TRADITIONAL NUCLEAR STRIKES ARE LESS LIKELY, BUT DIRTY BOMB ATTACKS ARE VIRTUAL PROBABILITIES.

BY AL J. VENTER

What are some of the biggest myths about surviving nuclear war? Nuclear war, the very nature of which could bring total destruction across the globe, is a non-starter in just about every corridor of power on planet Earth.

Certainly, Russia’s President Putin is causing some serious problems of his own: He and his minions have threatened several times to leave “piles of radioactive dust”after a nuclear attack on the United States (issues that were never once broached during the Cold War).

And while we are not at all certain what motivates him—or, for that matter, fathoming his rationale while performing his day-to-day duties—Vladimir Putin is not the only individual in the former Soviet Union who would be responsible for pushing that ultimately world-redefining button.

As with the United States and Britain, there are safeguards in place in the Kremlin to prevent any Russian leader, rogue or otherwise, from unilaterally initiating the kind of nuclear holocaust that would incinerate humanity.

In reaching this conclusion, we have to bear in mind that the majority of Russians are not unlike the majority of Americans. Like us, they have a vision for the future; they want to see the sun rise over the horizon tomorrow and would like to succeed at what they are doing, prosper and enjoy the successes of their children.

In brief, anyone, including their topmost leaders, who tries to seriously rock Moscow’s boat and destroy everything the Russian people have worked long and hard for would get short shrift from the country’s hierarchy … and that would include Putin if push came to shove. The “Supreme Soviet,”as it was called in the old days, might be history, but today’s powers in the Kremlin have their own equally eff ective series of checks and balances.

The bottom line here is that while the topmost Russian leadership is content to let Putin sow his measure of dissension and dislocation and cause problems for the West (as well as his neighbors in the Ukraine and elsewhere), those excesses will not be tolerated without limitation.

The Russian economy right now is under serious strain for several reasons, including a mindlessly stupid operation to murder a geriatric personal enemy of the Russian leader in a botched chemical warfare attack in Britain. Nobody in Moscow, Putin least of all, anticipated that this single act would generate sanctions in one form or another from scores of nations; nor that these punitive measures would still be in place almost a year later, eff ectively “quarantining”the country economically, with no end of this predicament yet in sight.

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Because of low crude oil prices (in spite of efforts by OPEC to raise them), things are financially tough for the average Russian.

One immediate result of this situation is that Putin is going to have to start thinking more carefully about his future political, and, by implication, economic moves.

Any suggestion of a nuclear option for conflict resolution is almost certain to get Putin pushed aside or, more likely, as in the old Soviet tradition, having an “inexplicable”fatal accident.

WHAT HAS RECENT HISTORY GOT TO DO WITH IT?

History is all of it. It always was. There is an old saying attributed to the philosopher George Santayana that applies here: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

That said, the possibility of a nuclear war— accidental or otherwise—has been with us for a very long time.