By Geoffrey Roberts, Responsible Statecraft, 4/23/21

With the death of scholar Paul Schroeder, international historians lost one of their most innovative and distinguished practitioners.

Schroeder’s approach to the study of international relations was ideational: it is not power or interests alone that shapes the behavior of states but prevailing norms, values, and experiences.

As Schroeder showed in “The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848,” the transition from an 18th century dominated by warfare to a predominantly peaceful 19th century was the result of a radical shift in “ideas, collective mentalities and outlooks.”

Driving this transformation was the devasting experience of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, which convinced elites they needed to replace conflictual balance of power politics with the negotiation of differences and the peaceful resolution of disputes. The result of this rethink was the Concert of Europe, which was able to maintain a general continental peace for nearly a hundred years. There were plenty of wars and conflicts, including some notable great power clashes, but none, until 1914, that threatened the existence or stability of the system.

Like most historians, Schroeder was skeptical of historical parallels, but he made a conscious effort to link his studies of the past to the concerns of the present. In that regard, one of his most remarkable, and still relevant, essays was “Containment Nineteen Century Style: How Russia was Restrained.”

Imperial Russia emerged triumphant from the Napoleonic Wars and was in a position to become a hegemonic world power. But It didn’t even try, argues Schroeder. Because of its membership of the Concert and the European community of nations, Russia was enmeshed in restraining relationships with its friends and allies.

In making this argument Schroeder contested the stereotype of 19th century Russia as a dangerously aggressive and expansionist power.

Russia did expand into Asia but such extra-European expansion was the norm among great powers. Russian violence and military conquests were no worse than any of its rivals, and neither did its actions upset the equilibrium in the European theatre.

Russia’s European policy was characterized by Schroeder as “conservative, legalistic, anti-revolutionary and oriented towards peace and great power cooperation.” It had ambitions in relation to Turkey and the Black Sea Straits, but these goals didn’t include the destabilization of the Ottoman Empire.

From the U.S. perspective, 19th century Russia was a markedly benign power — the state that stayed away from Latin America and sold it Alaska.

Schroeder stresses that Russian good behavior was not primarily a function of benign intentions but of “the existence and operation of a system — a stable network of rules and relationships between states — that enables statesman effectively to seek peace and, even in a sense, compels them to promote it whether they want to or not. … Russia was restrained not mainly by her moderate impulses, but by a viable international order she herself helped to create.”

Schroeder’s contemporary reference point was the breakdown of the American-Soviet détente in the early 1980s as a result of renewed Cold War tensions. His message was that while the analogy between the foreign policy of Tsarist Russia and that of the Soviet Union was imperfect, historical as well as recent experience suggested that détente was a better way to manage relations with the Soviets than confrontation.

Schroeder was well aware that historical analogies can be distorting as well as illuminating, the most egregious example being the frequent invocation of the Hitler analogy to derail legitimate attempts at appeasement.

Schroeder believed that it was possible to derive from the history of international relations some eternal truths, notably that “any government is restrained better and more safely by friends and allies than by opponents or enemies.”

Schroeder’s prescription for managing Russian power remains relevant, not least because today’s Russia is a self-proclaimed conservative state that still sees itself as primarily a European power and would readily participate in a renewed concert of great powers at the global level.

No policy has been so persistently pursued by Russia and its Soviet predecessor as the creation of an inclusive European security system. The first such proposals came in the 1930s as a means of containing Hitler.  Moscow’s striving for collective security was interrupted by the Nazi-Soviet pact, during the Second World War, Stalin embraced the concept of a peacetime grand alliance with Britain and the United States. After his death in 1953, the Soviets revived the idea of pan-European collective security and waged an extensive campaign to dissolve the Cold War blocs. Most extraordinary was a March 1954 proposal that the USSR could even become a member of NATO

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation sought a new, over-arching European security architecture, including Russian membership of NATO.

In 2009, Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, proposed an all-embracing European Security Treaty. Supported by his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, it reflected Russia’s aspiration for a “Greater Europe” with a multipolar Euro-Atlantic security system.

According to the current Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation that remains the country’s goal: “Russia’s long-term Euro-Atlantic policy is aimed at building a common space of peace, security and stability based on the principles of indivisible security, equal cooperation and mutual trust.”

Medvedev’s initiative was overshadowed and then derailed by the financial crisis, the Arab Spring, Western intervention in Libya and the civil wars in Ukraine and Syria.

Russia is now isolated and alienated from Europe and the object of escalating Western sanctions designed to reverse its takeover of Crimea and deter further encroachments on Ukrainian territory. There is no evidence that such sanctions have had any impact on Russian foreign policy in relation to Ukraine or on Putin’s policy in other parts of the world. In his presidential address on April 21, Putin was adamant that Western threats would not stop Russia from defending its interests as it sees fit.

