Are they sleepwalking – Western leaders and the memory of Hiroshima/Nagasaki

Today, 80 years ago, the US have used for the first and only time, nuclear bombs in a military conflict.

Japan and the World remember.

The two US nuclear bombs killed hundreds of thousands and mutilated millions. It broke the Japanese nation.

Still today there are voices that are justifying the use of the nuclear bombs against Japan – at a moment when Japan was retreating and not winning. It was about to finish the job, to break Japan, to kill. The US was not in an existential threat but claimed to stop the killing with the bombs –  through enormous killing.

Today’s nuclear doctrines are refined but essentially allow the nuclear nations sweeping usage of the bombs. Even a preventive nuclear attack could be argued under international law and the nations’ nuclear doctrines. Even nuclear attacks on non-nuclear nations could be considered as per the new Russian doctrine.

NATO is expanding eastwards since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia was too weak to respond in the earlier years but can since recently oppose to NATO’s expansion into Ukraine, Belarus or Gerorgia. That’s what happened in Ukraine when in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine to stop NATO and to protect its millions of Russians living on the territory of Ukraine.

Since 2022, NATO is pushing a war against Russia, with Ukrainian soldiers, but with NATO finance, equipment, arms, intelligence and command. It is a proxy war of NATO, or better said, it is NATO’s use of a part of the Ukrainian population to go to war against Russia. Pre-2014, before the Maidan-Putsch, the Ukrainian population was majorly Russia-friendly. The Maidan-Putsch separated the Russian speaking eastern provinces and rest-Ukraine became again Russia-hating, a histroic baggage of large parts of the population in Western-Ukraine and a brilliant basis for a conflict and war with Russians (in Ukraine) and with Russia. Finally, rest-Ukraine was ready to embrace NATO, to station arms, intelligence centers and biolabs, as well as missiles. In 2022, the Ukrainian army was the largest in Western Europe, financed, armed and commanded by NATO. Was Russia right to be afraid of NATO’s eastward move?

Within NATO, few member states have nuclear weapons.  Russia has the largest nuclear force.

What are both up to fighting the war against each other in Ukraine? NATO’s initial target was to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, then, as the war turned bad for NATO, the target became that Ukraine shall not lose the war. Is NATO willing to engage in a nuclear conflict with Russia over Ukraine and its targets? It seems that Russia is enough threatened by NATO’s eastward expansion to risk a nuclear conflict. Russia has made such statements regularly.

Taking up an aggressive statement of Dmitry Medvedev, not a member of the Russian government and a sidelined former president, Donald Trump ordered two nuclear submarines to be re-positioned to attack positions against Russia. The Kremlin responded with the re-positioning of nuclear bombers to Europe. These acts of nuclear escalation happen in the context of Donald Trump threatening Russia with more sanctions demanding Russia to accept an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, a demand which would favor NATO’s target of not losing the war in Ukraine. Russia expressed its fear that Ukraine would use the ceasefire to rearm or allow NATO troops to be deployed in Russia.

But this escalation happens also following the build-up of US nuclear mid-range launch systems in the Philippines and while the US announces that Germany wants to purchase the same nuclear launch systems. Both deployments would be an increased threat to China and to Russia. In response, Russia declared to give up its self-imposed limitation on mid-range nuclear weapons, a self-limitation which Russia kept after the US exited the NIF mid-range nuclear missile treaty. China has not yet responded.

Threats increase and Western governments play down the nuclear risk while they are further provoking and attacking Russia. Are they sleepwalking? Don’t they remember Hiroshima?