By RUBEN BAUER NAVEIRA*
It is expected that deterrence will prevail due to the fear of mutual annihilation, and thus, even though nuclear war appears imminent, it may continue to be postponed
Faced with the tragic historical moment we have reached, this article proposes to think about the unthinkable – what our lives will be like in a post-nuclear war – and it is composed of five parts, to be published in five consecutive weeks, always on Fridays -fairs.
Save the dollar – or die with it
July 01, 1946 and August 29, 1949 are not dates recorded in history books; nevertheless, they delimit different eras of humanity's mentality regarding nuclear weapons.
Prior to July 01, 1946, the world's population was completely unaware of such weapons. Since the surrender of Japan in the Second World War on September 02, 1945, it was known that the United States had a new and formidable weapon that had impelled the Japanese to capitulate, but nothing was known about it, which remained secret. absolute military. Until, in the summer of 1946, the American military invited the world press to present to them the atomic bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which had immense repercussions throughout the world, so much so that the revolutionary (a “bomb”, for current customs) two-piece swimsuit launched at the time still bears the name of the unfortunate atoll.[1]
From that first of July onwards, the world's population came to know that the Americans had a superweapon at their disposal, which made them invincible before the rest of the world.
That supremacy would last for just three years. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first nuclear device, unleashing fury and witch hunt in the United States, which – along with the rest of the world – began to find itself faced with perspective of a nuclear war, a prospect so terrifying that it ended up leading to a context of mutual deterrence: knowing that the adversary had the power to completely annihilate their country, both Americans and Soviets came to the realization that a nuclear war would have no winners, and they began to consider their own nuclear arsenal only as a safeguard so that the adversary could never use his. Sharing this understanding, the rest of the world began to consider the possibility of a nuclear war as unacceptable, and everyone has slept peacefully ever since.
And they continue to sleep peacefully, no matter how much the geopolitical fire crackles louder every day. After all, no one would be stupid enough to start a nuclear war in which everyone would die – including those who triggered it. This text aims, however, to show that those historical conditions have changed, and that nuclear war is now not only possible but probable. By relying on mutual deterrence, however, almost all people will go into deep shock if and when nuclear war comes – and without any prior warning.
Parenthesis: although the meaning of “probable” is clear, it is worth highlighting: I am not saying that nuclear war will occur. What I am postulating is that there is more chance of it occurring than of not occurring. On what basis? Based on my personal reading of events. Close parentheses.
Mutual deterrence requires, more than anything, that decision-makers are rational: leaders who will not “push the button” under any circumstances since they know, rationally, that they will also die – and with them the population of their country. However, what has gone unnoticed is that we have entered an era in which decision-makers appear to have become irrational, especially in the so-called West. Let’s look at three contemporary examples:
(i) Germany has spent the last few decades structuring the country's energy security based on Russian natural gas, which is plentiful and cheap, as well as clean compared to the old coal and nuclear plants, which have been deactivated. However, as soon as the United States called on its European allies to unite against Russia, this was summarily discarded (nuclear energy and coal were even reactivated), with the country deindustrializing and the population becoming impoverished in the face of the abrupt rise in energy prices. energy.
The greatest symbol of this self-destructive process was the government's inaction in Berlin in the face of the terrorist destruction of the NordStream gas pipelines, which represented an energy death for Germany;
(ii) Israel, under the pretext of the October 07 attacks by Hamas, embarked on a campaign of open genocide of the Palestinian people, as well as an escalation of provocations against Iran to draw it into a large-scale war, and stubbornly maintains this course even in the face of its moral ruin and the resulting global isolation, and even though it has already become clear that not only will it not be possible to exterminate the Palestinians but that the Palestinian state will eventually be created,[2] with which the current Israeli government has greatly increased the risks futures for the continued existence of the state of Israel;
(iii) The United States has embarked on a massive campaign against Russia in Ukraine (economic sanctions that harm the West's own economy, billions of dollars in non-refundable military aid, explosion of the NordStream gas pipelines) with the stated aim of imposing a “ strategic defeat” to Russia, from which it would weaken and new destabilization movements could overthrow Vladimir Putin's government, leading to the subjugation of Russia. However, since June 2020 (two years before the invasion of Ukraine) Russian nuclear doctrine began to explicitly establish that nuclear weapons should be used by the Kremlin not only in retaliation for a nuclear attack, but also in the case of an “existential threat”. to Russia – well, what would the imposition of a “strategic defeat” on Russia be if not an existential threat to the country?
