Russia’s Nuclear Totalitarianism

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July 20, 2022

On Feb. 27, 2022, just days after invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order to prepare Russian nuclear weapons for use.

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Putin referred to this action as putting nuclear weapons “on special alert.” This step meant effectively placing an announcement: “Beware! The Russian Federation is a superpower, for it has nuclear weapons.”

The superpower had just attacked another country that had renounced its nuclear weapons in exchange for its security guarantees, as set forth in the Budapest Memorandum signed on Dec. 5, 1994. This document, signed also by the Russian Federation, contains the following paragraph:

“The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America confirm their commitment to seek immediate action by the UN Security Council to assist Ukraine as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in the event that Ukraine becomes a victim of an act of aggression or is threatened with aggression with nuclear weapons.”

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Ukraine has since become a victim of aggression by a nuclear superpower.

The Russian Federation’s attack on Ukraine is a gross violation of its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum.

Georgetown University professor and national and international security expert Dr. Philip Karber said, “The military intervention in Crimea was a violation of international law, the first state-level territorial aggression since the end of World War II. These actions violate the UN Charter, Article 2, they violate documents that the Russian side has signed, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, on short- and medium-range forces, and agreements on the reduction of conventional armed forces. And this is a blatant violation of the Budapest Memorandum on security guarantees for Ukraine, which will have consequences for the entire international system (arms control) in the future.”

Dr. Karber was referring to the seizure of Crimea in 2014. Of course, an even greater violation of the UN Charter, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Budapest Memorandum is the Russian Federation’s attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. 

The Russian leadership’s repeated reminder that their country is a nuclear power is more than just superpower self-assertion. By declaring the purpose of its attack on Ukraine its “denazification,” the Russian Federation thereby declared that its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II gives it the moral right to determine which country is a Nazi and what “punishment” that country should bear for its supposed “guilt,” as established by the Russian Federation. 

The Russian Federation believes that the victory of a different state, the USSR, and its allies in World War II, gives it a moral advantage over other countries in any conflict.

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According to the English historian Arnold Toynbee, twentieth-century Russia resembles Byzantium because of two characteristic features. The first is the conviction that it is always right, and the second is the institutions of totalitarian statehood.

Toynbee was referring to the USSR. However, the Russian Federation inherited the Soviet consciousness of absolute rightness and totalitarianism in foreign and domestic policy.

There is another characteristic the Russian Federation inherited from the USSR and the Russian Empire: drunkenness.

In the Russian Federation, alcoholism is a widespread and painful phenomenon. Russian nationals have always drunk alcoholic beverages in enormous quantities. Since the time of Tsar Ivan IV, the Terrible (16th century), the Russian authorities had been getting the people drunk in order to profit from the alcohol trade. Drunkenness is not only a social disaster of the Russian people, but also a byproduct of their distorted self-esteem, an exaggerated sense of national rightness and confidence in their power. The British writer Mark Forsyth, in his book A Short History of Drunkenness, noted that Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Stalin used alcohol to rule the country.

The Russian Federation is intoxicated with its power. Its authorities get their population drunk and use massive propaganda to indoctrinate them into their worldview. The authorities of the Russian Federation and its people are intoxicated with the consciousness of their rightness and their power. 

The people are being enveloped in narcotically acting propaganda vapors that isolate Russian society from reality. Society in the Russian Federation is stupefied and dumbed down by superpower propaganda.             

The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons by the Russian Federation has been actively discussed since the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. Ronald Reagan said: “A nuclear war cannot be started and cannot be won.” There is no evidence that Reagan is right, but it is known that nuclear superpowers lose wars: the United States lost the war in Vietnam, the Soviet Union lost the war in Afghanistan and ceased to exist. Empires, including nuclear superpowers, involve themselves in colossal military adventures and cannot stop. This is what happened to Nazi Germany. Not only did Hitler commit suicide, but Nazi Germany condemned itself to defeat in the war it unleashed and its liquidation as an empire, for it could not retreat from its unrealistic plans of conquest.  

Nuclear weapons are not only murderous, but suicidal for the country that uses them.

On April 22, 1915, for the first time in history, weapons of mass destruction were used: the Germans used them against the Belgians during World War I in a chemical attack. Fifteen thousand soldiers suffered from this attack. However, this chemical attack did not give Germany any advantage as the French soon used chemical weapons against German soldiers. Germany hoped to win with a terrible new weapon, but it lost World War I. Chemical weapons harmed those they were aimed at and those who deployed them, as the wind directed the poisonous gases against the attacker.

Nuclear weapons are also weapons of mass destruction, but the winds of war can turn them against an aggressor. Their use could be an uncontrolled chain reaction, like the one that takes place in the atomic nucleus. The Russian Federation does not present the results of its nuclear initiative. The U.S. and other NATO countries also have no idea what would happen or what to do if the Russian Federation used nuclear weapons.

Russia borrowed nuclear weapons and reactionary totalitarianism from the USSR. The Russian nuclear bomb chain reaction, which is the realization of Russia’s reactionary, challenges those who are against aggressive totalitarianism and against the use of nuclear weapons.  

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License

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