by J.B. Shurk
War is ugly and awful. People who experience it generally detest it. In movies, soaring soundtracks make falling buildings and gunfights seem exciting. In real life, people feel excruciating physical and emotional pains that never really fade. It’s Hell on Earth.
After WWI, nations around the world celebrated Armistice Day on November 11, which later became known as Remembrance Day in many countries. Remembering the dead was only half of the holiday’s purpose; it was equally important for the survivors of the Great War to remember the costs of total war, so that mankind would never unleash such cataclysm again.
We did not sufficiently remember the costs of global war, and twenty years later, humanity endured a Second World War far more deadly than the First. After WWII, there was a movement in the United States to honor all veterans — both living and dead — on Armistice Day. President Eisenhower signed into law a bill renaming Armistice Day as Veterans Day, and we Americans have observed the holiday ever since.
We should honor our military veterans every day. By forgetting about Armistice Day, though, we stopped remembering the horrors of war. November 11 was once a day for survivors to say, “Never again.” It transformed into a holiday that celebrates heroes and sacrifice, while often burying the most important warning from past generations to the present: Do not repeat our folly.
War is tragedy, not entertainment. Although I wish that we humans had longer memories when it comes to the psychological toll of mass killing, we barely know peace for half-a-generation before descending into Hell once again.
Wars between belligerents who see no alternative to either victory or death are cruel, bloody affairs.
Despite historical revisionism that often casts the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as indefensible, the enormous loss of American marines, sailors, and soldiers on scattered Pacific islands proved that the Japanese would continue fighting to the last man before entertaining any notion of surrender. Both the Balkan Wars before WWI and the Yugoslav Wars following the Cold War were marked by ethnic cleansing, rape, and mass murder. Every Islamic war against Israel seeks the Jewish state’s eradication; therefore, every war Israel fights is life or death for the nation.
The war in Ukraine has taken on a similar zero-sum seriousness. Ukraine’s wartime president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has repeatedly insisted that there can be no peace until all formerly Ukrainian territory now claimed by the Russian Federation — including Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014 — is returned to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said this demand is an impossibility.
Ukraine desires membership in the European Union and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Russia went to war in Ukraine, in part, to keep NATO’s thirty-year encroachment from reaching the entirety of its western borders.
Ukraine and European members of NATO have described the war as an existential threat to all of Europe. Russian politicians, academics, and pundits similarly describe the war as an existential threat to Russia’s future survival.
Both sides seek what the other refuses to give. A dangerous stalemate now exists.
Although accurate numbers are difficult to obtain, both Russia and Ukraine claim to have inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties upon the other. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, and Russia’s border regions have endured sustained attacks.
Ukrainian authorities continue to press-gang young men into military service. European Union countries that welcomed hundreds of thousands of fleeing Ukrainians back in 2022 are beginning to insist that young Ukrainian men be sent back home to fight. European and American politicians have suggested that Ukraine’s legal age for conscription should be lowered and that Ukrainian women should be forced into combat, too. Martial-law-President Zelenskyy has admitted that his country is struggling to replenish lost troops.
In Russia, there is less concern about fielding troops for what the government calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. There is widespread concern, however, that the military will have considerable difficulty defending the country effectively should E.U.-NATO expand the conflict beyond Ukraine — especially if Russia is forced to defend its Kaliningrad exclave situated between Lithuania and Poland.
European politicians and military personnel have argued that taking Kaliningrad would effectively cut Russia off from the Baltic Sea and tighten the noose of a cordon sanitaire formed around Russia’s European flank. Although the largest country in the world by territory, Russia’s moderate population of one-hundred-fifty-million puts it at a disadvantage against a European population three times its size.
With real troop losses and the threat of future troop losses weighing heavily on the minds of decision-makers in Europe and Russia, what once was unthinkable has become more openly discussed: the use of nuclear weapons on the continent. For eighty years, the taboo against atomic warfare has been so great that the United States and the Soviet Union fought a half-century Cold War in the shadows in an effort to avoid direct confrontation. However, as Russia, Ukraine, and E.U.-NATO struggle for leverage and deterrence, the likelihood of nuclear conflict is growing.
Despite the fact that Ukraine is not a part of NATO, military representatives from all of NATO’s thirty-two members gathered in Kyiv this week. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, announced, “We are here in full strength with a clear message: The bond between NATO and Ukraine is stronger and stronger.”
On Tuesday, the French military test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile over the Atlantic. President Emmanuel Macron was present for the test and described it as “a new demonstration of the credibility of our deterrence” and “a clear message … for wherever it must be received.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov agreed that France’s missile launch was a “loud and clear message.” Peskov then warned: “Against the backdrop of such aggressive actions and such plans, Russia is on alert. We are taking all necessary measures to ensure our national security at the strategic level.”
At the end of September, Russia sent official notices to NATO and Brussels warning that it would use nuclear weapons in defense of its territory, including Kaliningrad. In blunt language that unnerved European leaders, Russia’s diplomatic message promised “Russian strikes against decision-making centers in the alliance’s member states right from the outset.”
Russian Professor Sergey Karaganov — a highly influential foreign policy figure with close ties to both President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov — argues that “Russia must be prepared to use nuclear weapons.” Because E.U.-NATO countries have population and economic advantages over Russia, Russia must use its “competitive advantage” in nuclear weapons to deter European military actions. Karaganov insists, “Nuclear weapons are necessary to prevent major wars, but this only works if the threat is taken seriously.”
The head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy then takes direct aim at Europe: “Western European elites must be punished for their aggressive policies … and an EU that has lost its mind must begin to truly fear.” Furthermore, “Seeking peace through non-nuclear means alone could prove far too costly for Russia.”
Karaganov concludes, “If the current Ukrainian or German regime … were to acquire nuclear weapons, we would be obliged to launch a preemptive strike because we’d have to stop them. It would be a short war, as a result of which these countries would cease to exist.”
There are those in the U.K., Europe, Canada, and America who believe war with Russia is inevitable. Before we reach the point of no return, I humbly ask that people take a moment to remember why we all once feared WWIII. Remember why mutually assured destruction was madness. There is no shame in armistice when the alternative is Armageddon.