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Tag Archives: war
BOOKS: “Nuclear War” by Annie Jacobsen
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie JacobsenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: March 28, 2024
Annie Jacobsen’s new book is fascinating and — quite frankly — horrifying from cover to cover. The book presents a hypothetical minute by minute unfolding of events that culminate in full-scale nuclear war and the end of the world as we know it. A four-hundred-page book that breaks down the events of an hour may sound like a recipe for tedium, like Joyce’s seven-hundred-plus page elaboration of the events of a single day in “Ulysses.” But, it is anything but. There is so much to explore amid the concepts like “the nuclear football” and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction,) and EMP’s (Electromagnetic Pulse weapons.) There is also so much to go wrong, and much that is virtually certainly go wrong.
That last sentence might suggest that the book takes an excessively pessimistic view to create drama. Sadly, it does not need to. The ultra-fast timeline of nuclear calculus does the work of ensuring that many things will go terrifyingly and irreparably wrong. Decision makers have a short window to make decisions, and “use-’em-or-lose-’em” thinking plays a major role in decision making. (i.e. One can’t count on delaying a decision about a counter response because one’s delivery infrastructure — notably, the human bit of it — will likely be destroyed if one absorbs the first strike.) There is also the fact that — counter to all the abort buttons seen in the movies — once missiles are launched, there is no way to stop them. [A bit of “Dr. Strangelove” writ into the system.] At many of the points at which it may seem that Jacobsen is being pessimistic for effect, she explains the basis for her pessimism: from historical events like the failure of the nuclear hotline to commentary by experts.
Lest one think that nuclear warfare is a threat of the past, and that it’s a solved problem, Jacobsen’s scenario reminds us that it’s not just a matter of NATO v the Warsaw Pact (i.e. America v the USSR in the common conception) anymore. She does this by using North Korea as the instigator. We don’t ever learn the Kims’ theoretical motivation, but all one really needs to know to make one nervous is that the DPRK has been quite happy playing the role of pariah, engaging in a number of activities in violation of international law and norms, as well as that Kim Jong Un might just believe some of the ridiculous things his yes-men tell him. (Not to mention the famines and other destabilizing conditions that could lead some other inside actor or group of actors to take unanticipated actions.) The truly disturbing part is to see how easily a strike by the DPRK could draw Russia or possibly China into the nuclear exchange. [Russia because it’s in the path between the US and the DPRK, and China because it could suffer massive casualties from strikes on North Korean facilities near the border that send radiation to sizable Chinese population centers.]
This book is a must-read for anyone who thinks nuclear weapons are the problem of a bygone era.
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“The River Runs Red” by Yue Fei [w/ Audio]
Enraged, I lean on the rail as rain ceases.
I look skyward, and sigh -- then roar.
My grand legacy has crumbled to dust:
A journey of thirty years and 8,000 li.
Young men, don't let regret come with gray hair!
The shame of Jingkang lingers -- a foul taste
We Generals must wash from our mouths.
Let's charge our chariots through Helan Pass
To feast on the flesh of our foes & drink their blood.
Only then can we return home with honor.
In Chinese, the poem is entitled 滿江紅 (Man Jiang Hong,) “The Whole River, Red”:
怒髮衝冠，憑欄處，瀟瀟雨歇。
抬望眼，仰天長嘯，壯懷激烈。
三十功名塵與土，八千里路雲和月。
莫等閒白了少年頭，空悲切。
靖康恥，猶未雪；
臣子恨，何時滅？
駕長車踏破賀蘭山缺！
壯志飢餐胡虜肉，笑談渴飲匈奴血。
待從頭收拾舊山河，朝天闕。
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In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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Pillbox Kitsch [Tanka]
what is this place, with its defensive bunkers on every rise? lasting vestiges of war, so unlike my childhood home.
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The Futility of War [Haiku]
two young gazelles lock horns and head-wrestle, then quit and move on.
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Scarecrow [Free Verse]
Scarecrow, n. - that which exists
solely to evoke fear.
There are so many scarecrows:
global - the end of the world
as we know it.
societal - the end of the tribe
as we know it.
individual - scarecrows of the soul.
Scarecrows lead us into the worst
versions of ourselves:
The one who's stressed, and mean
because of it.
The one who imagines conspiracy
around every corner.
The one who sees threat in every
change & in every difference.
The one who wants an orderly world
of people just like themselves -
familiar, cozy, and lacking surprises.
Scarecrows even march us off to war,
and war should be the scariest state
imaginable --
death doled out on a random basis.
War should be the scariest, but terrible certainties
spur less fear than any old uncertainty.
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Metaphor & Misnomer [Free Verse]
"in the trenches" what a circuit that phrase has taken: from the Western Front of World War I, where the trenches were cold, claustrophobic places of mud and creeping mustard gas; harbor & prison for shell-shocked souls at wit's end to become used by businesspeople & politicians to describe metaphorical fights... but there are no metaphorical fights, they should be called metaphorical games games have winners & losers, but not the living & the dead & the dying & the disabled & the permanently disturbed it feels like a frivolous bit of linguistic creep as fighters now stand on cold, wet feet in muddy trenches in Eastern Ukraine talk of salespeople or grassroots political organizers as "in the trenches" misses the point that everyone in trenches is a soldier -- be they a salesperson in the metaphorical "trenches" of calmer days.
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War [Haiku]
war is in the wind; i hear its shrill grinding, but can't tell from where.
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Fields of the Dead [Free Verse]
It's a beautiful day
in the graveyard.
Blue skies.
Cool, but not cold.
The ideal temperature
to be an overdressed military man.
Do ghosts amble among the stones
on days like these?
I imagine most of these men died
on quite different kinds of days:
Rainy, cold, muddy days.
Muggy, buggy, malarial days.
The kind of day that just won't end,
but to fold into a sleepless night.
How many died,
not from spall or Minié balls,
but because they just didn't have the will
to drag themselves through another day?
from exhaustion?
from demoralization?
How many died under beautiful blue skies
on an idyllic autumn day?
I don't know whether
there're good days to die,
and even less whether
there're good days to be dead.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 