Twice recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the prospect of using nuclear weapons in the war he launched to destroy Ukraine.
With Russian forces retreating in Ukraine's Donbas region, Mr. Putin's threats amount to desperate saber-rattling intended to frighten all. But his threats must not be brushed off completely, given Mr. Putin's record of recklessness. What weapons are we talking about? Not the nuclear warheads carried by intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of city-destroying strikes with limited warning, which defined the Cold War. According to the Nuclear Notebook in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, by Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, Russia possesses 1,912 nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons, designed to be launched from ground-based missiles, airplanes, or naval vessels.
No treaty has ever limited these weapons. Although in 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to voluntarily pull many of them back to warehouses. The Russian warheads are stored by the defense ministry. If Mr. Putin were to deploy them, the weapons would be released from storage onto transport by trucks or helicopters. Once deployed on delivery vehicles " say, missiles or airplanes " Mr. Putin would have to issue a direct order to use them.
Each step might be detected and provide the United States and its allies time to react. Early warning would trigger intense diplomatic and other pressure on Mr. Putin to stop before setting off a nuclear war. Preparing to exploit this warning is the best defense against disaster. No doubt, Mr. Putin might want to play out such a deployment to ratchet up the pressure. But in so doing, he would escalate the risk of error or miscalculation. A nuclear blast in Ukraine, even low yield, would kill civilians as well as soldiers and contaminate Russia, Ukraine and beyond.
In 1962, the world stood at the brink when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear warheads on missiles in Cuba, then stood down and took them home. Mr. Putin is getting closer to those momentous days. He flirts with a dance of death. The only sane thing to do is stand down and end this needless war. The world's geopolitical blocks are engaging in a tug-of-war right now. Russia is in the Chinese orbit and is using the riff between the United States and China to expand its influence, a strategy called hedging in international relations circles.
Hopefully, the world can make it through the Ukraine crises without a nuclear war, it's very possible. There's a bigger question to ask. After the crises, how do we manage conflict? Do we use diplomacy, the idea of international law, and arms control? If we don't learn to use those things, then we could be stumbling from crises to crises.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy
