I’ve been asked to weigh in on whether Putin might resort to nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and if so, what happens then?
First let me restate that my record of predictions regarding Putin’s behavior is abysmal. I thought he was bluffing right up to the day of the Ukraine invasion, and he has since crossed every line I was sure he’d never cross.
I was right, however, that he had nothing to gain from any of it. This has been abundantly demonstrated, beyond my — or anyone’s — imagination. He has committed blunders of Shakespearean proportions.
Which is why his petulant nuke-rattling is so unnerving to any rational human, especially those of us who remember the “air-raid drills” of our youth. It was in the fifties and sixties, at the height of the Cold War. We’d hear the famous siren, the cue for our whole class to walk, not run, down to the school basement, where we’d face the wall and throw spitballs while awaiting nuclear annihilation. Which, I’m pleased to say, never came.
But at the time, this nuclear threat was the background hum of American society. It pervaded the culture — all kinds of doomsday scenarios played out in our movies, TV shows, magazines, books, and nightmares. We absorbed words like ‘megaton,’ ‘mushroom cloud,’ and ‘brinkmanship,’ and we all grew comfortable with the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD), the idea that any nuclear strike would trigger instant retaliation in kind — which wouldn’t work out well for anyone.
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