There are those in the West who are clamoring to double-down on a hardline approach to Russia. However, history suggests that a policy of engaging, conciliating, and integrating Russia into the European and global community will be more effective in promoting peace and security for all states, including Ukraine.

Just now, the idea of a European security system with a Russian pillar as well as an American one seems fanciful, to say the least. But consider the following thought experiment:

Imagine that Medvedev’s European Security Treaty proposal had gained some serious traction in Russian-Western negotiations. Would the bottom have fallen out of NATO and the Western security system? Hardly. Would Ukraine have split over its geo-political and geo-economical orientation? Doubtful. Would Crimea still be part of Ukraine? Almost certainly. Would Russia and the West be collaborating rather than competing in the Middle East? For sure. Would we be facing into a new arms race and a new cold war? Definitely not.

Like all states, Russia has its interests, concerns, aspirations, and sensitivities. The threat of war with the West as a result of Russia’s borderland disputes and tensions with Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and the Baltic States is very small but far from negligible. As Paul Schroeder said, “war sometimes just happens; peace is always caused.”

History also shows that the best way to influence and restrain a powerful and resurgent Russia is not to treat it as an enemy but make it your friend.

Kremlin website, 6/5/24

News Director at DPA Martin Romanczyk (retranslated): Good evening, Mr President. Good evening, everyone.

Chancellor Scholz has agreed to supply arms to Ukraine. I would like to ask you how you would react if Scholz changed his mind. And what do you think this implies for Germany? Did you try to warn, caution or maybe threaten Mr Chancellor when he made the decision to send weapons to Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: Why would you think we would threaten anyone? We never threaten anyone, least of all the head of another state. That would be mauvais ton, unacceptable in polite society.

We have our own viewpoint on certain issues. We know the European states’ approach, including Germany’s approach, on the current developments in Ukraine.

Everyone believes that Russia started the war in Ukraine. But no one – I want to emphasise this – no one in the West, no one in Europe is willing to remember how this tragedy began. It started with an unconstitutional coup in Ukraine. This was the beginning of the war. But is Russia to blame for that coup? No. Have those who are trying to blame Russia today forgotten that the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France went to Kiev at the time and signed the settlement document as guarantors of a peaceful constitutional resolution of the crisis? This is something Europe, including Germany, prefers to forget. Because if they remembered, they would have to explain why the leaders of Germany, along with the other signatories, never demanded that the perpetrators of the coup in Ukraine return to the constitutional framework. Why did they neglect their obligations as guarantors of agreements between the incumbent government and the opposition like this? They are as responsible for what happened as the forces in the United States that provoked the unconstitutional seizure of power. Don’t you know what followed? The residents of Crimea made a decision to secede from Ukraine, and the residents of Donbass refused to obey those who carried out the coup in Kiev. This is what followed. This is how this conflict began.

After that, Russia made every effort to come up with a formula for a peaceful settlement. What is now known as Minsk agreements were signed in Minsk in 2015. By the way, they were institutionalised by a UN Security Council resolution. It was an actionable document. Instead, they chose to resolve this issue militarily. They used artillery, tanks and aircraft against civilians in southeastern Ukraine. For some reason, no one, I repeat, no one wants to talk about this either in Germany and other European countries, or the United States. So be it.

We facilitated the signing of the Minsk agreements, but it turned out that no one was going to act on them. The former Chancellor of Germany and the former President of France have publicly stated so.

What does this mean, Mr Romanchik? They made a public confession that they were not going to implement the Minsk agreements, and signed them just in order to buy time to arm Ukraine and to create proper conditions for continuing hostilities. All they did was pull the wool over our eyes. Is that not so? Is there any other way to explain what happened?

For eight long years we have been trying to achieve a peaceful solution. Eight years!

A former chancellor once told me, “You know, in Kosovo, we, NATO, went ahead without a Security Council resolution, because blood was spilled for eight years in Kosovo.” What about the blood of Russian people spilled in Donbass? Was it water, not blood? No one wanted to pay attention to it.

In the end, this is what we were forced to do when the then Ukrainian authorities said that they did not like a single clause of the Minsk agreements, and the then Foreign Minister said they were not going to fulfill them.

Do you realise that these territories were plunged into economic and social degradation? Eight years. I am not even talking about murders, constant killing of women, children, and so on.

Considering this, we were compelled to recognise their independence. We did not recognise their independence for almost eight years. We were looking forward for both sides to come to terms and to resolve this issue peacefully. Eight years! When they said they were not going to implement any peace agreements, we had to use military force in order to bring them into compliance.

