The Economist Magazine Cover For This Week-Nuclear War!

 

JUNE 4TH 2022

SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image

Our cover this week looks at the dire consequences of Vladimir Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons against countries daring to interfere in his subjugation of Ukraine. Even if Russia never uses a weapon there, vulnerable states who see the world through Ukraine’s eyes may decide that the best defence against a nuclear-armed aggressor is to have weapons of their own. And nuclear states may start to think that they can gain by copying Mr Putin’s grim tactics.

The black-on-yellow design comes from the warning symbol for radioactivity stamped on the mouthpiece of this sinister mask. It’s dark and disturbing, but this image conjures up a nuclear accident or a chemical weapon rather than the Bomb. The world-grenade conveys a global threat but, like a mixed metaphor, it jams together strategic and conventional arms. We thought the focus should be on nuclear war.

These images hint at how the danger was growing before Mr Putin’s invasion. Weapons are proliferating. America and the Soviet Union barely coped with a two-sided nuclear stand-off. There is insufficient alarm at the prospect of many nuclear powers struggling to keep the peace. Like a jack-in-the-box, the nuclear threat is real and shocking but it has been hidden away. If proliferation continues, a feather will one day be enough to tip the world into war.

Speculation about nuclear weapons inevitably summons thoughts of game theory and elaborate schemes setting out the calculus of deterrence and escalation. Here we have a Russian Iskander missile launching from a black-square silo. Next to it is a nuclear rocket dominating a chessboard strewn with upended pieces.    Yet our argument is about the moral revulsion against the use of nuclear weapons. We worry that, as memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fade, people are failing to grasp how the detonation of a small battlefield weapon, of the sort Mr Putin might lob, could escalate into the tit-for-tat annihilation of entire cities. Our fear is not just about strategising but also about the ending of the nuclear taboo.

Here are two ideas that work in combination. One component is a nuclear-capable Iskander missile, named after a Persian variant of Alexander, meaning “defender of men”. That is an irony when you consider how, in its current non-nuclear form in Ukraine, the Iskander is an aggressor. The other is the red line of a growing mushroom cloud.

We found a lot to like in this design. It is clearly about the danger of a nuclear strike. It is connected to the conflict in Ukraine by the Iskander. It draws on the emotive power of a just-launched missile smashing through a red line. The abstract geometry of a chess board has been left behind.    But we struggled with the words. Among analysts the term “taboo” is reserved for the use of nuclear weapons. Despite Mr Putin’s heinous threats, he has not violated it. It does not help to slap on a question mark to suggest that we do not mean exactly what we are saying.   And then there is the subtitle. Some of us felt that, with this explicit mention of nuclear conflict, we would be seen to be warning that Armageddon looms. Others thought that readers would take our words at face value: simply that Mr Putin’s tactics add to the nuclear risk and are thus unacceptable.

Here is a less controversial alternative. The title is fine, but the subtitle fails because arms-control was shattered even before the invasion. That wasn’t satisfactory either.   So we mixed and matched. We tested combinations of words on unsuspecting colleagues. We thought some more. And in the end we brought together the simplest headline with the most explicit subtitle. When you are dealing with something as terrible as nuclear weapons, it is best to be clear.

Cover image • View large image (“A new era”)