Were the United States counting on the fact that, in the event of Ukraine's (read NATO) victory in the war, the Russians would passively and resignedly give up on a nuclear response, which they had explicitly declared they would adopt? In any case, that American strategy will not succeed because Ukraine will not be able to defeat Russia militarily, but having it formulated and proposed was not at all prudent.
Much has already been written about the historical process of political degeneration in Western societies, with exacerbated individualism isolating people and undermining any possibility of consistent collective action. Solidarity requires empathy, the ability to be distressed by the suffering of others. In the face of the genocide in Gaza promoted by Israel or the slaughter in Baixada Santista by the São Paulo PM, there are those who rejoice, admitted fascists that they are, but there are many more who pay lip service to it because it is socially well-regarded, without losing the sleep however. It is worth pointing out that, no matter how intense the social and cultural pressures to conform to individualism are, the renunciation of identifying with others never ceases to be a choice.
It was to be expected that such social degradation would result in a numbness (indifference, more than tolerance) of societies regarding the process of ascension of their leaders and regarding their actions once in power (unless when these directly affect the individual). The other side of this coin is that, equally, a process of “leveling down” of the leaders themselves has been advancing. The comparison between the decrepit Biden or the narcissistic Trump (or Clinton, or Obama, or Bush Jr.) with a Carter, a Kennedy or an Eisenhower, or between the Rothschilds' errand boy Macron (or the nullity Hollande) and a Mitterrand, a de Gaulle or a Chirac is frankly unequal, and not in ideological terms (basically, they are all cut from the same cloth) but in terms of stature, of preparation for the responsibilities of the position (statesmanship).
The growing inability to adhere to rationality in what is strategic in the long term, in favor of convenience in what is circumstantial in the short term (and which in strategic terms in the long term will prove to be irrational) is symptomatic. It was no surprise that the last American governments scrapped all the arms containment agreements established over decades with the then Soviet Union (including NATO's non-expansion to the east, the trigger for the war in Ukraine), impoverishing global security. .
But this precariousness of rationality is not enough for us to predict the future event of nuclear war. In order to better understand it, it was presented in the first part of this text the theory of autopoiesis by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, which also allows us to understand another even more critical element: the role of the identity specific to each society (each country) in determining its actions.
We say that the behavior of government decision-makers is becoming “irrational”. Basically, it isn't. According to the theory of autopoiesis, “irrational” expresses our judgment as external observers, based on our identity, regarding their behavior:
(a) Germany's elites discern that what is at stake, ultimately, is the maintenance of status quo the unipolar world order in which financial turbocapitalism prevails and on which these elites depend at all costs, even above the risks of increases in energy prices for German industry;
(b) Israel is, broadly (even if there is some internal dissent), driven by the Biblical Zionist project of territorial expansion towards “great Israel”, the set of lands occupied by the ancestral Jewish peoples, and this identity blocks any position in contrary;
(c) American identity is founded on hegemony over the planet and the accumulation of wealth resulting from it; Thus, there is no limit to actions in defense of this hegemony – including militarily confronting the nuclear superpower that is Russia.
Autopoietically speaking, notions such as “homeland”, “national wealth”, “world”, “world order” or “war” are by no means absolute or universal; they are necessarily referenced based on the identity specific to each society, each country.
Let us take “stupidity” as a synonym for “irrationality”: Albert Einstein said that “two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; As far as the universe is concerned, I’m not completely sure.” No individual will see their own behavior as stupid (or as irrational), but here the external observer (Einstein) referred to the human species as a whole, as a way of expressing that human beings have a tendency to cling to their identities. (instead of predisposing to update them) even when they become clearly out of step with the circumstances of the environment, putting survival itself at risk.
