{"id":50352,"date":"2024-12-02T09:42:42","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T17:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50352"},"modified":"2024-12-02T10:01:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T18:01:45","slug":"how-about-a-winnable-nuclear-exchange-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/02\/how-about-a-winnable-nuclear-exchange-america\/","title":{"rendered":"How About a Winnable Nuclear Exchange, America?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Like too many people, I sometimes make the mistake of talking about nuclear war, when it&#8217;s really annihilation and genocide we&#8217;re talking about.<\/p>\n<p>Wars have winners and losers. In nuclear &#8220;war,&#8221; everyone loses. The planet loses. Life loses and death triumphs on a scale we simply can&#8217;t imagine.<\/p>\n<p>Language is so important here. I grew up learning about nuclear exchanges. EXCHANGES! The U.S. military talks of nuclear modernization and &#8220;investing&#8221; in nukes when the only dividend of this &#8220;investment&#8221; is mass death.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One of the few honest acronyms is MAD, or mutually assured destruction. Lately, it&#8217;s an acronym that&#8217;s largely disappeared from American discourse.<\/p>\n<p>More than anything, though, realistic images of a nuclear attack are perhaps the most compelling evidence against building more nukes, as in this powerful and unforgettable scene from <em>Terminator 2<\/em>:<\/p>\n<div id=\"youtube2-xjatJ36cJvM\" class=\"youtube-wrap\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;xjatJ36cJvM&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"Youtube2ToDOM\">\n<div class=\"youtube-inner\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/xjatJ36cJvM?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0\" width=\"728\" height=\"409\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>To me, nothing beats that scene. <em>That <\/em>is nuclear \u201cwar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. has over 5000 nuclear weapons; the Russians close to 6000. That&#8217;s more than enough to destroy the earth and a few other earth-sized planets. Imagine the scene above repeated eleven thousand times on our planet.<\/p>\n<p>The insanity, the immorality of spending another $2 trillion on new nukes&#8230; well, it boggles my mind. We&#8217;ve become like the mutants in <em>Beneath the Planet of the Apes<\/em>, worshiping the bomb, acolytes of death and destruction.<\/p>\n<p>If we all don&#8217;t end up killing ourselves and the planet in \u201can exchange,\u201d we&#8217;ll likely degenerate into utter barbarism, as depicted in Cormac McCarthy&#8217;s <em>The Road<\/em>. And even that grim novel has a life-affirming ending that is most unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>Amazingly, after I wrote the above passages about nuclear \u201cwar\u201d and \u201cexchanges,\u201d I came across Admiral TR Buchanan\u2019s recent keynote address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he uses the word &#8220;exchange&#8221; in a remarkably banal (and frightening!) way.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s an excerpt from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stratcom.mil\/Media\/Speeches\/Article\/3976019\/project-atom-2024-csis-poni-keynote\/\">the transcript<\/a> with emphasis added.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>BUCHANAN: <\/strong>Yeah, so it&#8217;s certainly complex because we go down a lot of different avenues to talk about what is the condition of the United States in a post-nuclear <strong>exchange environment<\/strong>. And that is a place that&#8217;s a place we&#8217;d like to avoid, right? And so when we talk about non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities, we certainly don&#8217;t want to have <strong>an exchange<\/strong>, right?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I think everybody would agree if we have to have an exchange, then <strong>we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States<\/strong>. So it&#8217;s terms that are most acceptable to the United States that <strong>puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right<\/strong>? So we&#8217;re largely viewed as the world leader.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And do we lead the world in an area where we&#8217;ve considered loss? The answer is no, right? And so it would be to a point where we would maintain sufficient \u2013 we&#8217;d have to have <strong>sufficient capability<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>We&#8217;d have to have <strong>reserve capacity<\/strong>. You wouldn&#8217;t expend all of your resources to gain winning, right? Because then you have nothing to deter from at that point.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So very complex problem, of course. And as I think many people understand, nuclear weapons are political weapons. I think Susan Rice said that at one point.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"youtube2-bZm3qBdECdw\" class=\"youtube-wrap\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;bZm3qBdECdw&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"Youtube2ToDOM\">\n<div class=\"youtube-inner\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/bZm3qBdECdw?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0\" width=\"728\" height=\"409\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The motto of Admiral Buchanan might be: We had to destroy the world in order to lead it. Buchanan here is less sane than General Buck Turgidson in <em>Dr. Strangelove<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>This admiral thinks we might have to have &#8220;an exchange&#8221; with Russia, and that, if we do, we could do so &#8220;in terms that are most acceptable to the United States,&#8221; and that even after &#8220;an exchange,&#8221; the U.S. can still &#8220;continue to lead the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Truly this is the banality of evil. I like how even after &#8220;the exchange,&#8221; we need to have a &#8220;reserve capacity&#8221; so that we can nuke the world again.<\/p>\n<p>This is madness \u2013 sheer madness \u2013 but it&#8217;s received as probity and sane &#8220;strategic&#8221; thinking by the national security blob.<\/p>\n<p>This guy was promoted to admiral precisely because he thinks this way. He thinks without thinking. With no humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Well, as General Turgidson says in <em>Dr. Strangelove<\/em>, we might just get our hair mussed during a nuclear \u201cexchange,\u201d but does it really matter as long as we can kill more of them than us?<\/p>\n<p><em>William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Bracing Views<\/a>. His video testimony for the Merchants of Death Tribunal is available<span class=\"gmail-Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/v4cruwx-the-military-industrial-complex-lt.-col.-william-astore.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">at this link<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Like too many people, I sometimes make the mistake of talking about nuclear war, when it&#8217;s really annihilation and genocide we&#8217;re talking about. Wars have winners and losers. In nuclear &#8220;war,&#8221; everyone loses. The planet loses. Life loses and death triumphs on a scale we simply can&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-50352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Sure, we might get our hair mussed..."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50360,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50352\/revisions\/50360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50352"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}