The Ukraine situation illustrates the ineffectiveness of nuclear weapons in preventing escalating military tension, raising the possibility of war, despite the potentially catastrophic consequences.
Scottish CND condemns the substitution of military threat for diplomacy and notes the danger for the entire planet when nuclear weapons are part of the context. We condemn the military deployments by Russia on the border of Ukraine. We also condemn the history of use of military might by the USA and NATO that substitutes for diplomacy and plays into Putin’s narrative that Russia must defend itself from an expansionist and hostile West. The end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact afforded a moment of opportunity to create a different kind of European-wide security system that included Russia. Instead NATO expanded as an alliance that is essentially against Russia.
Rather than using diplomacy to rescue the INF treaty that limited the US and Russian intermediate range nuclear weapons, the US withdrew from the treaty in 2019. They have built-up NATO cruise missile bases in Romania and Poland, adding to the number of European countries hosting US nuclear weapons.
The risk of military conflict drawing in the nuclear powers and accelerating into a deliberate or accidental nuclear exchange is a concern for all of us. We know from multiple examples over the past 60 years that nuclear weapons don’t stop wars.