by
Austin BayAugust 6, 2025
The 80th anniversaries of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide an instructive moment for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to mull the costs of war and the benefits of peace -- and perhaps rethink risking a head-to-head collision with nuclear-armed America and a revitalized and rearming NATO.
The nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) didn't end World War II -- at least not quite. That's a fact that needs to be repeated.
The six days between Nagasaki and Japan's surrender on Aug. 15 were six more hideous days of war for U.S. and allied forces. Combat -- and Japanese atrocities -- continued in China, the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
During those six days, vicious political turmoil shook Tokyo, as the Japanese high command's so-called peace and war factions battled for control of the state. The fanatics wanted to continue the war.
In his classic essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb," Paul Fussell (World War II vet and National Book Award winner) observes that during the interim, "Allied (Pacific) casualties were running to over 7,000 per week." After Nagasaki, "captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the U.S. submarine Bonefish was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down ... and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost."
I hear an echo of Fussell's casualty toll when President Donald Trump deplores the weekly casualty count in the war Russia wages against Ukraine. Trump often says 5,000 a week. There's evidence that combined Russian and Ukrainian killed and wounded per week exceeds 10,000. The Kremlin doesn't provide casualty stats.
I write this column on Aug. 5. Trump has set a deadline for Putin to agree to a ceasefire, to end the slaughter of Ukrainian and Russian "souls," as he puts it. At one time, his deadline was sometime in September. Then it became Aug. 9, Nagasaki's anniversary. Now Aug. 8 is the deadline for Russia committing to a ceasefire.
The column I wrote last week suggested Trump's harsh sanctions and secondary tariff threats conceivably exposed Putin's regime to an "economic Nagasaki."
That was a metaphor. Russia is in terrible economic shape. It is vulnerable to an enforced economic embargo. However, economic sanctions are not nuclear devices.
During the Cold War, the prospect of a nuclear war haunted Russia-U.S. relations. But fear of mutual devastation, mutual assured destruction (MAD), actually stabilized Europe. The Cold War's shooting wars were waged on the periphery -- in Africa, Asia, South America.
But in 2025, nuclear weapons shadow all Ukraine-related negotiations, especially the looming economic and diplomatic collision. On July 31, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (a popinjay given to apocalyptic threats) told Trump to "watch his words" because Russia still possesses a nuclear arsenal.
Trump responded with video of two U.S. Navy nuclear ballistic missile subs presumably deploying to give Medvedev and Putin reason to watch their words.
That Russian nuclear might blights the Ukraine War is a wrong attributable to Western liberal end-of-history triumphalism.
Post-Cold War, Ukraine possessed the planet's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile. Then disarmament diplomacy intervened. The Clinton administration and Britain thought they had solved the problem of loose ex-Soviet nukes and Ukrainian territorial sovereignty when the Kremlin signed the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Ukraine gave up its nukes, and Russia said it would guarantee Ukraine's borders, including the Crimean Peninsula.
In 2014, Vlad Putin's forces shredded the memorandum and stole Crimea. Putin had nukes, and Ukraine didn't. That's a very ugly fact.
Putin and his thugs employ "I'll use nukes" threats to intimidate and cower. So far, the threats have failed.
However, Eastern Europe, central Europe and Western Europe haven't quailed. Now Donald Trump, putting his tough-guy reputation on the line, says it's time to end the killing.
We will witness the 81st anniversary of Hiroshima. As for the first anniversary of the end of the Ukraine War? Let's see what happens over the next 90 days. Then I'll risk an estimate.