... foreclose the prospect that the remaining part of Ukraine, beyond the four new regions that have joined the Russian Federation, might ultimately find itself in a closer political alignment with Russia.
Such an argument renders any case for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine essentially apolitical, even in a context where the nuclear taboo is eroding. Given how brutally a modern state can wage war—as evidenced by Israel’s latest campaign in the Gaza Strip—it is reasonable to assume that the Russian leadership,...
... to put an end to hostilities in Ukraine may be interpreted as a sign that the spectre of available options for settling the Ukraine conflict is narrowing. Kiev pins its hopes on NATO offering it more weapons, while the Alliance members are set to increase ... ... defence spending and invest in arms manufacturing and infrastructure in the foreseeable future.
Any attempt to assess the role of nuclear weapons in a present-day armed conflict stumbles upon the fact that the experience in using them in combat is virtually ...
... increasing. And they need to understand that entering into a direct war against us would be much worse for them than the defeat of Ukraine on the battlefield.
As for the reactions of parties not involved in our conflict with the West, my personal experience ... ... communicating with experts from such countries shows that China, despite its public stance on the inadmissibility of the use of nuclear weapons, the need for denuclearization and almost a ban on atomic bombs, understands the situation in which Russia finds ...
... linked to the great powers, are painful and destructive, but implicitly motivated by the need to resolve the contradictions impeding the new world order’s formation.
In the fall of 2024, such an understanding is in need of correction.
First,
regarding nuclear weapons. It is not that they have ceased to function as a deterrent. Their possession by Russia, China—and to some extent Israel—does deter those states’ adversaries from actions that they would likely otherwise take to achieve success. But the Ukraine conflict has forced the world to reconsider the limits of nuclear deterrence, i.e., to define what exactly it is able to deter. The current U.S.-NATO proxy war against Russia, in the form of full-scale military support for Ukraine and all-out ...
... U.S. experts about the possibility of a
nuclear conflict
between Moscow and Washington. This issue has become even more acute in recent days when senior officials of the U.S. administration began sending us direct signals warning against the use of nuclear weapons in the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Moreover, threats against us have started to be heard from the official establishment.
Princeton University has even made
predictions
that millions of Americans and Russians would perish in the exchange of
nuclear strikes
. Sometimes it feels ...
... nuclear accord with Iran impact U.S. Missile Defense deployments in Europe — particularly given the fact that Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons program and its missile program primarily justified those deployments.
Can the U.S., Russia, China and Japan find ... ... and China that the US deployment of MD systems is not aimed a developing a first strike capability?
Russia–Crimea–Eastern Ukraine
In June 2017, just after the U.S. re-imposed sanctions on Moscow, the U.S. State Department insisted that the new sanctions ...