We were not the ones to start this war. The war started in 2014 following the coup and their attempt to use cannons to break resistance of the people who opposed the coup.

And now for people following international events and international law. What happened next? What did we do? We did not recognise this for eight years. What did we do when we realised that the Minsk Agreements will never be fulfilled? Please note everyone: we recognised the independence of these self-proclaimed republics. Could we do this from the point of view of international law, or no? As Article One of the UN Charter says, we could. It is about the nations’ right to self-determination. The UN International Court of Justice ruled (it is put in writing) that, if any territory of a country decides to become independent, it is not obliged to appeal to the higher authorities of that country. All this was done regarding Kosovo. There is a decision of the International Court of Justice, which reads: if a territory has decided on independence, it is not obliged to apply to the capital for permission to exercise this right.

However, if it is like it is written in the UN court decision, then these unrecognised republics, the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, had the right to do so. And they did. Did we have the right to recognise them? Of course, we did. And we did recognise them. Next, we entered into an agreement with them. Could we sign an agreement with them or not? Yes, of course. The agreement provided for assistance to these states in the event of aggression. Kiev waged a war against these states, which we recognised eight years later. Eight years.

Could we recognise them? We could. And then, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, we provided them with assistance. You know, no matter what anyone says, this is exactly what I told Mr Guterres, the logic we followed, step by step. Where is the mistake here? Where are the violations of international law here? There are no violations, considering international law.

Then we hear the answer: well, you attacked anyway. We did not attack, but defended ourselves, just to make it clear to everyone. The first step towards the war was taken by those who encouraged the bloody unconstitutional coup d’etat.

Now regarding the arms supplies. Arms supplies to a conflict area is always a bad idea. Especially when those who are supplying weapons not only supply them but also operate them. It is a very serious and very dangerous step. You and I know this, and the Federal Republic doesn’t deny it (I certainly don’t know how it made its way to the press), that a Bundeswehr general discussed where and how to deliver a strike: either at the Crimean Bridge or at some other facilities inside Russia, including a territory that no one doubts belongs to Russia.

When the first German tanks, tanks made in Germany, appeared on Ukrainian soil, it produced a moral and ethical shock in Russia because the attitude in Russian society to the Federal Republic has always been very good. Very good. Now, when they say that some missiles are to appear that would attack facilities on Russian territory, it will certainly destroy Russian-German relations for good and all. But we understand that, as one of the well-known German politicians said, after World War II the Federal Republic of Germany has never been a sovereign state in the full sense of the word.

We were in contact with Mr Scholz, we met on many occasions. I don’t want to assess the performance of the Federal Government, but it’s the German people, the German voters who are making such assessments. European parliamentary elections are coming up; we will look at what is going to happen there. As far as I know – of course, I actually care about Germany, I have many friends there, whom I am trying not to contact, not to subject them so some obstruction in the country, I am trying not to maintain relations with them, but I simply know these people for many years, I know that they are reliable friends and I have many of them in Germany. So, I am also aware of the balance of forces in the political arena. As far as I understand, if I am not mistaken, the CDU/CSU now has somewhere around 30 percent, the Social Democrats have about 16 percent, the Alternative for Germany already has 15 percent, and all the others are lower. This is the elector’s response. This is the Germans’ mood, the mood of the German people.

I understand the dependence of the Federal Republic in the area of defence, in security in general. I understand its dependence in politics, in information policy, because wherever you point to there, to any major publishing house (I don’t know where you work) its ultimate beneficiary is located overseas, some US foundation. Well, I applaud those American foundations and those who are conducting such policy: It’s great that they are holding the information field of Europe so firmly in terms of their interests. And they are also trying hard not to reveal themselves.

It’s all understandable. The influence is tremendous and it is very difficult to oppose it. It is clear. But there are some elementary things. Speaking about these elementary things – it is strange that nobody in the current German leadership protects German interests. It’s clear that Germany does not have full sovereignty, but Germans are still there. Their interests should be taken into account and protected, at least a little bit.

Look: the ill-starred pipelines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea have been blown up. No one is even indignant – as if this is the way it should be. We nevertheless continue to supply gas to Europe through the territory of Ukraine. We continue to supply gas. There were two pipeline systems there, and Ukraine closed one of them, screwed the valve, just closed it and that’s all, although there were no grounds for this. It left only one pipeline system – well, okay. But gas goes to Europe through it, and European consumers receive this gas. Our gas also goes to Europe through Turkey via Turkish Stream, and European consumers receive it.

