Welcome to the Jungle

June 15th, 2025

With apologies to Axl Rose, we are back in the jungle.

For the last 80 years much - but by no means all - of the world operated as if we’d all finally learned our manners. There was a term for it: the rule of law. In fact, for those who were paying attention, the law was much older one: the law of the jungle. For most of those 8 decades we all pretended there were international mechanisms that would work to provide order. Some even talked of global governance and true international law.

But the fact is the system failed to produce. And nuclear proliferation is the proof. 

There are lots of dangerous things in the world. But nuclear weapons hold a special place. Nuclear weapons really can destroy whole nations. Even for the largest of nations, Russia and the US and China, a large-scale nuclear engagement would leave these nations - and the world - shattered and the survivors would be living in a far different place than anything anyone would choose.

For many smaller nations, any use of nuclear weapons on their territory would be literally existential. Therefore, if there were anything that the “rules based order” needed to prevent, it was any spread of nuclear weapons. That several nations chose to give up their weapon development program was not and is not enough. 

In fact, international organizations, whether the IAEA or the UN as a whole, did precious little to actually prevent the spread of nuclear weapon technology. A treaty was drafted - signed in 1968, effective as of March 1970. But since then multiple states have in fact become nuclear weapon states: India, Pakistan, North Korea (note that Israel was probably already a nuclear weapon state at the time the treaty went into effect). But other states were secretly pursuing nuclear weapons: Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Libya. What matters isn’t that some gave up weapons or that many countries didn’t try to develop them. What matters is that in each case where a country was stopped (Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Iran), the international governance efforts did nothing and the only actions taken were by, en toto, three countries: Israel, the US and the UK. Meanwhile, one of the permanent members of the Security Council - China, almost assuredly played a direct role in the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan and through Pakistan to North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya.

At this point, to assert that somehow the international system is still of value is to suggest, like General Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove: “it's [not] quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up…”

By counting on international bodies to “do something,” we have managed to validate the one truth that burns through all this: having nuclear weapons is the one thing that assures your independence. Would we have bombed Libya in 2011 if she had not given up her WMD programs in 2003? If Iraq had had nuclear weapons would we have invaded? Or Syria?

Which leads to a statement made by Adm. Kilby this past week. Adm. Kilby, the acting Chief of Naval Operations, was asked what weapons he’d prefer on Taiwan right now to deter China; he answered, in effect, drones more than aircraft carriers.

Adm. Kilby is wrong.

Unfortunately, he had an opportunity to "reset the strategic table” and missed it. The right answer, the answer Kilby - or somebody in the Pentagon must give is: B-61s.

The B-61 is a nuclear bomb. The US needs to start thinking in terms of theater nuclear weapons, particularly in the western Pacific. And Israel’s foray into Iran makes that more clear than ever. Here's why:

First, as noted above, the game has truly changed. The world we wanted to create - and which really existed only in polite society - the rules based world, is gone. It should not be missed. The “world” it claims to  defend included things like the 25 year war in the DROC; the bloody-mindedness of Communist China; and a hundred little actions that took place in the face of UN Security Council Resolutions that insisted they stop.  Remember the UNSCRs passed to stop Saddam Hussain from butchering Kurds or Marsh Arabs? The UN did not prevent war in Europe in the 1990s in the Balkans or in Ukraine in the 21st century. The UN in fact did not prevent a whole host of wars. The globalist, rules based illusion is dissipating like a morning fog, and now we see the jungle more clearly… welcome (back) to the jungle. 

In fact, the one thing that kept any order for most of 8 decades was the fact that there were “cops on the beat,” mainly in the form of aircraft carrier strike groups, that could show up unannounced, and behind them were Marines, bombers and a host of other things. And in Washington from time to time there were administrations that knew how to flex their muscle - without getting too terribly involved in the local fight.

Second, Israel acted because the UN and other international bodies were neither capable of nor interested in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, nor were they capable of defending Israel from the use of those weapons. Israel’s actions then, and US support for it, make a new, hard case that proliferation isn’t allowed. Yes, we’ve allowed it in the past: North Korea is the most recent, case in point. The US strategic malaise for more than 2 decades relative to Ukraine highlights the point: the Clinton administration was willing to do anything to eliminate Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal, to include generating a strategic nightmare - the one Ukraine finds itself in right now.

But, that we’ve made it clear that “Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons” has a cost. If Taiwan or the Republic of Korea (ROK) or Japan were to decide to produce nuclear weapons to defend themselves from China, what might Beijing do, and feel quite justified in doing? The notion that Japan, Taiwan or the ROK could, if the need arose and they were so disposed, produce a small nuclear arsenal within a matter of months is assuredly technically correct. But after IDF strikes on Iran, such a development would be a political crisis that would overtop the Cuban missile crisis almost instantly. 

Third, there’s Eisenhower’s point: the conventional forces needed to deter great powers simply are not affordable, a point he made when the US was committing more than 10% of GDP to defense, and at a time when US manpower was, per soldier or sailor, substantially less expensive. 

Adm. Kilby opted for drones over aircraft carriers to defend Taiwan, but we need to focus on Eisenhower’s point: conventional forces don’t deter great powers. A force of drones, no matter how conceived, is not going to deter or defeat a Chinese invasion force.

What will? Nuclear weapons. Yet, by endorsing - as we should have - Israel’s strikes on Iran, we make impossible any defense of another country (Japan, ROK, Taiwan, etc.) if they decide to develop nuclear weapons. The only answer is to revitalize the US “nuclear umbrella” so they - clearly - don’t need their own. 

The US must deploy nuclear bombs to someplace in the western Pacific, as well as deploy nuclear tipped Tomahawk missiles (or some follow-on missile) to some submarines or ships in the Pacific, and then present a simple note to Beijing that the US will not allow Taiwan, or the ROK or Japan, to be invaded. Nothing more need be said. But it would substantively change the calculus in Beijing.

And at the same time, we had best take Golden Dome seriously. 

Lex Saltu… Welcome to the Jungle.