Diplomacy at the Brink of Nuclear War

Vahe H Apelian

 

I googled and found out that October 16, 1962 was a Tuesday when we were in our classroom in the Armenian Evangelical College in Beirut Lebanon. We were 9^th grade students, that may be equivalent to high school soghomore or maybe Junior given that we graduated at 11^th grade.. Mr. Zaven Messerlian – who had not yet become the principal of the school, nor had he received his doctorate degree in. history - was our homeroom teacher and led the short general knowledge session in the morning before the class resumed its studies. We would be sitting in the same classroom and on the same desks, as teachers came for the different subjects. I remember distinctly when he told us that morning in a very solemn voice that the world is at the brink of nuclear war.

That was over 60 years ago. For many of my younger readers, the date may not say anything. It was the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union had stockpiled nuclear war heads in Cuba that was only 90 miles away from the United States at its closest point. President Kennedy had given an ultimatum to have the war heads removed from Cuba.  The Cuban Missile Crisis became a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war at no time closer after president Truman had authorized dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima, Japan and changed the reality of how deadly coming wars will be.

Today, a headline in NY times read that “Ukraine fired U.S. made missile into Russia for First Time,” and that the president Putin lowered the threshold of Russia using its nuclear might. (you may read the links below). These are not developments that can be taken lightly and gamble on who is going to blink first, Russia or Ukraine, the latter having received missiles from U.S. that can hit further into the Russia and Ukraine has hit further into Russia.

I do not want to hint to the internal politics whether it is the democrat Biden who is war mongering as he transfers power to republican Trump. In my book the war mongering countries are Russia and Ukraine. Let us face it, as saying goes in the U.S., “guns do not kill, people do.” It is Ukraine that used the deadlier weapons U.S. supplied. It did not have to, and could have resorted to diplomacy.

This brings me to Armenia caught in a region not far from Ukraine that is another tinder box for international conflict, South Caucasus. And when I compare the posturing of  Ukraine’s  president Zelenskyy, to that of Nikol Pashinyan, the prime minister  of the  tiny Republic of Armenia, I see more of reason to support Armenia’s prime minister’s policy of charting peaceful relations with its neighbors, than Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy’s militaristic stand.   “As has become something of a trademark for the 44-year-old Ukrainian leader, Zelenskyy wore his green military fatigues to meet the president at the White House Wednesday” said a report almost two years ago, on December 22, 2022. 

Let us not kid ourselves. No one among us is far away from dealing with the consequences of the nuclear was, as the doctor who worked in Kansas City was not in the movie “The Day After”.

It is a MAD, MAD, MAD world and I mean to say it is Mutually Assured Destruction world

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. 

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Notes:

1.  Ukraine Fired U.S.-Made Missiles Into Russia for First Time, Officials Say; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/world/europe/ukraine-russia-atacms-missiles.html

2. Putin Lowers Russia’s Threshold for Using Nuclear Arms; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/world/europe/putin-russia-nuclear-weapons-missiles.html