OK, one Nord Stream pipe was blown up, but another Nord Stream pipe is intact, thank God. Why doesn’t Germany want to receive our gas through this pipe? Can anyone explain the logic? You can get it through Ukraine, you can get it through Turkey, but you can’t get it through the Baltic Sea. What kind of nonsense is this? There is no formal logic in this, I don’t even understand it.

They would better say that Europe should not get gas at all. OK, fine, we’ll get over it, Gazprom will survive. But you don’t need it, you need to buy overpriced liquefied natural gas shipped from across the ocean. Don’t your ‘environmentalists’ know how liquefied natural gas is produced? By fracking. Ask the people in the United States where they produce this gas – sometimes they get slop instead of water running from their taps. Your ‘environmentalists’ who are in power in the government, don’t know that? They probably do.

Poland has closed its Yamal-Europe pipeline. Gas was going to Germany through Poland. We didn’t shut it down, the Poles did. You know better than I do the effect the termination of our ties in the energy sector has had on the German economy. It’s a sad result. Many large industrial companies are looking for a place to land, but only not on German territory. They are opening in the USA and in Asia, but the business conditions there make them uncompetitive. And this, by the way, can have severe consequences for the European economy as a whole, because the German economy (everyone is well aware of this, no offence to any other Europeans) is the locomotive of the European economy. If it sneezes and coughs, everyone else will immediately get the flu. France’s economy is also teetering on the brink of recession right now, everyone knows that. And if the German economy goes down, all of Europe will be shuddering.

I am not suggesting that the Euro-Atlantic ties should be broken. Otherwise, someone (not necessarily you) might hear what I am saying and infer that I am calling for breaking up Euro-Atlantic solidarity. Listen, your politics are flawed, and you are making glaring mistakes every step of the way. I think the current developments represent a major mistake for the United States itself. In a push to maintain their leadership using the means they are using, they are, in fact, causing harm to themselves. But things are even worse for Europe. Indeed, you could say, “We support you in this, that, and that, but this belongs to us. Look, if we undermine our economy, everyone will feel the consequences. You cannot do that, we are against it, it is taboo, do not touch it.”

But the federal government is not doing that, either. Frankly, sometimes I get confused and cannot see the logic behind this line of conduct. Okay, they were going to undermine Russia’s economy, and they thought it would take them three to six months to get there. However, everyone can see that this is not happening. Last year, our economy grew by 3.4 percent. This year, it grew by 5.4 percent in the first quarter. Moreover, according to international financial and economic organisations – the World Bank re-ran some numbers (it was our goal) – and we were in fifth place in terms of purchasing power parity in the world and we set ourselves the goal of making it to the fourth place. I think you are following the calculations of our colleagues from international financial institutions. Quite recently, last week, I think, the World Bank ran the numbers on our GDP only to find out that we were outdoing Japan in this regard. According to the World Bank, Russia is the world’s fourth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity meaning that we achieved that goal.

That is not what really matters, though. This is not an end in itself. What is important, though, is to keep up the pace and progress. So far, we have been able to do so, because in the first quarter, as I said earlier, our GDP amounted to 5.4 percent. The reason I am saying this is not to brag about it. I want those who are trying to get in our way, to cause us harm and to slow down our progress realise that what they are doing does more harm to themselves than to us. They should realise this, draw conclusions and mend their ways for their own benefit. But we do not see it happening.

No offence, but I think that the level of professional training of the decision-makers, including in the Federal Republic [of Germany] leaves much to be desired.

Andrei Kondrashov: Thank you, Mr Romanchik.

I think it would be logical to not wander away from the European theme and give the floor to France: a country that admits quite officially that European troops can be sent to Ukraine.

Our guest is Editor-in-Chief for Europe at France-Press, Karim Talbi. Mr Talbi speaks excellent Russian, because, like Martin Romanchik, he worked as a correspondent in Moscow for quite a long time.

Please, Mr Talbi, your question.

AFP Editor-in-Chief for Europe Karim Talbi: Mr President, my question also concerns Ukraine.

Why cannot you still disclose the number of losses among Russian soldiers in Ukraine during the hostilities?

Vladimir Putin: If this is the only thing you are interested in, I can say that, as a rule, no one ever talks about this. If they do, then, as a rule, they distort the real figures.

I can tell you with complete confidence that our losses, especially as concerns irreparable losses, unfortunately, then they are several times less than on the Ukrainian side.

I can tell you exact numbers captured by the both sides, or war prisoners. There are 1,348 of our soldiers and officers held by the Ukrainian side. I know the exact numbers because we work with them every day. As you know, there was an exchange just recently: 75 people were exchanged for 75 people. We have 6,465 Ukrainian soldiers.

