The Insanity Of War

K1: Koo, I haven't ever been as frightened in my life as I am right now!

K2: What? I thought you were always frightened! What's happened now? Your girlfriend is a karate black- belt she's discovered you have relations with another woman?

“Always frightened”? Who? Me?

Yes, YOU! Have you been able to fire that fellow whose negligence nearly gave you a severed ankle?

That's not cowardice, my friend! I just couldn't contemplate....

Ahah! You always put yourself in the place of people who cause you harm. But let's not enter into a philosophical discussion about empathy, and the lack thereof, in the world. Otherwise, we could be here all night. Why are you frightened?

I watched a TV discussion on the Russian-Ukrainian war the other night, and some of the panellists suggested that Putin is losing the war and that to save his face, he might use “tactical nuclear weapons!”

“WHAAAAAT? Tactical nuclear weapons”? But NATO would immediately retaliate by

using similar weapons against Russia? That would be the end of the world!

Koo, why do you think I am so frightened? The annoying things is that although we in Africa might want to leave the “Great Powers” to their war games, that won't save us! Nuclear weapons of any sort release mushroom clouds, containing deadly radiation, into the skies. The winds would then blow these clouds around the globe, and some poor palm-wine tapper looking for delicious nnomo [fungi] and akɔkon [palm-beetle larvae] in the forest for his wife to cook a mouth-watering nkontomire stew [conjured up with cocoyam leaves] would be dead a few hours after inhaling the radiation-infected air!

Koo, that's a truly frightening prospect! I wish we could move elsewhere and leave Planet Earth to the insane warriors who want to destroy us all.

Oh, so now, YOU too are frightened?

Well, nuclear war means the end of all life on Earth, doesn't it? No-one would be spared. The earth would become as dead as the moon. Or red-soiled Mars. I once read a book called On The Beach by Nevil Shute. [ I suggest you Google it by title.) Koo, I swear I had nightmares for months after reading that book. It's about the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe, as experienced by some fun-loving, “naive” folks who were minding their own business far away from the so-called centrers of civilisation!

I remember reading it too! I think they made a film of it. It became very popular, and was one of the reasons why “Ban-The-Bomb” movements sprang up all around the world in the 1950s and 60s. Remember the marches to the Aldermaston nuclear plant in the UK? Thousands of people c;lashed with the police, who didn't want them to go near nuclear plants to try and destroy them!

Yes. I even remember that we had a “World- without-the-bomb” conference in Accra! That was in June 1962. The whole idea of nuclear war was so eerie and weird that some of us used to think it was a joke. I regret to admit that I once referred to the Secretary of the Ghana “World-Without-The-Bomb Conference” (a top diplomat called Frank Boateng) as Secretary of the “Bomb-without-the World Conference.”

Hahahaha. Was he angry with you?

No!

He had a very good sense of humour. He just said I was a “bad boy”! I visited him in Copenhagen in 1979, when he was ambassador to Denmark and he received me very nicely. The last time I saw him, he was in the entourage of another former ambassador who had been enstooled as Asantehene, Nana Opoku Ware The Second. I was amused at the fact that they were all in battle-dress! This was at at Manhyia Palace. No trace of “pacifism” there!

Hahahahahaha!

Why have organisations devoted to banning nuclear weapons vanished from the world?

I think it's because there was at first, what was called a “detente” in the Cold War. That made the “balance of terror” seemingly irrelevant. So, the world's more sensitive politicians took their eyes off the nuclear ball. After all, the potential causes of war – the Berlin wall, for instance, and the existence of the Warsaw Pact as a counterpoise to NATO – seemed to have dissolved into thin air.

Yep, it was widely assumed that Putin and his Russian “oligarchs” were only interested in seizing Russia's state resources for themselves, now that private enterprise had arrived there....

Yeah, Putin's mansion in Russia is said to be something else. I mean, if Abramovich, who is not a politician, could throw so much money into Chelsea Football Club and into buying unimaginably luxurious yachts and private jets, then what about their political maestro himself?

So everyone stopped worrying about nuclear weapons....?

Yep. But now Putin wants to prove that he cares about “Great Russia's history”; he's discovered national pride!

And he's using Ukraine as the sacrificial lamb.....

Yep. And the NATO nations don't know what to do. Sanctions against Putin aren't deterring him, just as they didn't on Iran.....

And they dare not give Ukraine air cover to save it from being flattened by Putin....

And yet Putin is so obstinate that no-one can tell what he might do if driven further into a corner …,.

Koo, how much would it cost to build a nuclear-bomb-proof bunker in the Atewa forest?

Hahahahaha! Haven't you heard that the forest is already being prepared for mining bauxite?

Koo, so there's nowhere to hide?

Why do you think I'm so frightened?