What Does WWIII Look Like?
Nobody asked me, but it looks a lot like I and II with a savage nuclear twist
World War III has begun.
The barbarous assaults on civilians in Ukraine have resurrected the undead evils of the previous wars.
As in WWII, this one begins as an Eastern Europe border dispute with the consummation of a love affair between two totalitarian states united against a common enemy: freedom.
Stalin married Hitler for convenience. Now, Xi backs Putin.
As in the two previous world wars, we see unprovoked attacks on sovereign states, outrageous lies, millions of refugees.
What’s new is that the West now finds itself a victim not just of a natural desire to avoid foreign entanglements, but nuclear extortion.
Will WWIII bring revolutions and imperial collapse, as did WWI? Or will it end with an expansion of totalitarian states, as did WWII?
Yes, we are supplying arms to the citizens of Ukraine. I hope that our under-the-table flashy technology is being put to use. We have spent many hundreds of billions on it; why should it not be used to defend the free?
Are we doing enough? Has the Biden-Obama-Clinton khvost kneecapped the dark world?
All the careful people say confronting Russia directly risks nuclear war. Where is the line? Can we send drones and air defense systems, but not airplanes? Why?
Can we send weapons systems that can take out military launch systems within the Russian border? Why not?
Not even the once-daring Israelis venture to challenge Russia. Post-Netanyahu Israel refuses to lend Ukraine its Iron Dome protection systems. Why?
We’ve steadfastly refused to #ClearTheSky, even as horrific images of Ukraine’s devastated hospitals and shelters flash on our screens. Does an American or Ukrainian face looking a Russian soldier in the eye make all the difference? Why? Why is that different from sending in drones?
Truth be told, our president dares not extend effective help. The horrible Hunter Biden emails reveal a family shamelessly selling influence. Hunter, promoting family business deals, accompanied his father on diplomatic trips. Is Biden a Mexican-style president ? Or worse, a puppet of Russia and China?
I don’t want to believe it. It really is too awful to think about.
Better to focus on what the other side is doing.
Putin, as a Ukrainian parliament member told NPR, is forcing Ukrainians into Russia. The well-based fear is that Putin means to re-establish the gulags of Stalin.
If you’ve read Solzhenitsyn, you can understand the Ukrainians’ determination to resist to the death.
Freedom is not “just another word” for anything.
And after all this, who will be left standing?
If America averts its eyes, will Putin next attack Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Moldova Romania — all the countries freed so recently? Will Russia try to annex the rest of Finland, after being forced by WWII resistance fighters on skis to limit its appetite to Karelia?
Why not?
Who’s to stop a nuclear bully?
After World War I, the simultaneous collapse of the Austria-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman, and British empires laid the ground for Nazi Germany’s near-total conquest of Europe in World War II. Russia came out a winner. But socialism brought stagnation, and 44 years later the Iron Curtain was pulled apart, stone by socialist stone.
When I was a child in the ‘50s and ‘60s, my parents took me to visit neighbors’ bomb shelters. How horrible, I thought, to live underground in a windowless place for a whole year, eating canned food.
Then came the school drop drills. When the town sirens wailed, we fourth-graders ducked under our desks and clasped our hands over our heads to fend off shards of glass as nuclear explosions shattered our classroom windows.
At night, I could not sleep. I was tormented by the vision of a giant wall of fire heading toward me at blazing speed from Khrushchev’s nuclear bombs.
Somehow, the fears receded. Talking helped, along with the strategic doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Ah, but today’s nuclear weapons are smaller, they say. Everyday Kremlin strategies incorporate them.
Perhaps the world is still not civilized enough to forego nuclear weapons.
In fact, our planners contemplate it in all its excruciating possibilities. The nuclear tests of previous decades have been carefully studied. We can now map blast patterns and predict radioactive fallout plumes with some precision, depending on the prevailing winds.
Here’s a draft, not-for-distribution document for first responders that somehow managed to find its way to the Web.
I do hope that, like the Swiss, you have access to an underground radiation-shielded bomb shelter. Be sure to stock it with food and water. Bear in mind that water and power may be disrupted. In any case, you should not expect help until the radiation readings are down.
You do, of course, have some means of measuring radiation? And a radiation-proof room?
Heaven have mercy on us all.