If we talk about approximate irretrievable losses, then the ratio is the same: one to about five. This is what we will proceed from. This is precisely the reason of the attempt to carry out total mobilisation in Ukraine: because they suffer great losses on the battlefield.

You know, this is how it looks: according to our calculations, the Ukrainian army loses 50,000 people per month as sanitary and irretrievable losses both, although their irretrievable and sanitary losses are approximately 50/50. The total mobilisation effort, which is now underway, does not solve the problem, because, according to our data (we get it from various sources), they recruit around 30,000 [people] per month by force or without force, but mostly by seizing men on the streets. There are not many people willing to fight there.

According to our data, last month and the month before that they recruited about 50,000–55,000. But this does not solve the problem. You know why? Because this mobilisation can only cover losses. All of these men are sent to make up for losses. This is the basic problem that leads to a lowering of the mobilisation age: from 27 years old down to 25 now.

We know from the Ukrainian side (it’s an open secret there; there are no secrets there at all): the US administration insists that the threshold be gradually lowered from 25 to 23 years, then to 20 years, and then to 18, or immediately to 18 years, because right now they are already requiring 17-year-old boys to register. We know this for sure: this is a demand from the US administration to the Ukrainian leadership, if it can be considered leadership after the election was cancelled.

Anyway, as I have said in one of my recent public appearances – I think it was when I talked to the media while returning from my visit to Uzbekistan – I believe that the United States administration would force the current Ukrainian leadership to take these decisions on lowering the mobilisation age all the way down to 18 years, and once that is done, they will simply get rid of Zelensky. But first, he will have to do it. In fact, this is not an easy thing to do. They will have to enact a law and take specific steps to make this happen.

We are in June 2024 right now. I think that they would need a year to do this. This means that they would tolerate him until the beginning of next year, as least, but once he does everything they expect from him, they will just wave him goodbye and replace him with someone else. There are several candidates for this job, as far as I understand.

However, all this entails so many casualties. I mentioned the 50,000 figure, but this is as conservative as you can get. The 50,000 figure is what we see on the battlefield, but we can see that there were other losses too, without being able to count them. They happened deep in the rear, behind the lines, and once you factor them in, the number becomes much bigger. This is what I can say about the casualties.

By Scott McConnell, Modern Age, 7/17/23

For baby boomers, a first encounter with George Kennan likely came in a college history assignment to read American Diplomacy, the published lectures Kennan gave at the University of Chicago in 1951. Or perhaps with Kennan’s “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” the historic essay, written under the pseudonym “X,” published in 1947 in Foreign Affairs. There Kennan distilled the message of the “Long Telegram” he had dictated from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow the previous year, crystallizing Washington’s thinking about how to deal with the Soviet Union in the new postwar era. 

A first-time reader might have sensed the beauty of Kennan’s prose, unusual for those writing about foreign policy. Then might have followed a realization that the arguments he made seemed like no one else’s. 

Foreign-policy debates during the Vietnam era fell almost invariably into two ideological camps. Some writers scorned the United States, finding fault with nearly every aspect of the country’s conduct because it was imperialist or bellicose or insufficiently humanitarian—the Marxist and liberal positions often overlapped. 

Others—most government officials and Cold War liberals and conservatives—presented American policies as an outgrowth of good or reasonable intentions, directed against genuine threats, or as efforts to right genuine injustices. If those policies were sometimes flawed or ineffectual, the purposes behind them were moral and sound. 

And here was Kennan, very much a part of the American establishment, yet highly critical of American policies. All too often they were, he argued, manipulated populist impulses disrespectful of the realities of power and arts of diplomacy. He lamented an American proclivity for legalism and moral posturing in foreign affairs, decried his country’s tendency to present America’s opponents as embodiments of evil, worried over America’s hubris and lack of humility. He concluded (in 1951) that we were a far less secure country than we had been in the nineteenth century. 

While several excellent biographies of George Kennan have been published, it’s not obvious that any of them give a better sense of the man or more reading pleasure than his own voluminous published writings. One of his biographers, the noted historian (and Kennan’s close personal friend) John Lukacs, says in George Kennan: A Study of Character that Kennan “was, and remains, the best and finest American writer about [interwar] Europe at that time: better and finer than hundreds of others, including Hemingway.” 

That judgment is based simply on Kennan’s verbal sketches and diary entries written as a young Foreign Service officer, stationed in interwar Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltics, well before he was famous. Fame did ensue after the Long Telegram and the X article, which led to a few years of genuine influence in government, followed by a lengthy post-government career at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. There Kennan became a prize-winning diplomatic historian, producing after the age of fifty a body of scholarship which would exceed that of most Ivy League professors. 

