This week, the people who run the Biden administration escalated tensions between Russia and the US by giving the Ukrainian regime authorization to use American-made (and presumably American-funded) ATACMS ballistic missiles against targets inside Russia itself.
This significantly raises the stakes of the US-Russia conflict because it put the US in the position of directly funding and encouraging attacks on Russian territory.
In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response.”
It is unclear what exactly this nuclear response would be, but the latest escalation by the US ought to cause us to question why Washington is entertaining tactics that might prompt a nuclear response of any kind. What we do know is that Washington and its acolytes in the media have repeatedly scoffed at the idea that nuclear war ought to be a deterrent to repeated escalations in Ukraine.
Fundamentally, the US position appears to be that nothing should deter the US or NATO from continuing to escalate against Moscow. This position, of course, necessarily puts American civilians in harm’s way since even a limited nuclear exchange between the US and Russia would likely lead to the deaths of at least tens of millions of Americans. Or put another way, Washington’s position is essentially this: “we are willing to sacrifice millions of Americans to fight Russia over a country that has absolutely nothing at all to do with the defense of the people or territory of the United States.”
The fact that Washington is offering up millions of Americans as a potential sacrifice in the war to save the oligarchs of Kiev should strike us as ghoulish at the very least.
This, however, is nothing new when we consider Wahington’s attitude about nuclear war in times of crisis. During the Cold War, the anti-communist DC establishment and its conservative cheerleaders often shrugged off criticisms of global nuclear war, and war advocates regarded themselves as morally qualified to offer up others’ lives as “collateral damage.”
Some of the best insights on this come from Murray Rothbard who dissected the moral incoherence of this position back in the 1961. Rothbard noted at the time how William F. Buckley fancied himself the savior of civilization because he was willing to get millions of women and children killed. Rothbard begins by quoting Buckley in Buckley’s debate with Ronald Hamowy:
There is room in any society for those whose only concern is for tablet-keeping; but let them realize that it is only because of the conservatives’ disposition to sacrifice in order to with stand the [Soviet] enemy, that they are able to enjoy their monasticism, and pursue their busy little seminars on whether or not to demunicipalize the garbage collectors.
In Buckley’s mind, he is heroically providing a great service to mankind by offering up other people as a sacrifice. Buckley cared so much about freedom, you see, he was willing to get you killed to preserve it. Hamowy didn’t fall for Buckley’s characteristically dishonest ruse:
It might appear ungrateful of me, but I must decline to thank Mr. Buckley for saving my life. It is, further, my belief that if his viewpoint prevails and that if he persists in his unsolicited aid the result will almost certainly be my death (and that of tens of millions of others) in nuclear war or my imminent imprisonment as an “un-American”. . . .
I hold strongly to my personal liberty and it is precisely because of this that I insist that no one has the right to force his decisions on another. Mr. Buckley chooses to be dead rather than Red. So do I. But I insist that all men be allowed to make that decision for themselves. A nuclear holocaust will make it for them.
To this, Rothbard Rothbard adds:
anyone who wishes is entitled to make the personal decision of “better dead than Red” or “give me liberty or give me death.” What he is not entitled to do is to make these decisions for others, as the prowar policy of conservatism would do. What conservatives are really saying is: “Better them dead than Red,” and “give me liberty or give them death”—which are the battle cries not of noble heroes but of mass murderers.
This is essentially now the position of those who support continued escalation of the Ukraine war. Rather than endure a world where a portion of the Ukrainian population would rather be ruled from Kiev than Moscow, we are supposed to casually court all-out war with a nuclear power. Only the most crazed ideologue would take such a position, but this is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the war party in the US.
In reality, Ukraine is not worth the life of a single American soldier, but Ukraine hawks are willing to sacrifice millions.
In the nuclear age, of course, courting a conflict with any nuclear power is supremely irresponsible and clearly contrary to any notion of just war or regard for the neutrality of civilians.
In his essay on war and the state, Rothbard explains why this is so:
War … is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals. We may judge for ourselves how many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion.
It has often been maintained, and especially by conservatives, that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder (nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.) is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one. But another answer that the libertarian is particularly equipped to give is that while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even “conventional” aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a sin and a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.
This is why the old cliché no longer holds that it is not the arms but the will to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace. For it is precisely the characteristic of modern weapons that they cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner. Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own sake. And if we will indeed use our strategic intelligence, we will see that such disarmament is not only a good, but the highest political good that we can pursue in the modern world. For just as murder is a more heinous crime against another man than larceny, so mass murder—indeed murder so widespread as to threaten human civilization and human survival itself—is the worst crime that any man could possibly commit. And that crime is now imminent. And the forestalling of massive annihilation is far more important, in truth, than the demunicipalization of garbage disposal, as worthwhile as that may be. Or are libertarians going to wax properly indignant about price control or the income tax, and yet shrug their shoulders at or even positively advocate the ultimate crime of mass murder?
If nuclear warfare is totally illegitimate even for individuals defending themselves against criminal assault, how much more so is nuclear or even “conventional” warfare between States!
