https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/europe/ukraine-cyber-attack-government-intl/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59998988

Or crapping my diapers during the Cuban crisis. My father, an officer with high clearance, knew how close it was. I don’t remember it, specifically, but I know my parents were terrified, and that has to soak into an infant.

Or living my first 18 years on military bases; the threat ever present. I remember finding the handbook that was issued to my father about the effects of nuclear weapons and how to use the water out of the toilet for survival. I was ten. My siblings joke that we grew up in a gated community where the guards were armed with machine guns. The book “On Thermonuclear War” was assigned reading in high school, as was “Hiroshima.”

Duck and cover training, of course.

As a teenager, my friends and I would sneak and explore the mock prison camp used for training.

I’d like to say it was a strange way of growing up, but not really. It was normal for us. I wouldn’t say we grew up in fear. Just hyper aware of world events. And the military aircraft 1000 feet overhead were a constant reminder. We could identify all of them, often just by their sound.

Tell your 17 year old the best study of how wars can erupt accidentally, even when both sides are doing everything they can to avoid them, is Barbara Tuchmann’s “The Guns of August”.

It was required reading when I was in college, and one of the great influences on my thought along with Morrises “The Naked Ape” and Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint”.

Hitler made the same mistake in Poland. He knew the Brits and French were in no position to stand up to him, but they decided to do so anyway. From that point on, his enemies, regardless of how weak they might be, had a vote in the outcome.

That’s the problem with starting wars, even if victory is certain, you have no guarantee the losing side won’t care and will do something really stupid. Like the Fat Man told Sam Spade in the “Maltese Falcon”; “Such situations require the greatest judgement from everyone involved because in the heat of action, men tend to forget where their true interest lies.” And in today’s high tempo military environment, the situation can quickly get out of hand.

The same problem occurs in WESTPAC. The Chinese are stronger than the US and its allies in theater, but eventually the US can muster bigger forces. from the rest of the world. If either side finds itself in a jam, the nuclear option is the only way out, and it is too easily available.

Remember what Pyrrhus said after he defeated the Roman Legions. “Another victory like that and we’re finished.”

1983