In addition, he wrote two volumes of widely read and touted memoirs, some remarkable polemical sallies (most notably against the 1960s student left), and a best-selling work of political philosophy that was published when he was approaching ninety. 

Yet in Kennan’s diaries and memoirs there runs a skein of almost constant complaint about his own lack of influence over the direction of his country, regular expressions of woe that, while he was treated with a kind of respect, he was never (apart from the interlude of the late 1940s) taken seriously.

YouTube link here.

By Michael Mechanic, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists/Mother Jones, 4/1/24

This article was originally published by Mother Jones.

Nuclear war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high-ranking foreign officials whose motives we may have reason to distrust, just as they distrust ours—about how we can collectively avoid launching a weapon that would end our civilization.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s timely new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, is a lightning-fast read intended to put the nuclear threat squarely back on everyone’s radar. Her narrative thread, as the title suggests, is a fact-based (though thankfully fictional) scenario that shows how a nuclear launch can escalate into World War III at dizzying speed.

Jacobsen tees up her cinematic approach with chapters describing how we got here, including a discussion of America’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for General Nuclear War—which was devised in the 1960s and, as Jacobsen details in this book excerpt published today by Mother Jones, was more or less a recipe for the end of the world.

Because that’s nuclear war: One bad assumption, one shot, one retaliation, and it’s unstoppable.

Your book is frightful. What made you want to write in such detail how a nuclear war could unfold?

As a national security reporter, I have written six previous books on military and intelligence programs—CIA, Pentagon, DARPA—all designed to prevent nuclear World War III. During the Trump administration, amid the “fire and fury” rhetoric, I was watching STRATCOM commanders and deputy commanders speak freely on C-SPAN about the dangers therein. I began to wonder, My god, what would happen if deterrence failed? I began to interview people during COVID, when people had more time on their hands for someone like me—and that began the terrifying process of learning that nuclear war is, in essence, a sequence of events, and that once it starts it almost certainly will not stop.

The US public hasn’t thought a whole lot about nuclear weapons since the Cold War. We have more nuclear nations today, but far fewer weapons in the global arsenal. Are we safer now?

Well, as I show in the book, it doesn’t take but one weapon to set off a chain reaction to unleash the current arsenal, which is forward deployed in launch-on-warning positions and could be fired in as little as a minute—15 minutes for the submarines. There are enough weapons in those positions right now to bring on a nuclear winter that would kill an estimated 5 billion people.

Are there too many? Absolutely. Have we made progress? The all-time high in 1986 was 70,481 nuclear weapons. Now, there are approximately 12,500. But to your point, there are nine nuclear-armed nations, not just two or three superpowers. And that presents a lot of unknowns that create serious unease and room for catastrophe.

So we may be less safe because we don’t really know how certain nations might behave—notably North Korea.

Absolutely. Reporting and writing this book was one surprise after another. For example, I did not know until I had it confirmed with US nuclear experts that North Korea does not announce any of its missile tests, whereas the other countries do. North Korea has launched 100 missiles since January 2022. After you read my book, you realize what happens to the US nuclear command and control apparatus in the seconds and minutes after a launch is seen by the advanced super satellite system we have. You can now imagine what goes on in those command centers.

A total frenzy.

Imagine!

One thing that really struck me is the unbelievable speed at which nuclear war is waged.

Gen. Robert Kehler, the former commander of STRATCOM, said to me that the world could end in the next couple of hours. It took me a minute to ask my next question, because coming from someone in that position of authority—the most significant role in the entire nuclear apparatus—that really blew my mind.

Ditto goes for an interview I did with President Barack Obama’s FEMA chief, Craig Fugate. Of course, FEMA is the agency in charge of what’s called population protection planning for American citizens in the event of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes. Fugate told me that after a nuclear war, there wouldn’t be any population protection planning because everyone would be dead.

Help is not coming.

I said, “Well, what should people do?” He more or less said, “Self-survive, and don’t forget your morals, and I hope you stocked Pedialyte”—because radiation poisoning makes you vomit and have diarrhea and away go all of your electrolytes, which leads to secondary problems.

I learned from your book that FEMA plays a unique role in the event of a nuclear attack, and it’s not what one might expect.

That’s right. In the ’50s and ’60s, the US position was that a nuclear war could be fought and won. That is no longer the official position. But plans were put in place for the continuity of government programs—the idea that the government must continue functioning no matter what. That is also a fantasy.

To hear from former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry about the madness and mayhem and anarchy that would follow, in his mind, in the event of a nuclear war, you really get the sense that civilization will fail. I believe one of the reasons so many of these sources went on the record for me is because they know that this is the truth. And they know it is up to the people to change the trajectory of where we’re headed. I mean, my god, look at the saber-rattling going on as we do this interview.

