By Brigitte L. Nacos
While many parts of the world suffer deadly or life-changing effects of all kinds of natural disasters--lethal storms, floods, draughts, and pandemics, there are plenty of man-made catastrophes—civil wars, deadly oppression of political dissenters, senseless mass shootings. But the probably most horrific threat today was described by President Joe Biden the other day as the most serious “prospect of Armageddon” since the Cuban Missile Crisis six decades ago. Biden’s assessment of President Vladimir Putin’s repeated warnings of using the nuclear option in Russia’s war against Ukraine should be taken as seriously as Putin’s nuclear threats.
This, then, is the time to remember that John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev found a way to end an existential crisis. Faced with an ultimatum and a blockade of Cuba by the U.S., the Soviet Union blinked. But Khrushchev’s agreement to remove the missiles from the island came with Kennedy’s promise to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. Obviously, Kennedy and his advisers understood that the Kremlin needed a face-saving give-and-take deal. Never mind that the missiles in Turkey were considered close to obsolete at the time.
Whether Putin’s nuclear threat is understood as the use of tactical weapons of mass destruction in the Ukrainian theater of war or as all-out nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West does not matter now. The potential of the deployment of any nuclear weapons calls for all sides—Russian, Ukrainian, and American leaders--to think and talk about ways to end the disastrous war for both the Russian and Ukrainian people.
It would be naïve to believe this to be an easy task. The Ukrainians, on a roll in the Eastern provinces that Russia forcefully annexed and progressing even in the South, are not in the mood for a cease fire and peace negotiations. Washington’s revelation that Ukraine was responsible for the recent assassination of the daughter of one of President Putin’s allies was probably meant to warn President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly to refrain from further hostile actions on Russian territory.
Putin, increasingly criticized openly by war hawks among his longtime allies because of the failure of the Russian military, cannot and will not accept defeat. Therefore, his nuclear threat cannot be ignored.
For all the support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, the Ukrainian people, and Ukrainian leaders, Washington, along with European allies, must take the lead in getting Russians and Ukrainians to the negotiating table.
If there is any chance for an agreement, the peaceful end of the Cuban Missile Crisis provides an example that President Zelensky must understand: Without a face-saving deal for Putin—perhaps Russia keeping the long-disputed Crimean Peninsula and access to the Black Sea—there will not be peace but more suffering on both sides.
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