..., the proxy war waged by the United States and its allies against Russia is not a “bug” but a “feature” of nuclear deterrence.
This paradox is confirmed not only in theory but also in historical practice. At a minimum, the Vietnam and Afghan conflicts of the bipolar era constituted proxy wars in which one nuclear superpower confronted the other indirectly; yet they were never interpreted as a failure of nuclear deterrence.
Consequently, nuclear weapons cannot be used to eliminate instability at lower levels of escalation, because such instability is inherent to nuclear deterrence itself. It is impossible to compel Washington, London, Brussels, or other unfriendly actors to abandon their ...
... believed to eliminate wars, including economic globalization, changes in warfare methods, rising costs of war, the advent of nuclear weapons, advancements in social civilization, and so on. These factors may have played a role in varying degrees, reducing ... ... careful maintenance. On the contrary, the gene of war is naturally present in human life. Without constraints, it can trigger conflicts at any time.
Compared with the previous historical periods, namely the Cold War era, today’s world has not become ...
....
In this regard, lowering the threshold for the use of atomic weapons and expanding the number of situations in which Moscow allows this step is long overdue. Just as the wording of the previous version of the doctrine, which stated that the use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear conflict was only possible in the event of a threat to Russia’s very existence as a state, was no longer in line with global realities. Now this threshold has been lowered, and the use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear ...
... and they entered into their decisive phase with the outbreak of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, and Palestine. These conflicts, directly linked to the great powers, are painful and destructive, but implicitly motivated by the need to resolve the ... ... 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 ...