Potential nuclear nightmares range from an accidental detonation to a massive “decapitation” strike to someone using a small nuke on the battlefield. You picked the madman scenario: North Korea inexplicably launches a long-range missile at Washington, DC. Why that one?

I did a series of interviews with [physicist] Richard Garwin, who is now 95. He is arguably the most knowledgeable person about nuclear weapons on the planet, and he probably knows more about policy over the long lens of history because he was 23 or 24 years old when he designed the first thermonuclear bomb.

In the “Ivy Mike” test, it exploded with 10.4 megatons of power—about 1,000 Hiroshimas. Garwin said to me that his biggest fear was now, and always had been, the madman theory you referred to. He used the French phrase Après moi, le déluge—after me, the flood—referring to this idea that a maniacal, egotistical, narcissistic madman leader could launch a nuclear weapon for reasons no one would ever know.

And to counterattack North Korea, as in your scenario, the US would need to send missiles over Russia, which has a very unreliable early warning system.

That’s right. Learning about the technological limitations of some of the Russian systems was just as terrifying as any part of reporting this book.

It’s almost like you’d want to reach out to the Russians and say, look, just take our technology so you won’t launch on a false alarm—but the US would never do that.

There have been many opportunities to have a dialogue with the Russians—Putin inquired about joining NATO back during the Clinton administration. One really has to lean upon one’s leaders to think about communicating rather than saber-rattling, because I hope that my book demonstrates in appalling detail how horrific nuclear war would be. And we know from the Proud Prophet war games that no matter how it begins, it ends in nuclear apocalypse.

For context, Proud Prophet was a classified series of war games President Ronald Reagan ordered in 1983. Civilian and military planners convened for two weeks to run through scenarios that could spark a nuclear war and see how they played out.

That Proud Prophet was declassified is interesting. Nuclear war games are among the government’s most jealously guarded secrets. I printed a copy of what a couple pages of the declassified war game look like—95 percent is redacted. It’s literally a couple of headers and a few numbers.

But when something like that gets declassified, it becomes very valuable to the people. An individual like Paul Bracken—a civilian professor at Yale who participated in Proud Prophet—can now speak about it in general terms. He wrote in his own book that everyone left very depressed, because no matter how the nuclear scenario begins—if NATO is involved or not involved, China is involved or not—it always ends the same way, the most terrible way, because America has a “launch on warning” policy.

We do not wait to absorb a nuclear blow. Once a missile is on the way and there is secondary confirmation from ground radar, the president is asked to launch a counterstrike. In the book—I have the president asking this because it came up in my discussions with sources—he says, “How do we know it’s a nuclear weapon?”

And we don’t.

That is a fact. The answer is, Well, it could be a biological weapon. Another answer I was told is that no one launches a ballistic missile at the United States unless they’re expecting a counterattack. So now you are looping into the Orwellian world of: This is deterrence. Deterrence will hold. Don’t you dare launch at us or else! Which becomes part and parcel for why the counterattack is required, per the deterrence doctrine. There is no room for saying, well, maybe we’ll wait and see.

Once you break deterrence, everything else goes out the window.

Correct. One of the most haunting quotes in the book is from the deputy commander of STRATCOM, Lt. Gen. Tom Bussiere. I located an unclassified discussion he had with insiders, and the quote is along the lines of, When deterrence fails, it all unravels. In seconds and minutes and hours—not days and weeks and months.

Twelve thousand years of civilization extinguished in a few hours.

General Kehler was not speaking hyperbolically when he said that.

Say more about “launch on warning.” You cite Paul Nitze, a former defense secretary and later presidential adviser, calling the policy “inexcusably dangerous.” Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden wanted it scrapped. So why is it still in place?

I’d like to shout out William Burr, who runs the National Security Archive at George Washington University, because many of those quotes and documents come from that organization, which made them accessible to journalists like me. Nitze was one of the biggest hawks across the Cold War. To have a guy like that go on the record and say this is inexcusably dangerous says a lot.

Multiple presidents have campaigned on the promise that they will change this dangerous policy, but then they become president and you never hear of it again. That speaks to the kind of secret-keeping that is dangerous and can be changed. I wrote Nuclear War: A Scenario for the layperson to be able to rip through it in a night, no matter how terrifying. I do not bog the reader down with polemics or jargon, because this is an issue everybody should know about. Because only in knowing about it is change possible. We can look to The Day After battle, what’s known in inner circles as the Reagan Reversal policy of 1983.

Wait, what’s that?

So in 1983—I’m dating myself here—I was a high school student. And I watched the ABC movie The Day After.

I was the same age, and watching it too.