In the same way as it was mentioned above that Russia will go to nuclear war in the event of a possible existential threat to the country, the same is true of the United States. The difference is that the United States will be (if it is not already) under direct existential threat.
Who actually holds power in the United States? Half a dozen families (in other words, family dynasties, generation after generation) that, through cross-shareholdings, have control of practically all large corporations in the USA, and that constitute the plutocracy that effectively “pulls the strings”. At the other end of the strings are the agents of this plutocracy, in the White House and its Departments, in Congress in both parties, in the Pentagon and in the military-industrial complex, in the media corporations, in the intelligence agencies, in the universities and think tanks. This complex web is called deep state (Deep State), that is, a government (the de facto government, even if not elected by anyone, and worse, acting in the shadows) that governs from within the government (the government of law, official, formal).
What is the historical identity (generation after generation…) of this plutocracy? The ever-increasing accumulation of wealth and power. To this end, the United States has been subjecting the rest of the world to economic plunder – in a word: hegemony. Hegemony is the expression of identity typical of the United States. This hegemony rests on two pillars, the dollar as a universal store of value and undisputed military power, and both are collapsing, and in an associated way (an eventual military humiliation of the Americans – and this is what is about to happen in Ukraine – it could be demoralizing to the point of worsening the process of abandoning the dollar throughout the world).
There is also, underlying, an auxiliary pillar – a “society in booty”, offered by the Americans to the economic elites of the countries as a kind of bribe for them to betray their desire for sovereignty and, instead, share the hegemonic interests of the USA.
The United States is the only country in the world (and in history) that can afford to have an infinite public deficit, because to refinance it they can simply print more money (dollars) without any collateral.[3] To do so, they need the rest of the world to acquire dollars, which in turn requires that practically all trade between countries be done in dollars (and Americans buy everything they need around the world by paying with the dollars they print and that the rest of the world needs to obtain). To ensure that no one questions this state of affairs, the United States needs to have armed forces that are feared by the rest of the world (there are over a thousand US military bases abroad, spread across the entire planet).
The American government's military spending corresponds to an immense and ever-increasing share of total public spending (as much as the armaments industry boosts the US GDP) contributing to making the public deficit increasingly stratospheric, with which the circle closes.
Those countries throughout the Global South that yearn for sovereignty, freeing themselves from the surrenderers in their elites, intend to put an end to their dependence on what is the instrument par excellence of hegemonic domination, the dollar. However, in this sense they need other countries to also emancipate themselves, but there is no feasibility for this in the short term.
The main precondition for the Global South to proceed massively with massive de-dollarization has not yet been met, which is the advent of a new reference currency, this time supranational, in a manner associated with the creation of an international payments system. that constitutes an alternative to the SWIFT system implemented and controlled by the Americans and their allies. Russia and China have been working intensely to launch such an alternative currency and system within the BRICS, and the crucial variable will be the timing with which they will be able to achieve this (there is an expectation of an announcement in this regard at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, next October; new countries joining the group will certainly be based on the determination of these countries to embark on this endeavor).
In any case, it can be said that the historical process of emancipation of those countries that still gravitate towards the American orbit out of fear of Washington's military power has already begun; This will ultimately lead to the abandonment of the dollar as the reference currency for world trade, which will lead to fatigue in the conditions for refinancing the American public deficit, which will lead to an unprecedented economic crisis, with deep and abrupt impoverishment of the American population, which will lead to the end of the institutions in that country as we know them if not to the end (disintegration) of the country itself. In a word: collapse.
And we are only dealing here with the economic collapse resulting from de-dollarization across the rest of the world. If we add to this factors such as the country's social disintegration resulting from increasingly radicalized polarization (driven by the attack on Donald Trump on July 13), what we have is a perfect storm culminating in collapse.
