Red lines and mushroom clouds

It's just as hard to miss the tinge of red in the mushroom clouds produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb as it is the setting of "red lines" that has coloured much international relations over recent times.

When the great powers set red lines they do so under the shadow cast by mushroom clouds.

In June 1983 the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, warned US envoy Averell Harriman that the actions and rhetoric of the Reagan administration were leading the US and the USSR toward "the dangerous red line" of nuclear war through "miscalculation."

Six months later that red line was reached, but thankfully, was not breached. It was a close run affair, we now know.

At the time the Reagan administration adopted a nuclear strategy, not terribly different from that of the Carter administration, that called for the US to "prevail" in a "protracted nuclear war." The strategy sought to achieve "escalation control" through the use of nuclear weapons strikes as a type of communication device. The idea was that limited nuclear strikes, backed up the credible threat of a full scale nuclear attack, could be used in a graduated fashion to signal resolve and so compel Moscow to do Washington's bidding during a crisis.

This strategy was matched by strategic programmes such as the MX missile, Pershing II missile, Trident II D5 missile, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and so on that were, in part, designed to give the US the ability to launch a preemptive first strike on the Soviet Union and prevent it retaliating in kind. To control the process of escalation required a credible capacity to destroy the Soviet Union with relatively limited cost.

Despite all the historical water that has flowed under the proverbial bridge the strategy and the efforts to "modernise" nuclear weapons to make these war fighting strategies credible endures, from the physics packages of the warheads themselves, to the reentry vehicles in which they are bused, to the delivery vehicles such as missiles upon which they are launched, to the system of command and control needed to control escalation after their use.

Today all the nuclear powers, so far as we are aware, are modernising their nuclear weapons precisely as they are setting new red lines. They are doing so because they understand that red lines stay bright red when the shadow cast by the mushroom cloud remains clear to all and sundry.

All this moves us toward the "dangerous red line" of nuclear war through "miscalculation." This is because the nuclear weapons of the US and Russia remain on high alert, a posture known as "launch on warning." In a crisis high alert levels lead to a "use them or lose them" dynamic that puts a premium on striking first.

Furthermore, during the cold war, the Soviets indicated that they would not play the American game of communication through nuclear strikes; a limited US nuclear strike would be met by a full blown Soviet response. That set a red line that deterred even a limited nuclear strike by Washington.

Now things are a little bit different. Russia currently pursues a similar strategy of escalation control that would first begin with a limited nuclear strike to communicate resolve which would, hopefully, compel an adversary to deescalate a crisis, envisaged as one that threatens the viability of the Russian state, on terms favourable to Moscow. Both Washington and Moscow have a graduated nuclear strategy that makes nuclear weapons more "useable" in a crisis.

To make matters worse the red line that the United States casts for Russia now sits on her very borders. That has been perhaps the most significant long term strategic affect of the crisis in Ukraine. We now have both Washington and Moscow thinking they can play cat and mouse with nuclear weapons, and that when the red lines sit upon the Rodina herself.

The United States has no red lines; it is free to subvert, bomb and invade at will in order to advance its interests. Russia, by contrast, cannot act to secure its interests beyond the red line.

Ukraine is a state that is historically divided between east and west, and a sort of post cold war modus vivendi existed between Moscow and Washington regarding how this was to be managed. Critical to this understanding was the recognition of Russian strategic interests in Ukraine, expressed through Ukrainian neutrality and Russian control of the Black Sea fleet in Crimea.

This understanding was broken when the US moved to assist the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, who hailed from the east, as President of Ukraine by right wing nationalists from the west, who at once declared an intent to break this modus vivendi.

Naturally, Moscow feared that Ukraine would be incorporated into NATO upon the extension of the red line to the borders of Russia. Vladimir Putin immediately moved to annex the strategically significant Crimea, although historically a part of Russia and populated by Russians its annexation breached international law and treaties, and supported a revolt by the population of eastern Ukraine against western domination.

A very important consideration for Moscow was pushing the red line back away from Russia's borders.

Despite what may be the case on the ground the most important strategic affect of the Ukraine crisis is the official extension of the US red line to the borders of Russia.

The imposition of sanctions, the isolation of Russia politically, and the significant freezing of US-Russian relations means precisely this. To be sure Putin's actions mean the red line de facto has been pushed back to the historical fault line between western and eastern Ukraine, however Moscow would prefer that the red line be pushed officially back to where it currently sits de facto if not back to where it was prior to the ouster of Yanukovych.

That is why, in part, it has militarily intervened in the conflict in Syria in a way that props up the Baathist regime of Bashar al Assad. By supporting Damascus Russia encroaches upon a US red line, namely the Middle East, where no other great power hitherto has dared cross. Moscow hopes that its intervention in the Middle East will give it leverage to push the red line back at home.

