Opinion – Ross Douthat: Nuclear Shadow in Ukraine War Creates Unusually Dangerous Dynamics

At a banquet in 1985 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of National Review, attended by Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley Jr. gave a speech about the American nuclear deterrent and the American president’s willingness to make use of it.

These weapons and this disposition, he declared, protected American freedom throughout the Cold War, so that future generations could look back and be grateful that “in the face of the threat of darkness, they showed the same courage as their ancestors.”

A few decades later, after Reagan’s death, Buckley would write that he had changed his mind. He now thought that “if the critical moment had come,” Reagan “wouldn’t actually have dropped our big bombs, no matter what the Soviet Union had done.”

This story corresponds to the general evolution in people’s view of the Reagan presidency. As president, he was either loved or feared as a hardline and warmongering leader; today, he is increasingly remembered as a peacemaker. But history also illustrates the profound uncertainty inherent in every attempt to analyze or forecast the use of nuclear weapons.

For nearly eight decades, the possibility of nuclear war has been linked to complex strategic calculations, built into command and control systems, and subjected to exhausting war exercises. But every analysis also involves unfathomable human factors: faced with the crisis, the terrible moment, what choice will a human actor with decisive power make?

This problem is worth reflecting on because the world is probably closer to seeing nuclear weapons being deployed today than it has been at any point in decades. And exactly how close it is perhaps depends on the Russian dictator’s unfathomable states of mind.

In one sense, President Vladimir Putin’s speech announcing a mobilization may have moved away from the nuclear danger a little, as it committed him to the deepening of conventional conflict. But the nuclear threat has always been linked to Russian desperation in that conflict, and Putin’s move was undoubtedly an act of desperation.

The measure’s profound unpopularity promises to make Putin’s government much more vulnerable at home. Furthermore, it does not promise any certainty of military victory. At best, the mobilization can help Russia to conserve its limited gains, which have already come at a very high cost. At worst, it will only lead to miserable recruits on a collapsing war front.

And the speech of the mobilization was explicit in promising that a total collapse will simply not be allowed, even if it means using nuclear weapons. By announcing the holding of referendums in the occupied regions of Ukraine, Putin was essentially declaring that Russia intends to absorb these regions and make them part of its territory. Promising to defend Russian territory “with all the means we have at our disposal”, he promised to defend the conquests with, at the very least, tactical nuclear strikes.

This creates an unusually dangerous dynamic. We are not in a traditional balance of terror situation, where the nuclear superpowers are threatening each other with retaliation and the greatest danger is the kind of miscalculation or simple accident that has brought us close to the edge sometimes.

Instead we have an active conflict in which a non-nuclear power is trying to win a victory with conventional forces, while the other side is looking to draw a line that, if crossed, will result in the use of nuclear weapons. This means that if the war continues on its current trajectory, that side will have to demonstrate whether or not it is bluffing. It will have to make an immediate choice: go for the nuclear option or admit defeat.

The closest parallels to the Cold War might be Fidel Castro’s desire for Soviet nuclear weapons to defend his regime against an invasion or Douglas MacArthur’s request for authorization to use nuclear weapons to prevent an American defeat in the Korean War. Both were cases like the present one, in which a completely destructive “Dr. Strangelove” (“Dr. Fantastic”) type nuclear confrontation was not contemplated, but a tactical intervention to prevent a conventional defeat.

But in this case there is the additional detail that key decision-makers are more immediately threatened — in the sense of danger to their survival in power and, ultimately, even their physical survival — by the prospect of suffering a conventional defeat of the that the US stood in the way of defeat in Korea or Castro’s Soviet Union being overthrown.

This is not to say that we should expect Putin to use nuclear weapons (and it is unclear, judging by the Russian chain of command, to what extent such a decision would be made by him alone). The world-historical folly of such a decision would have the very consequences of the possible end of his regime: the possibility of escalating to a war with NATO, the total abandonment of Russia by its remaining uncertain allies or the total collapse of its economy.

It’s a reasonable bet that Putin or his regime would blink, even when faced with defeat.

But you don’t place bets on nuclear war in the same way you bet on other possibilities. Suppose there was “only” a 20% chance that the nuclear taboo would be broken: that would still be a frightening number, not a reassuring one. While Western warmongers on Ukraine — who tend to discount nuclear risk today — have already got plenty of hunches right, one of the most important things they got right about was that the aging Putin today is more of an ideologically foolish gambler. motivated, than a statesman who reasons coldly.

What does this mean for nuclear danger? Nothing positive.

So, back to the argument I’ve been making in the war: US support for Ukraine is good and necessary, but there is a point at which Kiev’s goals and Washington’s interests may diverge, and the combination of Ukrainian military advances with threats Russian nuclear weapons brings this closer: the point at which Ukrainians will want to fight to take back the entire country, while we need negotiation and containment.

I say this with the understanding that Kiev may be willing to accept an unusual degree of nuclear risk, even to absorb an attack, in the name of its territorial integrity. In a battle for freedom, Ukrainians, like Buckley, want their children to be able to look back and say that, in the moment of the greatest crisis, they showed the same courage as their ancestors.

But just as Reagan’s horror of nuclear war turned out to be central to his legacy, President Joe Biden’s policies — so far successful — will be judged not just by what they do for the Ukrainians at war, but by the peace of the world. whole world.