faith in the veracity of official government research and began to make and exchange their own measurements of radioactivity and industrial pollutant levels. The results were not encouraging and many started to feel that the Soviet economic development program had to be shut down.
Until 2010, America’s answer to the Chernobyl disaster had been the handling of the humanitarian disaster following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2010, it managed to do one better in the aftermath of the blowout, explosion and massive oil spill at BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The similarities between Katrina and Chernobyl included a lack of truthfulness in addressing the immediate consequences, loss of ancestral lands and political appointeeism (a horse specialist nicknamed “Brownie” was thrust in command, based on his credentials as the college roommate of a friend of the President). After the hurricane, the government continued to claim that the refugees were being evacuated, while in reality they were herded together, turned back by police and national guard troops when they tried to walk out of the disaster zone and allowed to die. As with Chernobyl, the government continued to lie until there was a public outcry, with much damage to the reputations of all concerned.
With the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the analogy with Chernobyl is much more direct, because both events fall into the category of technogenic catastrophes — direct failures of technology — rather than natural disasters. After Chernobyl, Soviet nuclear power stations were retrofitted with safety equipment that has so far prevented another disaster. It is not at all certain that a similar approach can be applied to deepwater drilling because of the already extremely high costs of these operations. Technology which can and sometimes does fail catastrophically, causing unacceptable levels of environmental devastation, but which cannot be retired for economic reasons, amounts to a false choice between physical survival and economic survival.
True to pattern, just as after Katrina, there followed an impressive display of official mendacity, fecklessness and shenanigans. Highlights included a video of retired coast guard admiral Thad Allen declaring that the well has been plugged in the attempted “top kill” operation appearing on news web sites right next to a live webcam of the selfsame well, gushing just as before. A truly astounding feature of BP’s spill mitigation strategy was to disperse the oil (by spraying massive amounts of the toxic dispersant Corexit into the sea) while simultaneously attempting to contain the oil, both at the seafloor and at the surface. Just as you’d expect, dispersal precludes containment. As soon as the well was tentatively cemented shut, the White House rushed to announce that most of the leaked oil had somehow miraculously vanished — in fact, most of the spill has now taken the form of a giant deep underwater plume that stretches for miles and consists of a diffuse suspension of oil droplets. It will remain like this for years, drifting slowly, poisoning the marine food chain of the Gulf and the Atlantic waters beyond.
It remains to be seen which type of catastrophe predominates: natural or technogenic. On the one hand, increasingly frequent killer hurricanes and other extreme weather events, a predicted consequence of ongoing rapid climate change, are likely to repeat the Katrina pattern. On the other hand, now that all the easily-accessed offshore oil fields have been depleted, deepwater exploration and production will continue to become more challenging and more costly. One of the reasons the Deepwater Horizon exploded was that BP tried to drill the world’s deepest oil well, but to do it on the cheap. The relentless pressure to cut costs is not conducive to improved safety, raising the probability of more giant explosions and massive oil leaks. Given the anemic response of the American political establishment to either of these disasters, this is more likely to be death by a thousand cuts. After each catastrophe, the promise of a technological remedy will begin to seem ever more outlandish, and the person proffering it will come to be seen as progressively less trustworthy. As the authorities lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the population, they will also lose its cooperation.
Militarism
The arms race is commonly viewed as the key element of the superpower standoff known as the Cold War (one hesitates to call it a conflict or even a confrontation because both sides diligently practiced conflict avoidance through deterrence, détente and arms control negotiations). Military deterrence and parity is seen as the paramount defining factor of the bipolar world that was dominated by the two superpowers. Military primacy between the United States and the Soviet Union was never actively contested and there was quite a lot of inconclusive militaristic preening and posturing. While the Americans feel that they won the Cold War (since the other side forfeited the contest) and were at one point ready to start awarding themselves medals for this feat, it is actually something of a success story for Russia.
Beyond the superficial and assumed offensive parity, the historical landscapes that underlie Soviet and American militarisms could not be more different. The United States considers itself a victor country: it goes to war when it wishes and it likes to win. It has not been invaded during any of the major modern conflicts and war, to it, is primarily about victory. Russia is a victim country. It has been invaded several times, but, since the Mongol invasion, never successfully. To Russians, war is not about victory — it is about death. The epithet that Russians like to apply to their country is nepobedimaya — “undefeatable.”
The United States is a country that enjoys bombing other countries. The Soviets, having seen much of their country bombed to smithereens during World War II, had a particularly well-developed sense of their own vulnerability. To compensate for this, they devoted a large part of their centrally planned economy to defense. They produced a staggering number of nuclear missiles, nuclear submarines, tanks, bombers, fighter jets, warships and other military junk, much of which now sits quietly rusting somewhere, perpetually threatening to wreak havoc on the environment. The nuclear stockpile continues to pose a particularly nasty problem. Much of this war production was a complete waste and even the object of some humor: “I work at a sewing machine factory, but every time I bring the parts home and assemble them, I end up with a machine gun!” But they did not get bombed by the Americans — hence victory.
The list of countries which the US has bombed since the end of World War II is a long one, from “A” for Afghanistan to “Y” for Yemen (that the list does not run “A” to “Z” is presumably explained by the fact that Zambia and Zimbabwe do not present a sufficiently target-rich environment to America’s military planners). The Soviet Union did not do nearly as much bombing. Czechoslovakia and Hungary received what amounted to a slap. Afghanistan was the one significant exception, playing host to a sustained and bloody military confrontation. Perhaps one positive effect of having one’s homeland extensively bombed is that it makes one think twice about inflicting that experience on others.
And so it is quite a satisfactory outcome that the United States has not been able to bomb a single country within the former Warsaw Pact and to this day has to play careful with Russia and her friends. This is because mutual assured destruction remains in effect: each side has enough nuclear weapons to obliterate the other. Since this is an affront to the American military ego, Americans have continued to preen and posture, announcing a defense doctrine that allows nuclear first strikes and actively pursuing the development of strategic missile defense. The Russians do not appear to be impressed. “We believe this strategic anti-missile defense system is somewhat chimerical, to put it mildly,” said Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister. “One can find a much cheaper response to any such system.” The cheapest response I can think of is simply having Mr. Ivanov periodically stand up and say a few words.
Perhaps that is all the response the situation calls for, but Russia sells a lot of weapons, including a new generation of supersonic missiles and torpedoes, against which the US has no adequate defense, and successfully marketing them requires taking a stand in defense of national military prestige. And so we are bound to hear a great deal more about Americans destabilizing the security of Europe, and about Russia countering this threat with some anti-missile chimeras of their own — much cheaper ones. The United States needs a new Cold War to show itself and the world that it still matters, and Russia, finding the venture not too risky and quite profitable, is willing to hold