In Syria we see the deployment of military firepower by both Russia, US allies such as Turkey and, of course, the United States itself. These deployments seek to establish and maintain red lines, as demonstrated by Turkey's shooting down of a Russian military aircraft, a dangerous precedent, and Russia's deployment of firepower to prevent anti Assad forces from crossing red lines in the internal conflict. The United States has also set red lines in Syria which Assad dare not cross.

All of this, of course, poses the risk of a wider conflict through miscalculation and accident.

The scramble to set red lines also occurs in the Asia Pacific as witnessed by the interplay between China, the United States and Japan. China is setting red lines a little bit beyond its borders in strategically and economically significant islands.

However, as with Russia, the United States has set its red line on China's border as evidenced by its efforts to counter what it calls Beijing's strategy of "anti access/area denial," which is designed, we are told, to deny the Pentagon access to China's red lines namely her borders.

The United States also seeks strategic dominance with respect to China in order to make the red lines Washington has set for Beijing brighter than a thousand suns. By contrast, again, the United States has no red lines as the Pacific is an American lake.

The differentiated setting of red lines in Asia supposed to be achieved through the full spectrum of military capabilities from conventional to nuclear.

Obama's "tilt to Asia" has resulted in a shift of firepower to Asia, a shift backed up the doctrine of AirSea Battle, a maritime version of AirLand Battle that NATO adopted in the 1980s. Critical to AirSea battle, as with AirLand Battle, are deep strikes to the rear of the operational theatre. In the case of AirSea Battle that rear is the Chinese hinterland for the red lines are on China's borders, recall.

In the nuclear realm the US possesses strategic nuclear superiority over China, and the deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense in Asia and the US homeland, it is at least hoped, would prevent Chinese nuclear forces from striking the United States following an American first strike.

China responds by placing multiple nuclear warheads upon its missiles, perhaps by changing, either now or later, its long standing doctrine of minimum nuclear deterrence, and augmenting its conventional capacity to deny the United States Navy and Air Force access to strategic areas near its borders that is the Washington imposed red lines.

This could eventually lead Beijing to also adopt a high alert status, that is launch on warning, for its nuclear arsenal.

Although our focus in both Europe and Asia is on current events we need to understand that the roots of the problem lie deeper and can be found in the manner that the US has pursued an "imperial" foreign policy "by design," to use the words of a leading international relations theorist, John Mearsheimer, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This includes expanding NATO geographically further and further eastward and expanding its declaratory mission from defence to incorporate offensive interventionism, and that beyond the European theatre of operations to boot for Washington is not constrained by red lines.

In Asia this includes containing rising Chinese power as China is a state that refuses to bend itself to Washington's will or readily acquiesces to its Washington imposed place as a subordinate power in regional and global affairs.

As the world slowly becomes more multipolar the expansive US setting of red lines, whilst maintaining freedom of action for itself, undermines global strategic stability, for the setting and counter setting of red lines compels the military forces of the great powers to increasingly engage in military exercises in close proximity to each other.

Upon the end of the cold war Mikhail Gorbachev had called for Europe to become a largely demilitarised "common home" that would offer Moscow a safe and secure place within her borders. This vision was explicitly rejected by the triumphant western powers led by the United States, and it was rejected against the wishes of the people of Europe including those of the east.

We should remember that one reason why we averted catastrophe in the 1980s was because the absurd nature of the superpower conflict encouraged the rise of a peace movement from below as people perceived that the world was approaching Andropov's red line. The protesters of 1989 in the east were a part of that peace movement. This movement was armed with a doctrine or vision known as "common security."

Instead of common security eastern Europe saw the expansion of the western alliance system and the extension of the most savage of neoliberal orders, which in essence amounted to little more than plunder.

Meaningful human survival ranked much, much lower as a priority relative to grand theft of property that theoretically, at least, was held in common through the auspices of the state.

In the nuclear age more than ever security is a common property or a common resource. This is because, despite all the efforts to achieve escalation control, the nuclear powers are locked into a condition of interdependency that technology and strategy cannot break.

To reignite an impetus for common security will require remobilising the peace movement; one of the benefits of the end of the cold war for elites was that it had the affect of demobilising the movement. Although it sprang up again in the context of Iraq and the "war on terror" it lacked an encompassing vision for common security, was largely reactive, and so as a consequence was easily dispersed.

We need to rearticulate a programme of common security and fight for it using the panoply of mobilisations and direct actions that the peace movement of the 1980s was noted for.

Meaningful human survival will depend upon an aroused global citizenry that dares once again to set red lines for the world's elites.