I wrote about the concept of impunity back in August.
I was talking in terms of American politics, but there’s a bigger kind of impunity, nuclear impunity, which Russia is now attempting to deploy.
The idea is that once you have a nuclear weapon you are immune to criticism. You can do whatever you want, kill whomever you want, because if you’re pushed to the brink, you can destroy the world.
North Korea is well known for this. The Kim dynasty can destroy their economy, starve their people, commit all kinds of crimes but South Korea writes it off because they have nukes. North Koreans are now several inches shorter than the people to their south. They suffer from chronic malnutrition. They live in a geographic prison, and no one will help them escape, because the Kims have nukes.
We can’t have effective nuclear non-proliferation with this kind of impunity. It’s too tempting. We know Israel has nukes. We just don’t say so. We know India and Pakistan both have nukes. We’re scared of Iran getting nukes because they might use them against Israel.
But no country’s nuclear impunity is as complete, or as dangerous, as that of Russia. Despite communism’s collapse, despite the former Soviet Union being 15 separate states, with a half-dozen formerly enslaved nations in Eastern Europe now free to choose their path, Russia still enjoys nuclear impunity, at least in the eyes of many observers.
Russia invaded Ukraine. They did it 8 years ago. They did it again in February. Russia denies that Ukraine even exists as a nation, denies that its people have the right to live, and proves it every day, wherever they maintain control there. As villages are taken by the Ukrainian army, it’s clear on every face. This is liberation. Ukraine is fighting a war for its very existence, against what is supposed to be the 2nd most powerful military in the world. And it’s winning.
It's winning except for nuclear impunity. It’s winning except for Russia saying it can and will deploy nuclear weapons. It’s winning except Russia could destroy it at a stroke. That’s why even the world’s richest man says, whoa, wait a minute, let’s step back and negotiate this thing.
There’s nothing to negotiate. You don’t negotiate with Hitler. We learned this the hard way.
But that’s the problem. Hitler with nukes. Putin is Hitler, with nukes. He has a lot of nukes. We don’t know how many would work. But he doubtless has some that do. When he fires one off, what then?
We have been living with this concept of nuclear impunity for 77 years. It’s time to end it. The U.S. government has said there will be devastating consequences if Putin drops a nuclear weapon on Ukraine. We won’t be specific. We can’t be and shouldn’t be. We have supposedly been more explicit in private. That is how it must be.
I pray that’s good enough. This could be the last blog post anyone writes. But the world can’t live with nuclear impunity.
Even our own.
