

Updated on Sep. 19, 2023 at 4 p.m.

-Analysis-

LJUBLJANANuclear war is the “inevitable” conclusion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That's the opinion of retired Major-General Alexander Vladimirov, from an interview he gave last week to the journalist Vladislav Shurygin, and reported by the British tabloid The Daily Mail.

The retired general and author of the General Theory of War, which is seen in Moscow as the nation's "war bible," warned: “For the transition to the use of weapons of mass destruction, only one thing is needed – a political decision by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief [Vladimir Putin].” According to Vladimirov, “the goals of Russia and the goals of the West are their survival and historical eternity.”

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

Sign up to our free daily newsletter.

That means, he concludes, that they will use all methods at their disposal in this conflict, including nuclear weapons. “I am sure that nuclear weapons will be used in this war – inevitably, and from this, neither we nor the enemy have anywhere to go.”

Recently, Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer sparked outrage in India because it contained an intimate scene that made reference to the Bhagavad Gita. Many people took to Twitter to ask how the censor board could have approved this scene. A press release from the Save Culture, Save India Foundation read: “We do not know the motivation and logic behind this unnecessary scene on life of a scientist. A scene in the movie shows a woman making a man read Bhagwad Geeta aloud (during) sexual intercourse.”

My response to this scene is precisely the opposite: the Bhagavad Gita portrays cruel acts of military slaughter as a sacred duty, so instead we should be protesting that a tender act of bodily passion has been sullied by associating it with a spiritual obscenity. We should be outraged at the evil of “spiritualizing” physical desire.

Isn’t Vladimirov doing something similar in this interview? He is seeking to somehow elevate a (self-destructive, murderous) passion by couching it in obtuse terms such as “historical eternity.”


Abandoning "Mutually Assured Destruction"

However, his pronouncement should not be dismissed as mere bluster, or a strategic threat. Even if it is meant as such, Vladimirov’s prophecy has its own internal logic. It abandons the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which ensured we avoided nuclear disaster throughout the Cold War, instead portraying the destruction of both sides as inevitable, because “neither we nor the enemy have anywhere to go.”

It is not about determining who is guilty, because this is about fate, about a life-and-death struggle.

Then there is the claim that “the goals of Russia and the goals of the West are their survival and historical eternity.” What does the strange phrase “historical eternity” mean here? It implies that, as Vladimirov sees it, both countries are faced with drastic, existential choices: as if both Ukraine and Russia were fighting for their survival, and therefore they had no other way out except for nuclear war (Russia is threatening the identity and existence of Ukraine, whereas no one is trying to redraw Russia’s borders).

Russia is only fighting for its survival if we understand “Russia” to mean the much larger area that formerly made up Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union – the idea of “historical eternity” relates to this eternal conception of Greater Russia. That is exactly why Vladimirov doesn’t talk about Russia’s right to defend itself against a Ukrainian attack. It is not about determining who is guilty, because this is about fate, about a life-and-death struggle, in which trivial questions such as “Who started it?” don’t matter.

What can we do?

So what can we do in a situation like this? Firstly, we should examine it closely, so that we can identify signs that might point in a different direction from the oversimplified outcome that Vladimirov has put forward. In early September, reports emerged that Cuba had discovered a human trafficking ring aimed at recruiting Cubans to fight as mercenaries for Russia in its war in Ukraine. The Cuban foreign ministry released a statement explaining that the authorities were working on “the neutralization and dismantling” of the network, which operates both in Cuba and within Russia.

Of course that begs the question: Has Cuba, a country in which all areas of life are under strict state control, really only just uncovered this human trafficking ring? The Cuban authorities must have known about it for some time. So the real question is: Why has the Cuban government decided to reveal this “discovery” now? Is it a sign that even Cuba, which had actively supported Russia in its war against Ukraine, is now distancing itself from Russia’s dangerous venture?

The only approach that combines principles and pragmatism is to take note of Russia’s nuclear threat, but ignore it on the level of diplomacy and military strategy. The worst option would be to give in to Russia’s attempts to intimidate, to argue that we should try to avoid provoking Russia.

We should simply continue to support Ukraine, while at the same time making it clear that no one is trying to annex any part of Russian territory (of course recognizing Ukraine’s borders before the occupation of Crimea). Russia should be forced into a position where it is clear that if it uses nuclear weapons, it has chosen to do so of its own free will, not in response to a threat to its territorial integrity.

Photograph of President John F. Kennedy and Chairman Nikita Khrushchev during their meeting in Vienna, Austria.

President John F. Kennedy and Chairman Nikita Khrushchev during their meeting in Vienna, Austria, in 1961.

Stanley Tretick/Wikimedia

Strange times

We live in strange times, in which the possibility of global nuclear war is treated as a threat on a similar level to the culture wars that pit populist neoconservatives against cancel culture. At the same time, life in the developed West seems to be largely carrying on as usual – Europeans’ main worries this past summer were bad weather and disrupting flights that might ruin their holiday plans.

It's possible that we will all perish in a nuclear war, but what really irritates us is cancel culture.

Our true madness lies in this peaceful coexistence of radically different possibilities: it is possible that we will all perish in a nuclear war, but what really irritates us is cancel culture or provocative statements from populists.

And in the end, even that isn’t really important to us; only our day-to-day life matters. From a rational perspective, we know that the problems on these three levels (to say nothing of the environmental disaster) are linked, but we continue to act as if they have nothing to do with each other.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Future

AI And War: Inside The Pentagon's $1.8 Billion Bet On Artificial Intelligence

Putting the latest AI breakthroughs at the service of national security raises major practical and ethical questions for the Pentagon.

Photo of a drone on the tarmac during a military exercise near Vícenice, in the Czech Republic

Drone on the tarmac during a military exercise near Vícenice, in the Czech Republic

Sarah Scoles

Number 4 Hamilton Place is a be-columned building in central London, home to the Royal Aeronautical Society and four floors of event space. In May, the early 20th-century Edwardian townhouse hosted a decidedly more modern meeting: Defense officials, contractors, and academics from around the world gathered to discuss the future of military air and space technology.

Things soon went awry. At that conference, Tucker Hamilton, chief of AI test and operations for the United States Air Force, seemed to describe a disturbing simulation in which an AI-enabled drone had been tasked with taking down missile sites. But when a human operator started interfering with that objective, he said, the drone killed its operator, and cut the communications system.

Keep reading...Show less

The latest