Growing up in the eighties, I was aware that we were in the midst of the Cold War, but I never really gave it much thought. The ubiquitous duck and cover practice of the fifties and sixties was nonexistent, and it seemed to me that Sting’s song “Russians” was less a worry about nuclear war and more a song about the simple fact that, because the Russians actually did love their children (they’re human after all), nuclear war was unlikely. Mutually Assured Destruction to my mind seemed to be common sense, and all adults possessed common sense. That’s what it meant to be an adult, I assumed.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, I (and likely most everyone else) assumed that the threat of a nuclear holocaust was at last a thing of the past. The only possibility of a nuclear explosion somewhere on the planet was connected to Islamic terrorism. Communism seemed it would have more reasonable leaders to me, and the fact that at most such terrorists could gain possession of a couple of such devices seemed to offset the relative dogmatic irrationality that accompanies Islamic terrorism.
During the past three weeks, though, I’ve thought more about the possibility of a nuclear world war than I ever have. Probably because it seems more likely than ever. Putin combines the worst of both the Cold-War era Soviet Union (i.e., a ton of nukes) and the warped view of the reality of Islamic extremists (i.e., an alternate view of history complete with totally fabricated “facts” that fuels a contemporary grievance). And he’s backed into a corner. The Russians are inflicting terrible damage, but three weeks in, they still haven’t taken the capital. Russian soldiers are abandoning vehicles daily and the advance seems to be slowed to a near-standstill. If this continues, Russian surrender is the only sensible option, but it’s the one option that so many of us cannot imagine Putin taking.
The thing is, I find myself thinking of this all the time. I’m standing in the hallway, monitoring students as they change classes, and I’m thinking about it. I’m mowing the lawn, and I’m thinking about it. I’m going for a jog, and I’m thinking about it. It’s easy simply to say, “Well, you’re an adult now, and you have children: you have a better grasp of the dangers, and you’re directly responsible for the well-being of two children.”
But this is fundamentally different: Putin is one man. He answers to no one. The premier of the Soviet Union answered at least to the Politburo. There was some sense of accountability. Putin, on the other hand, answers to no one. He’s been holed up in solitude for two years now fearful of Covid and ever worried about a potential coup (allegedly) — he has literally lived in a reality of his own making, and the notions coming from his speeches indicate that his reality and reality reality don’t have much in common.
And so I, like everyone else, go through my normal routine — teaching, running, mowing, laughing, fussing — with a nagging fear just under the surface. A fear that I tell myself is ultimately not founded in reality. “Surely,” I tell myself, “Putin won’t escalate this to the point of no return.”