All the talk is now about nuclear

The world’s two biggest nuclear powers have become embroiled in a war of words about the unthinkable. For 77 years, following America’s dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear deterrence and the concept of mutual assured destruction has held sway between the superpowers. The Cold War never went nuclear. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated overnight that Russia would only use nuclear weapons if the country faced an “existential threat”. While this remark appeared to row back on the alarmist order from Putin four weeks ago to put Russia’s nuclear weapons on high alert, Peskov was responding to a reporter’s question solely on the issue of potential nuclear exchanges between the US and Russia. He was effectively restating the nuclear threshold concept largely adopted by all those in the atomic weapons club. Nevertheless, the Pentagon felt it was appropriate to accuse Moscow of “dangerous” rhetoric. When Putin raised Russia’s nuclear alert status, the US deliberately avoided following suit for fear of escalating tensions. Only in January, leaders of the five nuclear weapons states, US, Russia, China, UK and France, issued a joint statement about the need to prevent nuclear war. “We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement said. However, the US has been watching for any unusual Russian nuclear weapons activity with dedicated spy satellites. One member of the five-nation nuclear club, France, appears to have taken an extraordinarily cautious and unprecedented approach by deploying three of its four Triomphant-class nuclear ballistic-missile submarines on patrol. Normally, like the UK, there would only be one such submarine operating at any one time, although France deployed two in 1981 during the crisis over the Soviet deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear missiles targeting Europe. The reasoning behind the French move is not unrealistic. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Putin has rapidly resorted to using every long-range weapon at his disposal as his ground forces faced daily setbacks. Conventionally-armed mobile ballistic missiles, 30-mile-range artillery, land-attack cruise missiles fired from warships in the Black Sea, and then a single hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missile, launched for no apparent tactical reason other than to show off Moscow’s arsenal of weapons. The West’s finest Kremlinologists, including William Burns, the CIA director and former US ambassador in Moscow, have warned that Putin is angry, isolated and functioning emotionally, not the best frame of mind to make logical decisions about which weapons to turn to next. This is why President Biden has revealed US intelligence assessments that the Russian leader might resort to chemical or biological weapons. The nuclear option is next in line and, compared with the checks and balances surrounding the launch of American, British and French nuclear weapons, Putin is largely unrestrained from authorising their use. Peskov said a world nuclear war would only begin if Russia’s existence was threatened. But Putin might still make the decision to use tactical low-yield nuclear weapons, a tenth the size of the Hiroshima bomb, in Ukraine. Russia has around 2,000 of these weapons. Putin might calculate that such weapons used in a limited, albeit devastatingly destructive, strike, would not lead to the Third World (and nuclear) War.