The
Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 nearly ignited WWIII. For 13
harrowing days, what the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, called the
“smell of burning” hung in the air. To Jackie Kennedy’s mind, avoiding
the hecatomb of humankind came down to the difference between big men
and little men.
“You and he were adversaries,” Jackie Kennedy wrote Khrushchev following the assassination of her husband, “but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up.”
“The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones. While big men know the need for self-control and restraint, little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride.”
We are now engaged in a slow-motion rerun of the Cuban missile crisis by way of the Doctor Strangelove playbook. This time, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin star as little men who may or may not come up with a deal that saves the planet.
The olfactory dread that steeled Khrushchev’s determination to step down from the brink and make that deal is paramount once again, only this time command-and-control of WWIII is in the hands of a polyglot cohort of little men not necessarily fearful of blowing up the world.
Any number of flashpoints, from North Korea and the South China Sea
to the Indian subcontinent to Ukraine and the Baltic states, are being
primed for a nuclear showdown. The international system is beginning to
resemble Fat Man 1, the first atomic device, set upon a tower in the New
Mexico desert, wired crazy-quilt for uncertain detonation.
The Doomsday Clock, now at an unnerving two and a half minutes to The End, has begun the countdown that appears more insanely inexorable with each tweeting day. The saber-rattling rhetoric of Trump and Putin has brought brinksmanship out of cold war storage.
Trump’s tweet tantrums and off-the-wall edicts have destabilized the Pax Americana, to Putin’s delight, and his ongoing purge of the national security infrastructure have put the CIA and the state department, and now even the FBI, on notice that the commander-in-chief does not have their front or back.
Trump, whose knowledge of the world has been gleaned from the dressing room of the Miss Universe Pageant, has a churl’s temperament and a tyrant’s character. Alt-facts have a way of morphing into shock and awe, as the 43rd president (W) found out the hard way. Eye to eye today, eyeball-to-eyeball tomorrow.
Trump can’t help himself from playing Putin’s game, which began with a decapitation strike that took down the Clinton national security team. The resulting pas de deux has been choreographed to the martial strains of Make Russia Great Again.
No wonder there was jubilation in the Kremlin on election night. The US and Nato were undermined by just a screen and a keyboard. A reset of relations Putin style. So much for Trumpian triumphalism.
Time is running out for humankind. The miracle of miracles that delivered us from the 20th century intact cannot be counted upon to work its magic again. As the Canberra Commission put it in 1997, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility.”
There is only one way out of this existential crisis, the most dangerous since the first Cuban missile crisis. Big men (and even bigger crowds) have to persuade little men to assume the mantles of Kennedy and Khrushchev, Reagan and Gorbachev, and jettison their nuclear stockpiles. Lose them before we use them.
If the hecatomb of humankind is to be averted “self-control and restraint” must replace “fear and pride”. If it doesn’t, we risk a “smoking, radiating ruin” becoming the stark monument of the grandiose ones.
“You and he were adversaries,” Jackie Kennedy wrote Khrushchev following the assassination of her husband, “but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up.”
“The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones. While big men know the need for self-control and restraint, little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride.”
We are now engaged in a slow-motion rerun of the Cuban missile crisis by way of the Doctor Strangelove playbook. This time, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin star as little men who may or may not come up with a deal that saves the planet.
The olfactory dread that steeled Khrushchev’s determination to step down from the brink and make that deal is paramount once again, only this time command-and-control of WWIII is in the hands of a polyglot cohort of little men not necessarily fearful of blowing up the world.
The Doomsday Clock, now at an unnerving two and a half minutes to The End, has begun the countdown that appears more insanely inexorable with each tweeting day. The saber-rattling rhetoric of Trump and Putin has brought brinksmanship out of cold war storage.
Trump’s tweet tantrums and off-the-wall edicts have destabilized the Pax Americana, to Putin’s delight, and his ongoing purge of the national security infrastructure have put the CIA and the state department, and now even the FBI, on notice that the commander-in-chief does not have their front or back.
Trump, whose knowledge of the world has been gleaned from the dressing room of the Miss Universe Pageant, has a churl’s temperament and a tyrant’s character. Alt-facts have a way of morphing into shock and awe, as the 43rd president (W) found out the hard way. Eye to eye today, eyeball-to-eyeball tomorrow.
Trump can’t help himself from playing Putin’s game, which began with a decapitation strike that took down the Clinton national security team. The resulting pas de deux has been choreographed to the martial strains of Make Russia Great Again.
No wonder there was jubilation in the Kremlin on election night. The US and Nato were undermined by just a screen and a keyboard. A reset of relations Putin style. So much for Trumpian triumphalism.
Time is running out for humankind. The miracle of miracles that delivered us from the 20th century intact cannot be counted upon to work its magic again. As the Canberra Commission put it in 1997, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility.”
There is only one way out of this existential crisis, the most dangerous since the first Cuban missile crisis. Big men (and even bigger crowds) have to persuade little men to assume the mantles of Kennedy and Khrushchev, Reagan and Gorbachev, and jettison their nuclear stockpiles. Lose them before we use them.
If the hecatomb of humankind is to be averted “self-control and restraint” must replace “fear and pride”. If it doesn’t, we risk a “smoking, radiating ruin” becoming the stark monument of the grandiose ones.
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