Don't Punt on Putin's Nuclear War Crimes
Attacks on Nuclear Plants Call for More Than Condemnation
Whatever Vladimir Putin thought he was about to achieve in Ukraine six months ago, Russia’s invasion appears to have devolved into his incompetent version of the strategy, minus its victories, pursued by his idol, Joe Stalin. The Boss destroyed the Nazi military machine and liberated his country in World War Two with a Red Army that massed its forces, overwhelmed the failing and frozen Germans, and disregarded its losses. Eighty years later, of course, Putin is reversing roles, playing the fascist invader rather than defender of the motherland. He’s also breaking new ground with war crimes imperiling not just the victims of his aggression, but Europe as well.
Putin’s infamy—indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear facilities—is getting attention, but among his growing list of the war’s criminal travesties not nearly enough. Writing for Project Syndicate, an independent opinion service, Bennett Ramberg, a scholar who, among other things, has studied the wartime vulnerability of nuclear sites, provides an exceptional analysis of why. His assessment deserves attention for several reasons, not least its survey of conflicts, from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and the first Iraq War in the early 1990s to North Korea’s nuclear threat, where western militaries have hit or considered attacking nuclear facilities.
But Ramberg also makes a singular contribution in flagging why condemnation, investigations, and sanctions are simply inadequate to deal with Putin’s threatening nuclear site attacks. For one thing, in pointing out the longstanding failure of the international disarmament community to take seriously the need to address the risk, Ramberg highlights that the ubiquitousness of the danger, not to mention the irresponsibility of ignoring it, is hardly new. But he also examines the model created by India and Pakistan, two nuclear weapons states that are no strangers to mindless military battling, that seeks to do what the global arms control bureaucracies have not.
Ramberg’s assessment is far more than the usual ‘hot off the press’ expert’s opinion on what happened yesterday. With Russian forces attacking Ukraine’s nuclear sites, occupying its power plants and degrading their safety, and arraying their units around them to prevent counterstrikes, it doesn’t take a four star general to see Putin’s crime is an integral part of his battle plan. When it goes wrong, its consequences won’t be limited to the fighting front, much less Ukraine’s geography. Nor will the condemnation of the international community’s failure if Putin’s nuclear criminality doesn’t move, sooner not later, to top-of-mind.