The Ukraine Crisis
The most troubling news story now is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So maybe I should say something about it. Unfortunately, I don’t know what’s going to happen or what the U.S. or Europe or Zelensky should do. So I’ll just say what I hope happens and doesn’t happen, then comment on the larger problem.
1. Why Did This Happen?
It seems that Vladimir Putin still has a cold war mentality, and he has long been worried about the eastward expansion of NATO. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, multiple former communist countries have joined NATO, thus not only strengthening Putin’s old enemy, but extending its influence eastward toward Russia. These former communist countries used to be a sort of buffer between Western Europe and Russia; now they are potential staging grounds for NATO troops, missiles, etc. Which, if you’re still in a cold war mentality, looks like a military threat.
If this seems to you like a bogus or trivial concern, remember that we got into the Cuban Missile Crisis over the missiles that Russia was sending to Cuba. At the time, Kennedy thought that the odds of the crisis ending in a nuclear war were about 1 in 3, but he still thought it was worth blockading Cuba to stop missiles from being stationed there.
So it’s possible that Putin would agree to withdraw, or would have never invaded in the first place, if Ukraine and/or NATO promised that Ukraine would not join NATO. (I’ve heard several observers say that Ukraine was never going to join NATO anyway, but I’m not sure why they’re so sure of that. It has been recognized as an aspiring NATO member, and several other former communist countries have joined.)
On the other hand, perhaps Putin wanted to invade Ukraine regardless, and his demand for assurances re: NATO & the removal of NATO weapons from Ukraine was just meant to make it easier for him to invade. These are both intelligible motives, and I’m not sure how people are confident in their assessments of Putin’s motives.
2. Best Outcome
Here’s what I hope happens: someone inside Russia deposes Putin, in reaction to how he is ruining the country. I don’t know if there is any real chance of this, but one could hardly overstate how great this would be. It would not only remove this specific tyrant, removing his threat to the security of Europe, but it would send a signal, for once, that tyrants with big militaries cannot just get away with whatever they want to do.
I assume, however, that Putin has already taken steps to stop this from happening; during the last two decades, he probably neutralized everyone he thought might possibly lead a coup against him. Alternately, maybe there will be a popular uprising that will lead to his ouster, though this seems unlikely.
3. Worst Outcome
The worst thing that might come out of this is nuclear war and the collapse of human civilization. Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, implicitly threatening to start a nuclear war.
A non-ridiculous scenario for nuclear war: first, some NATO country gets drawn into the conflict. Maybe they send troops to help Ukraine; maybe a Russian plane strays into their territory and they shoot it down; maybe a Russian attack on Ukraine accidentally hits another country’s forces; etc. Then NATO comes to the defense of its member nation. At some point during this war, Putin realizes that he is going to lose the conventional war, then he’d be deposed. He decides he doesn’t give a fuck anymore and orders a nuclear attack on Ukraine.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union have about 11,000 nuclear warheads between them. A nuclear war probably wouldn’t extinguish the entire human species (probably no one would bomb Africa, for example), but it could destroy Western civilization.
I don’t think that is going to happen; it is very unlikely. But there is a non-negligible probability of it, which has to be taken into account. That is the thing that should most worry us about this situation.
4. Likely Outcome
I suppose the more likely outcome is that Putin and Zelensky work out a deal whereby Russian troops withdraw, but Ukraine makes some major concessions, probably including never joining NATO (or not during the next 50 years, or something like that), not allowing NATO troops on their territory, etc. This is probably the best likely outcome, although it kind of sucks because it will show that military aggression is a successful strategy.
5. The Problem of Existential Risks
If we replayed this situation 1000 times, how many times would it end in the destruction of Western civilization?
I put the question that way because I think we have a tendency to discount small probabilities – it’s easy to think of plausible reasons why “Putin wouldn’t do that”, then just tell yourself that the nuclear war “won’t happen”, and therefore we don’t have to worry about it. But if you imagine us re-doing a scenario like this over and over again, you realize, I hope, that it would go differently on different occasions, and once in a while, Putin (or someone else) would do something crazy. Because that’s how people are; we’re not completely predictable, and occasionally someone does something crazy. (Invading Ukraine is already fairly crazy. But he might do something even more crazy.)
So then we should realize that if humanity keeps undergoing risks like this, eventually the disaster is going to happen. Eventually, we’ll have a nuclear war, or something like that. A few years ago, I linked to a petition to end the President’s legal authority to order a nuclear first strike (https://www.change.org/p/ethicists-for-better-nuclear-procedures-aa1a2f05-f594-4a9a-b838-0b026a5de465). This seems like a good time to revisit that.
At the time, some people showed up to pooh-pooh the proposal, and that petition has only ever gotten 500 signatures. Some ignored the words “first strike” and irrelevantly complained that the President might need to use nukes in retaliation for an attack by another country. Others thought there was no need to do anything because President Trump would never order a nuclear first strike for no good reason. (Unfortunately, of course, there is no available petition that might end the Russian president’s ability to order a nuclear first strike.)
The current situation reminds us that we are not out of the era of war, and thus not out of the danger of nuclear war. Crises like this happen periodically, and each one is a risk for humanity. Unfortunately, I don’t have any solution to this that seems feasible at the moment. We need to end the practice of having countries ruled by dictators, and every nuclear-armed country needs to end the practice of giving one man control over the nuclear arsenal. But I don’t know how we can convince the world’s evil dictatorships to do those things.
Obviously, someone needs to take out Putin, but I don’t know that there’s anyone in a position to do that who could also be convinced to do it. Maybe the U.S. could offer a $1 billion prize for anyone delivering Putin to us, dead or alive?