One day or another, the collapse will occur. How will the Americans react? Will they resign themselves to giving up their historical identity, becoming just another country among others, both impoverished and unprecedentedly subject to austerity policies, which will worsen impoverishment? Will they accept the reality of a multipolar world and participate in the construction, together with other countries, of a new, fairer and less unequal world order? Will they assimilate their loss of power with the dismantling of their hundreds of military bases spread across the globe, as they have become accustomed to believing that they are militarily unbeatable?
I don't believe they do.
And how will the plutocracy (who actually has the power to “push the nuclear button”) react? They, who have never known any other reality than that of the perpetual accumulation of more wealth and more power? Will they accept the demotion to the status of normal people? Will they accept the prospect of being held personally responsible for all the pain and suffering caused to Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Ukraine, Palestine and the rest of the world?
I believe even less.
Expressed in terms of autopoiesis of Maturana and Varela: in the name of their self-preservation as living beings, they will undertake to recreate their historical identity, transmuting it almost completely, in order to re-establish congruence with an external world that no longer allows them to maintain that historical identity ?
I consider something like this to be practically impossible to happen. Also in Maturana and Varela's terms, the life and identity of the living being are the same and unique thing, in such a way that a denial of identity is experienced in practice as death.
What the plutocracy will do in preserving its historical identity is to try to avoid collapse. However, there would be only one way to avoid it, which would be to “reset” the game (rewrite its rules), “erasing” the public debt of the United States as if it had never existed, which would require the submission of the remainder of the world, especially Russia and China, which would be the support for the rest of the world to resist such arbitrariness. In short, being able to rewrite the rules of the game required provoking a world war in order to, of course, win it (and, of course, without letting it reach the point of mutually devastating nuclear war).
In this sense, the identity of the United States incorporates a particularly harmful element: the American nuclear doctrine, focused on military supremacy like the rest of that identity, entails, unlike the Russian doctrine, the prerogative of the first strike, the right to a surprise nuclear attack to decapitate the enemy leadership (then Soviet, now Russian as well as Chinese) and to mitigate its retaliatory capabilities, without giving it time to react (it was for this reason that Russia could not tolerate the idea of nuclear missiles parked in Ukraine, a mere four-minute flight from Moscow).
To be able to complete the first strike, Americans have adopted measures such as:
– A significant fleet of aircraft was stationed in Europe Stealth (supposedly invisible to radar), in order to be able to use them in a surprise attack not only to launch nuclear bombs but also to suppress Russia's advanced anti-missile defenses;
– Converted four of their Ohio-class submarines (the USS Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Georgia), from ballistic missile launchers (each submarine carried 24 Trident missiles) to cruise missile launchers (each now carried 154 Tomahawk missiles) , more difficult to detect and which reach the target with greater precision;
– They introduced the technology they called “super fuze” in its warheads, whereby detonation occurs when reaching an optimal height above the target, with the deviation (trajectory inaccuracy) in relation to it having already been computed – which now allows less powerful warheads to ensure the destruction of targets with strong protected (like Russian missile launch silos);
– They have been carrying out a “miniaturization” of warheads (which could reach powers lower than that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), based on the premise that missiles that are more difficult to detect and that detonate at an optimal proximity to the target would ensure the annihilation of retaliatory capabilities Russian and Chinese even with less powerful warheads, thus minimizing the effects of the resulting nuclear winter.
Could this all be just a remnant of the Cold War era? Because the RAND Corporation, the think tanks par excellence to which the Pentagon has entrusted the formulation of its strategies for more than half a century (and which has always advocated for capabilities for a first strike), has just released (on 09/Feb/2024) a study entitled “Planning for the Aftermath”, containing guidelines to guide the American war effort after the war in Ukraine. Among the scenarios outlined, together with the proposal of appropriate actions for each of them, it is stated, on page 28: “[…] we assume that the United States adopts a strategy of nuclear superiority in the period after the war […] Washington pursues a position of strength that could, in a crisis, enable the United States to launch an attack that would destroy a vast volume of Russian and Chinese nuclear forces simultaneously, with the aim of minimizing the damage of any retaliatory attack.”[4] Yeah, first strike "source".
