If you recall, in that 1964 film a nuclear Armageddon starts by accident. That calamity comes in the shape of a US Air Force general who goes insane and orders a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
That sort of thing is probably unlikely: there have to be sufficient safeguards in place to prevent insane officers from giving insane orders. But that doesn’t mean accidents can’t happen – especially if one side is technologically backward.
That point was made with explosive power last night, when the pilot of a Russian SU-34 accidentally dropped a bomb on Belgorod, a Russian city close to the Ukrainian border. The blast was so strong that a car was thrown onto the roof of a five-storey building.
The crater was some 70 feet in diameter, but no, the bomb wasn’t nuclear. This time. But the accident, acknowledged by Russia’s defence ministry, certainly gives one food for thought.
Also for jokes, come to think of it. The Russian Internet is abuzz with them, such as suggestions that the pilot confused Belgorod with Voronezh (another Russian city, if your geography is uncertain). The Russian proverb “beat your own to make others fear you” is being repeated no end.
Experts have figured out what happened. When the Russian blitzkrieg failed in February-March last year, they realised a war of attrition was beckoning. Having taken stock of their arsenal, the Russians found their missiles to be in short supply.
However, they did have large stocks of old FAB-500M-62 blockbusters designed for carpet bombing. Such dumb bombs can be smartened up, as American showed. They came up with a JDAM system (Joint Direct Attack Munition) that, attached to an old-style bomb, turns it into a guided missile. So equipped, the bomb can cruise dozens of miles before hitting a target programmed into its GPS.
The Russians hastily produced their own JDAM equivalent and began to deploy the new weapon a month or two after the war started. But, now we are talking in proverbs, haste makes waste – especially considering the Russians’ lackadaisical approach to quality control.
If anything, I’m surprised it has taken so long for an accident to happen. Until now, those FAB bombs have been causing quite a lot of damage to the Ukraine.
An aircraft would launch one from the Russian territory, out of reach for the Ukrainian AA defences. The bomb would then unerringly guide itself to the Russians’ favourite targets: hospitals, kindergartens, residential blocks – and, well, I’m sure there must be some military targets too. However, that was an accident waiting to happen.
Sooner or later a mishap had to occur: failure of the Russian JDAM, GPS malfunction, wrong coordinates put in – ask the experts, they’ll tell you. To err is human (I must have proverbial logorrhoea today), especially in Russia.
Anyone familiar with Russian manufacturing will know that, given their monumental administrative and managerial incompetence, coupled with pandemic negligence, it takes an immense creative ingenuity to keep things afloat, after a fashion.
As proof of that, émigré Russian engineers have no trouble instantly finding high-paying jobs in the West, where they are greatly appreciated. But, like those Polish artists only achieving greatness abroad (Chopin, Conrad, Apollinaire), those same Russian engineers aren’t nearly as successful at home.
If you don’t believe me, compare, say, a Russian Lada or Volga with an Audi or a Toyota. Also, take stock of all your possessions, from shoes to computers, and see how many are made in Russia. (Then see how many are made in China and weep.)
If the Russians can only produce automotive answers to Chernobyl, that’s their business. But if they produce bombs, especially nuclear ones, that have a mind of their own, it becomes everyone’s business.
A Dr Strangelove scenario is far from impossible, and Putin’s bellicose rhetoric may well trigger a doomsday finale. As you know, hardly a day goes by without either him or one of his stooges threatening the West with nuclear annihilation.
That has to produce some reaction, especially since Russia’s words are backed up with deeds, such as deploying nuclear weapons in Belarus, frequent overflies of Nato territory by nuclear-armed aircraft and so forth. I’m sure Nato’s own nuclear forces are on high alert, ready to deliver a retaliatory, or ideally pre-emptory, strike at a moment’s notice.
Two trigger-happy forces facing each other create a high potential for accidents. Human error, like the one imagined by Stanley Kubrick, is unlikely, one hopes. But a technical malfunction, like the one last night, is possible. And the longer the confrontation lasts, the more possible it becomes.
Western commanders are trained – and empowered – to make tactical decisions on their own, without waiting for an order coming down the chain of command. If a Russian nuclear missile or bomb hits, say, Warsaw, the response may come instantly even if that was an accident.
Rattling today’s sabres is dangerous: they may blow up in your face. Those Russian bandits should keep that in mind and pipe their rhetoric down. Their threats may come true, whether they want it or not.
P.S. The other day I (and a very perceptive reader) commented of Peter Hitchens’s idiotic statement: “If every dollar these [American] zealots have spent on war had been spent instead on building prosperous free countries in places such as Russia, the world would be a startlingly better place.”
But since then a wild thought occurred to me: what if that wasn’t just Hitchens’s usual pro-Putin waffle? What if Putin is using him as a conduit for a blackmailing offer to the West: we’ll end the war, but it’s going to cost you? If you promise Russia a massive aid package along the lines of the Marshall Plan, we’ll sue for peace.
Hitchens could have been used consciously or ‘in the dark’, with a supposed leak fed to him. This is of course conjecture, but with some basis in reality. Putin, by his own admission, grew up as a common thug, and has spent his whole career in cahoots with organised crime. Blackmail comes to him naturally, it’s coded into his DNA.
If that’s indeed his offer, and the West takes him up on it, then I propose a time-saving procedure. Since all such aid would end up in the personal accounts Putin and his merry men keep in Western banks, the costly procedure of transferring money to Russia can be eliminated. Just shift all those billions sideways into their accounts in the same banks, and Boris is your uncle.
With a mad man at the helm, it is impossible to predict what will happen. Scary stuff to consider, especially when one realizes that the men in charge on both sides are no smarter than you or me nor have they shown themselves to be better, moral men. I just carry on with my day-to-day activities and enjoy time with my family.
It is interesting that “Dr. Strangelove”, “Fail Safe”, and “Seven Days in May” – all dealing with the threat of nuclear war – all were released in 1964 (so was I, come to think of it!). It has been a long time since I have seen any of them, but I do remember not finding “Dr. Strangelove” particularly funny. Not my type of humor, I suppose. But to this day I can say I have never seen a commie drink water.