The Edge

Today’s Munich Security Conference has Europe on edge – as it should be. The name of the Ukraine derives from Ukraina (оукраина) the “borderland”, from the Proto-Slavic krajь, meaning the “edge”, and the internal war in Ukraine threatens to become the edge of a wider war – a Cold War 2.0

The reporting and commentary of Strategic Demands since our initial launch has focused on new definitions of national security. The banner under which we write speaks of Security being a mutual endeavor, “security is indivisible”, demanding points of view that are not ‘old world’ in the form of unquestioning nationalism that delivered historic wars, but rather a ‘new vision’ linked to a newly connected world, where peoples of the world go online and see, via the Internet, news and images of a 360° world.

The 20th century of nationalism has given way to a new millennium that promises historic change, much of which will be enabled by the world wide web. Even as ancient antagonisms, religious beliefs, tribal rivalries, petro money, blowback and cycles of revenge play out, we are on a historic stage with opportunities to move away from the past. The means and methods of the old ways are being replaced by another realm, where citizens can watch their representatives at work, online and live, now in Munich, and read their missives from the frontlines of negotiations in progress.

The current conference in Munich offers a test to take strategic affairs to the next level.

https://www.securityconference.de/en/activities/munich-security-conference/

The news carried up to the Security Conference  is replete with escalation, a ratcheting up of sanctions, armed conflict, quid pro quo threats, and most ominously the re-emergence of nuclear weapons in Europe and region, as development and deployment of next generation weapon systems spreads among the nuclear powers.

Looming large is the ‘modernization’ of next generation US Air systems, the largest weapons program in the nation’s history, the F-35, newly announced as carrying next generation B61-12 nuclear ‘smart’ guided weapons — which the Russian Federation is responding to with a broad front of military moves.

The ramifications are, in our considered opinion, to be seen in the Ukraine, the edge of a new, ‘modernized’ Cold War.

We have written of “provocation” in its most basic form —

To Provoke

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Our readers know too well of the historic provocations that led to World Wars 1 and 2 — the lessons learned carry over to today.

Munich — the name itself is ominous with the backdrop of Chamberlain’s pre-World War 2 mistakes in the Munich agreement. Experts in history, war, and strategic policy know that the road to war has gone through Munich.

There is a difference, however, between today’s “flashpoints” and the echoes of the Munich Sudetenland disaster. A “conventional” war is being fought in the Ukrainian Donbass region and not far removed are tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

Munich

Live reports from the Munich Security Conference

Our readers also know that, today, nuclear weapon arsenals, tactical and strategic, remain on ‘instant alert’ with response systems in place enabling a firing within minutes, a vestige of “mutually assured destruction” policies of the Cold War.

The “fail safe” of a pre-Cold War era of conventional weapons is no longer. The “fail safe” today is near at hand, literally in the hands of multiple countries with multiple policies, fallible technologies (“normal accidents: living with high risk”) — and less-than-secure nuclear response systems.

Nuclear delivery systems, redundant and deployed, are again expanding their capabilities — sea, land and air — destroyers with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, submarines in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Gulf with nuclear first- and second-strike response capabilities, forward-deployed nuclear land-based missiles and fighter/bomber nuclear weapons in the Middle East and across Europe.

The treaties that have been drawing down nuclear weapons, over the past two decades, are now in danger.

The removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, per treaty agreements, has stalled.

The risks and costs of the Ukrainian civil war are growing, across Europe and the world, as proliferation rises as a threat as calls to escalate grow.

It need not be said, but we will say, since in our reading of the popular press/media it is not being said, how fortunate it is that the Ukrainian nuclear weapons were removed by treaty (the Budapest Memorandum between the Ukraine, Russian Federation, UK, US, later with France and China.)

Yet, Ukraine’s nuclear capabilities were not removed even as its nuclear warheads/missiles were… Ukraine retains significant nuclear expertise, fuel cycle capabilities, and a large nuclear power program.

Although the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the world’s worst nuclear accident to-date, occurred in what is now Ukraine, the civil war has produced calls for the re-firing of the Ukrainian nuclear program — both as deterrent and offensive capability.

December 2014

Should Ukraine rewrite history and reacquire nuclear weapons? No and no.