Tuesday
As Ukraine’s brilliant armed forces, supported by advanced Western weapons systems, continue to claw back territory seized by Russia, people are speculating whether a desperate Vladimir Putin might resort to tactical nuclear weapons. When I hear such talk, a scene from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew comes to mind.
Regarding such a response, most commentators I’ve read rate the possibility as low, although they do not rule it out altogether. That’s because, as former American ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has observed, Putin himself seems increasingly unhinged. Just how far will a narcissist go when facing his own collapse? Lewis’s novel gives us an unsettling answer.
Through the use of magic rings, Diggory and Polly have chanced upon another world, one in which there is only one survivor. This is Jadis, queen of Charn, who once found herself pressed as Russian troops in Ukraine are currently being pressed. Like Putin, she too has a terrible weapon, which at one point she shows off to the two children:
The Queen let go of his hand and raised her arm. She drew herself up to her full height and stood rigid. Then she said something which they couldn’t understand (but it sounded horrid) and made an action as if she were throwing something towards the doors. And those high and heavy doors trembled for a second as if they were made of silk and then crumbled away till there was nothing left of them but a heap of dust on the threshold.
“Whew!” whistled Digory.
“Has your master magician, your uncle, power like mine?” asked the Queen, firmly seizing Digory’s hand again. “But I shall know later. In the meantime, remember what you have seen. This is what happens to things, and to people, who stand in my way.”
As this point in her story, Jadis is boasting what she is capable of. Unfortunately for Charnian civilization, she actually used that power in a wartime situation. She explains the situation to the children as they stand on the steps of the ancient palace:
“It is silent now. But I have stood here when the whole air was full of the noises of Charn; the trampling of feet, the creaking of wheels, the cracking of the whips and the groaning of slaves, the thunder of chariots, and the sacrificial drums beating in the temples. I have stood here (but that was near the end) when the roar of battle went up from every street and the river of Charn ran red.” She paused and added, “All in one moment one woman blotted it out forever.”
Then she elaborates and, like Putin, she blames the other side:
“It was my sister’s fault,” said the Queen. “She drove me to it. May the curse of all the Powers rest upon her forever! At any moment I was ready to make peace—yes, and to spare her life too, if only she would yield me the throne. But she would not. Her pride has destroyed the whole world. Even after the war had begun, there was a solemn promise that neither side would use Magic. But when she broke her promise, what could I do? Fool! As if she did not know that I had more Magic than she. She even knew that I had the secret of the Deplorable Word. Did she think—she was always weakling—that I would not use it?”
“What was it?” said Digory.
“That was the secret of secrets,” said Queen Jadis. “It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it. But the ancient kings were weak and soft-hearted and bound themselves and all who should come after them with great oaths never even to seek after the knowledge of that word. But I learned it in a secret place and paid a terrible price to learn it. I did not use it until she forced me to it. I fought and fought to overcome her by every other means. I poured out the blood of my armies like water——”
“Poured out the blood of my armies like water” sounds like Putin throwing new Russian conscripts, often without equipment, armaments or training, onto the front lines. He has also been deaf to those Russian forces in Lyman and Kherson who are begging to be allowed to retreat. But back to the story:
“The last great battle,” said the Queen, “raged for three days here in Charn itself. For three days I looked down upon it from this very spot. I did not use my power till the last of my soldiers had fallen, and the accursed woman, my sister, at the head of her rebels was halfway up those great stairs that lead up from the city to the terrace. Then I waited till we were so close that we could see one another’s faces. She flashed her horrible, wicked eyes upon me and said, ‘Victory.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘Victory, but not yours.’ Then I spoke the Deplorable Word. A moment later I was the only living thing beneath the sun.”
Jadis, of course, has the same callous regard for other people—even her followers—that we see in all dictators and narcissists, from Putin to Trump:
“But the people?” gasped Digory.
“What people, boy?” asked the Queen.
“All the ordinary people,” said Polly, “who’d never done you any harm. And the women, and the children, and the animals.”
“Don’t you understand?” said the Queen (still speaking to Digory). “I was the Queen. They were all my people. What else were they there for but to do my will.”
“It was rather hard luck on them, all the same,” said he.
“I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
To compare “the deplorable word” to nuclear armaments is not a stretch as Lewis undoubtedly had nuclear Armageddon on his mind in 1955, the date of the novel’s publication. Europe in the 1950s had already witnessed two world wars in the course of the century and could imagine only too easily a third, this one involving nuclear weapons. The end of all life on earth seemed a tangible possibility.
Putin’s “high and lonely destiny,” as he sees it, is restoring the Russian empire of the tsars or the Soviets. It is a destiny he sees as inseparable from his own self-aggrandizement, and a narcissist experiences thwarted ambitions as a negation of the self. The good news is that he may realize that the use of a tactical nuclear strike, at this time, will lose him far more than it will gain him. Unlike the deplorable word, nuclear weapons won’t take out all life, and there will be repercussions that even a supreme narcissist could imagine.
Such people love threatening people with their nuclear might. It’s another matter, however, to actually use it.