[D66] Alles loopt in de soep: West makes plans to avoid panic if Russia uses nuclear bomb in Ukraine

[René Oudeweg]

theguardian.com
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/west-plans-avoid-panic-if-russia-nuclear-bomb-ukraine-putin>



  West makes plans to avoid panic if Russia uses nuclear bomb in Ukraine

Dan Sabbagh
4-5 minutes
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Western officials are engaged in “prudent planning” behind the scenes to
prevent chaos and panic in their home countries in the event Russia was
to detonate a nuclear bomb in or near Ukraine
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/ukraine>.

Although a nuclear crisis is considered highly unlikely, the insider
said officials internationally were re-examining plans to provide
emergency support and reassurance to populations fearful of nuclear
escalation.

Hints of the thinking emerged in a briefing by an official on Friday,
who was asked if there would be measures in place to prevent panic
buying or people fleeing cities en masse in fear of escalation after a
nuclear event.

Governments were engaged in “prudent planning for a range of possible
scenarios” said the western official, who was speaking on condition of
anonymity, although they stressed that any use of nuclear weapons by
Russia <https://www.theguardian.com/world/russia> in the war would be
abhorrent.

Public information campaigns and even school drills on how to survive a
nuclear war were a feature of the cold war, including the duck and cover
campaign
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/forgetting-the-apocalypse-why-our-nuclear-fears-faded-and-why-thats-dangerous>
in the US in the 1950s, Protect and Survive
<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/30/uk-was-primed-for-nuclear-war-in-the-uk-taras-young-interview>
from the UK in the late 1970s and “Everyone has a chance”
<https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/TV2QKE7VFFDQKV2WYOMZCU6B6OTRCQM6>
in West Germany in the early 1960s.

These campaigns were the subject of considerable criticism and parody
for their suggestion that it could be possible to survive an all-out
nuclear conflict, although in this case the focus is supposed to be on
preventing public panic over fear of an uncontrolled nuclear escalation
that would lead to major cities being targeted.

Kate Hudson, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament <https://cnduk.org/>, said: “This ‘prudent planning’ harks
back to the British government’s cold war-era Protect and Survive
campaign – which was roundly condemned by CND as giving the false
impression that a nuclear attack could be survived by whitewashing
windows and other irrelevances.”

As Moscow has suffered reverses on the battlefield in Ukraine since
September, Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the nuclear rhetoric, saying
last month that he would use “all available means” to defend Russian
territory.

The western official said the Russian president’s comments about nuclear
use were “deeply irresponsible” and no other country was talking about
nuclear weapons. “We do not see this as a nuclear crisis,” they said.

Echoing comments made by the US, the official said: “Any use of nuclear
weapons would break a taboo that has held since 1945” which would “lead
to severe consequences for Russia, as well as for everybody else”.

Towards the end of last month, Jake Sullivan, the US national security
adviser, said there would be “catastrophic consequences” for Moscow if
it sought to deploy a tactical nuclear weapon, which can have the power
of six or seven Hiroshima blasts.

The west does not want to spell out how it might respond, to preserve a
deliberate ambiguity – and on Friday the official would not be drawn on
what nuclear armed countries might do. But the expectation is that to
avoid rapid escalation any initial response would be non-nuclear.

On Thursday, Emmanuel Macron broke ranks and said he would not order a
like-for-like retaliation if there was a Russian nuclear strike in
Ukraine. The French president said the country’s fundamental interests
“wouldn’t be directly affected at all if, for example, there was a
ballistic nuclear attack in Ukraine, in the region”.

Earlier this week, Jeremy Fleming, the head of the GCHQ spy agency, said
he not seen any sign that Russia was preparing to use a tactical nuclear
weapon in or around Ukraine. It is his agency’s job to help monitor
Russian military movements, and whether its military was trying to pair
a nuclear warhead with a conventional missile.

Experts generally believe that Putin is engaged in a bluff, trying to
provoke fear and uncertainty in the west, to ensure that the US or Nato
does not enter the war on Ukraine’s side.
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