I watched CNN. Anderson Cooper was interviewing patients and their parents at a hospital filled with seriously ill children. I tried to imagine the worries that must torment a little girl whose chemotherapy treatment is suspended while air raid sirens wail their haunting alarm. Fear on top of fear demanding more courage on top of bravery. A parent must wonder where the love of God goes when a child fighting for breath is disconnected from oxygen so he can be moved to a basement because a manmade hell rains down outside?
As I watched from my recliner, thousands of miles from the bombardment of Ukraine, the urge to help, to actually bear arms soaked my soul. If one of those kids had been mine – but then, aren’t they all our children too? Those thoughts addled my mind and squeezed my chest. Every Ukrainian interviewed has begged NATO and the USA to establish a no-fly zone, an umbrella over their homeland to deter the bombing. Ukrainians are carrying the fight on the ground but they need help to stop the fire raining down from the sky.
The instigator of this violence does not care that children die. He cannot empathize with the pain and fear of an eight year old drawing his final breath huddled in a basement with his mother holding his hand and his father gone to fight Russians. A useless, avoidable death is of no concern to Vladimir Putin. His decisions emanate from the darkest corner of a mind that is driven by insatiable lust for fulfillment of a vision that only he can see. He is not rational by normal human standards. He decides to kill like a hungry great white shark decides to eat. And children die.
Imagine yourself learning to make Molotov cocktails and getting instruction on how to use them for maximum effect. Imagine being handed an AK-47, instructed on how to assemble it and how to make your first practice shots. Imagine this is the first time you ever held a lethal weapon. Last week you worked in a bank or as an electrician. This week you are part of the resistance. You decided to fight to save your country from being consumed by the overwhelming force of invaders. You helped build your democracy and your country and you damn well will not be ruled by the whims of an autocratic dictator. You sent vulnerable family members west to escape to safety. They are heading to an unknown destination for an unpredictable period of time. Perhaps forever. You hug, kiss, and try to hold back tears as you say goodbye. You pray that a time will come when you can share a joy filled hug when you are reunited. You pray but are not very confident that time will come.
So, here I am. I watch the news. I read updates online. For now, I am completely safe and have no reason for fear. But I ache. I am embarrassed by my lack of personal sacrifice to preserve our democracy, to protect our constitution and to celebrate living in a country that has, for the most part, resisted autocrats or rejected them before their damage became irreversible. I am sure that when we get too lazy or too cowardly to govern ourselves, there will always be a “Putin” ready and willing to take what has been created here and use it to serve his own ego.
So what now? For those of us who lived through the cold war with the USSR, the reactions to Russian aggression are almost a reflex. We cannot fire a single shot at a Russian because that one shot risks escalation to nuclear war. We have been taught to believe that one shot will inevitably escalate step by step until nukes are launched. Nuclear war has only one predictable result – the destruction of our world as we know it. Even if some people survive the early aftermath, they would face a nuclear winter thwarting plants and animals for decades or more. Some radioactive isotopes would not decay to safe levels for more years than our accumulated recorded history of mankind on earth. Uninhabitable zones could last for millennia.
The result is simply too severe to risk starting a nuclear war. Our choice is to watch while an autocrat who commands a gigantic army trains his sights on sick children. We watch while he aims his bombs toward the homes of old folks who don’t have the ability to escape or the will to pursue safety by walking for days into an unknowable future. We watch until we get overwhelmed by one more report from a subway tunnel or basement where the people of Ukraine have gone while the missiles and bombs destroy their homes. We watch until all of Ukraine is occupied by Russian troops and all western correspondents have been ousted or killed. We watch until the bombs and missiles and artillery have levelled everything in the camera’s field of view. We watch until it looks like nuclear bombs exploded there.
As I watch, I try to imagine how I would feel while I wait the final minutes before a Russian nuclear ICBM hits Kansas City. My family would perish in a few nanoseconds. Our fate, the fate of the world, could be irreversible if the autocratic madman’s ego was sufficiently bruised.
If he was incensed because Ukraine became a no-fly zone, he might go nuclear. If NATO or US planes shoot down a Russian plane that violates a no-fly zone, he might go nuclear. What might make Putin decide to unleash Russia’s nukes? No one knows for sure. Are there rational people around him to stop the nuclear first strike from being carried out? I don’t know but I hope there are. Preventing nuclear war has been, and should be, a unifying goal of all humankind.
However, is salving Putin’s ego worth the price? So far, in America the price is higher gas prices and disruptions to the supply chain – whatever that really means. Death, destruction and enslavement are part of the price is being paid by Ukraine. Forty million people’s lives will end – either physically or practically. Forty million lost to save eight billion lives around the world, is that a fair price? Would it be just as fair if the forty million people were Americans? Should the price already paid by Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, Afghanistan and others be added? Should the price of Putin's next victim (perhaps Moldova or Finland) be considered? What if his next target is a NATO member that happens to be a former Soviet republic? What choices will be made as the coalition members rally to defend?
The conventional wisdom states that mutual assured destruction means that nuclear war must be avoided at all cost – that the world should pay any price to keep one nuclear power from firing a single shot at another nuclear power. Under this philosophy we are never faced with Sophie’s choice – confronting pure evil versus nuclear war. One shot escalates to two until one country has its back to a wall. Nukes are released. The theory is plausible but it isn't the only route to a nuclear conflagration. Avoiding nuclear war at any and all cost worked well through the cold war before Putin took over Russia. I don’t believe Putin will stop after Ukraine. I don’t believe that he will ever feel restrained from escalating to nuclear war. Provocation from us is not required, the absence of provocation from us is not sufficient.
For me, Ukrainian children being slaughtered is a price I cannot bear. If the arc of the world is for autocrats to survive because they have nuclear weapons while children die because they're in the way of a madman's ego, it is time to consider a no-fly zone. Without this or some comparable help for Ukraine, there will be confirmation for every aspiring autocrat that he needs a nuclear weapon. Such a weapon will give him a perpetual free pass to spread unchecked mayhem. He will be unrestrained as he serves his demented ego. That is the only thing that motivates or matters to autocrats like Putin and there are many others.
Is now the time for Putin's free pass to expire? Are sanctions and economic pressure plus weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukrainians enough? Or is now the moment when we stare directly at Sophie's choice? As citizens of democratic countries that stand in opposition to Putin, we all are walking in Sophie's shoes now. We must make our choice.
--td
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