When will the hecatomb occur? In my opinion, for now, it will not happen. As long as the prospect of collapse does not materialize in a tangible way, the logic of mutual deterrence will continue to prevail, and not even the plutocracy that commands the deep state will bet on nuclear war. The time of collapse cannot be foreseen, it will most likely happen as a result of a cascade of linked events, and this is something that may or may not take time. It will only be when collapse breaks out or is already felt to be imminent that the plutocracy will give the order, either as a desperate attempt to turn the tide through a first strike (the most likely), or to destroy everything at once (the least likely, but not impossible).
However, given the escalation of serious provocations from the United States to Russia and China that we are all witnessing, several analysts came to understand that the Americans had decided to bet on provoking more and more until they obtained this war, to be fought in a conventional way, in a preferably through a third party (proxy) including Europeans to replace the decimated Ukrainians, and which would presumably escalate, at most, to a “limited” nuclear war, that is, with a level of destruction that is to some extent “endurable”.
For my part, I understand that such a stance on the part of the Americans is a reflection of a state of daze and exasperation, harbingers of despair, but I believe that the war will be triggered by this incremental path (after all, Russia is winning the war in Ukraine and so can refrain from retaliating directly against provocations, avoiding embarking on a dangerous and unpredictable escalation against the USA and choosing to retaliate against them in the indirect way that it has already been adopting, for example by delivering cutting-edge weapons to the enemies of the West).
Going to war along this path of incremental escalation would translate into an extreme degree of dissociation from reality, since it would be the most certain recipe for a total nuclear war with mutual annihilation – the most logical thing would be to bet on a first strike to be carried out in the most surreptitious way possible (José Luís Fiori in his article more recent also advocates this, including raising the hypothesis that the decision to launch the first strike may already have been taken). But anyway, as Einstein said, human stupidity is infinite, so anything is possible.
I ask you not to misunderstand me. I'm not saying that nuclear war will only happen with the collapse of the dollar, it could happen before, due to a myriad of factors (including by accident, or misinterpretation). I am also not saying that the collapse of the dollar will only happen with the advent of a new reference currency for international trade, it could happen before, due to factors related to the dysfunctionality of the American economy.
However, both these factors and others are unpredictable, so I prefer not to conjecture. The only thing that can be safely predicted is that the advent of the new currency will lead to a collapse of the dollar, and this will lead to a denial of the identity (the same as the death) of the plutocracy, which will almost certainly lead to nuclear war. . In the meantime (until the end of the dollar occurs) I have no way of predicting, but I believe that deterrence will prevail through fear of mutual annihilation, and thus, even though nuclear war appears imminent, it will continue to be postponed.
*Ruben Bauer Naveira He is a pacifist activist. Book author A new utopia for Brazil: Three guides to get out of chaos (available here).
To access the first article in this series, click https://dpp.cce.myftpupload.com/a-guerra-nuclear-causas-e-consequencias-i/
Notes
[1] The press was called upon to monitor a series of three nuclear tests. In the first of them, on July 01, 1946, journalists were kept at such a great distance that they were practically unable to take photographs, and had to make do with images provided by the military. In the second test, on July 25th, the bomb proved to be much more photogenic to them. The third test ended up being cancelled.
[2] See, for example, points 34 and 35 of the joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia) meeting on June 10, 2024 in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia), in English by the Ministry of External Affairs of India and in Local Guide by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In summary, these two points express, respectively, the condemnation by those countries of Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip and its disrespect for international laws and the deliberations of the United Nations and international courts; and the support of those countries for the creation of the sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine within the internationally recognized borders of June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
[3] This has happened since 1971, when the United States, realizing that the rest of the world was already sufficiently conditioned to the use of the dollar, unilaterally determined the end of the dollar's convertibility into gold, an event that is considered the watershed in the transition from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism.
[4] In the original: “[…] we assume that the United States adopts a strategy of nuclear superiority in the postwar period [...] Washington seeks a force posture that could, in a crisis, allow the United States to launch a strike that would destroy large numbers of Russian and Chinese nuclear forces simultaneously, with the aim of limiting damage from any retaliatory attack".
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