![]() Russia has longstanding grievances with the geopolitical status quo, including most notably the expansion of NATO after the humiliating contraction of the Soviet empire. Pakistan has honed exactly this strategy against India, and now a revisionist Russia is adopting it too. In general, he appears to believe that Russian nuclear weapons provide cover for Russian aggression, while American nuclear weapons don’t provide reciprocal freedom to respond, perhaps because the US is less invested in defending the status quo than Mr. As a result, he may feel relatively safe engaging in conventional aggression or even limited nuclear use below that threshold-demonstration strikes, for example, or attacks on military targets-without much risk of a Western response. The problem is that precisely because all-out nuclear war would be so costly for both the US and Russia, Mr. Many credit MAD with keeping the Cold War cold. Under this condition, the risks of nuclear escalation become so dangerous and so inescapable that countries will hesitate even to provoke a crisis, much less to fight wars. This approach to nuclear deterrence calls into question the often-cited logic of mutually assured destruction, or “MAD.” This traditional notion assumes that mutual nuclear vulnerability-that is, a situation in which both sides have nuclear forces that can inflict significant retaliation on the other, even after suffering a nuclear first strike-can actually stabilize world politics and make conflict between nuclear adversaries, even over third parties, less likely. Putin is betting that despite the conventional military might of the US and its allies, they will shrink from confrontation at least partly out of fear of nuclear escalation. ![]() Having bolstered in recent years its arsenal of nuclear weapons that can evade missile defenses and hit targets in Europe and the US, Russia is attempting to use these forces as a shield for conventional aggression. Putin’s unusually explicit rhetoric has sent a clear message to the West: Stay out of my attack on a third party or risk nuclear conflict. Countering them will require the US and its friends to tailor both their conventional and their nuclear postures to the emerging danger-not only in the current crisis with Russia but also to prepare for the possibility that China might follow the same playbook in a future war over Taiwan. They are part of a deliberate strategy to advance Russia’s revisionist political and military goals. The US cannot overlook these chilling threats. He admonished that “anyone who tries to interfere with us…must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.” In case anyone misunderstood his warning, he added that Russia remains “one of the most powerful nuclear powers” with “certain advantages in a number of the latest types of weapons” and stated that “no one should have any doubt that a direct attack on Russia will lead to defeat and dire consequences for a potential aggressor.” A few days later, he upped the ante further with the public announcement of a Russian nuclear alert. On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin issued a nuclear warning.
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