It’s a fictional account of a nuclear war between America and Soviet Russia, and half the country watched it. Interestingly, behind the scenes, ABC got a lot of pressure not to air it. Well, one very important American watched it: Reagan had a private screening at Camp David. His chief of staff tried to suggest that he shouldn’t watch it, but he did. And he wrote in his diary that he became “greatly depressed,” and he picked up the phone and called [then–Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev, and the two leaders communicated—which is really the only solution for any of this.

Because of those communications and because of their conference and because of the treaty, the insane nuclear arsenal has been reduced to the approximately 12,500 we have now, which is a considerable reduction. The president’s position prior to seeing The Day After was a much harder, more saber-rattling approach. He changed his position and became much more dovish.

“Launch on warning” puts extraordinary pressure on a president. The one in your scenario is pretty clueless. He hasn’t ever rehearsed. Nobody told him he’d have just six minutes to choose from a Denny’s breakfast menu of existential options in response to what may or may not be an incoming nuke. It’s hard to believe the Pentagon doesn’t put every new president through a series of war games.

I was just as surprised as you are. But that’s coming from multiple secretaries of defense and national security advisers—people in a position to advise the president on a nuclear counterattack. The best summation came from Leon Panetta, who explained that as White House chief of staff he was witness to the fact that the president is primarily concerned with domestic issues—like his popularity. I asked Panetta how clued in he was when he was the CIA director, and he said almost not at all, because the CIA is about intelligence, not nuclear operations.

Only when he became secretary of defense did it really hit home, the weight of all of this. He spoke about visiting missile silos, submarine bases, and nuclear command bunkers—once you go to places like that, your entire perspective changes. And that is why I believe he was willing to go on the record. You really get the sense that things are precarious once they begin, and decisions follow that are out of everyone’s control.

Right. And our continued existence depends not only on our internal communications and processes, but those of our adversaries, about which we know little. 

Absolutely.

Your book busts some common myths, for instance the belief that the US could shoot down an incoming nuclear missile. We really can’t defend against nuclear weapons, can we?

We can’t. That is pure fantasy. During the final fact-checking incantations, I had the book read by a lieutenant general who ran these scenarios for NORAD. I was almost hoping someone would say, Annie, you should take this part out of the book, because we have a secret Iron Dome that you can’t report on. No. The truth is that the United States relies upon 44 interceptor missiles to stop any incoming missiles. Russia alone has 1,674 nuclear warheads in “ready to launch” position. Adding to that, according to congressional reports, the interceptors are only approximately 50 percent effective.

Under the best of circumstances.

Absolutely, like when you’re doing a test and you know precisely where the missile is going to be. It’s a curated test. So people have this idea that we have an Iron Dome–type shield. And we don’t.

The Reagan Reversal bit reminds me of a moment from your scenario. Your secretary of defense is sworn in as president because the president and others in the line of succession are dead or AWOL, and he has this moment of humanity. Russia has launched all its ICBMs at us, so we know we’re goners. And the new guy asks: Why respond now if all it will do is kill millions more people? The STRATCOM commander is like, Nope, we’re doing this. Humanity is already doomed, yet Russia and the United States keep launching their weapons until practically none are left. It’s nonsensical. But is it realistic?

It is if you talk to the sources I spoke to. A lot of the decision-tree situations involving the defense secretary came from my multiple discussions with former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, who has thought a lot about this—and what an individual’s thought process would be. The point of including that question was to demonstrate how the madness of MAD—mutual assured destruction—takes over.

I asked [retired weapons engineer] Glen McDuff—the curator of the classified museum at the Los Alamos National Laboratory—the question you’re kind of asking me: What did he think, as an insider, about the notion that people would not follow orders? He basically said: Annie, I would suggest betting on Powerball, because you’d have a better chance of winning than betting on a high-ranking individual in the nuclear command and control system not following orders.

Right. It seems like folks in the nuclear command and control structure have rehearsed these scenarios over and over. They’re on autopilot to a degree. Which gets at the notion of “apes on a treadmill” that you write about late in the book: We’ve made this plan, and we’re going to follow it—even if it’s completely bonkers.

Apes on the treadmill was just such a brilliant concept. It goes back to the Cold War when it was used as a metaphor for people slavishly following away in this nuclear arms race.

But even more interesting was the present-day anecdote I found. It was a scientific experiment having nothing to do with the original metaphor but was literally apes on a treadmill. The researchers were studying bipedalism: They put humans on the treadmill and they put apes on the treadmill. Anecdotally, one of the scientists said, and I’m paraphrasing, that some of the apes got fed up with walking to nowhere and got off the treadmill.

I thought, my god, the apes are smarter than the humans when it comes to mutual assured destruction.