Follow us on social

Prolonging the Ukraine war is flirting with nuclear disaster

Prolonging the Ukraine war is flirting with nuclear disaster

The chances of an atomic catastrophe are low but they aren't zero

Analysis | North America

Fighting in the Ukraine war has persisted well into the third year, with hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides.

For more than two years, the West has been stoking Ukraine’s hopes — with funding, military advice, and more and more advanced weapons — that it could push Russia out to its pre-2014 borders. This is an imaginary outcome that words of fiction will do nothing to achieve.

Equally misguided is the contention by Western leaders that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, he will gobble up more and more of Europe, beginning with Poland and the Baltics. Not only is there no evidence to support this assertion, but also the notion that a Russia that can barely defeat Ukraine would go to war against NATO simply defies logic.

These developments do, however, push Washington into spending more on “defense,” which enriches the arms manufacturers. Earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg trumpeted an 18 percent increase in military spending across Europe and Canada in 2024, “the biggest increase in decades,” two-thirds of which goes to U.S. manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons announced that global spending on nuclear weapons rose 13 percent in 2023, with the U.S. again leading the way. This is happening even though the U.S. already spends almost five times as much as China, its nearest competitor. U.S. nuclear weapons spending over the past five years has increased by 45 percent, trailed by the U.K.’s 43 percent.

The spending announcements coincide with news about the planet sweltering and little is being done to combat global warming. Clearly, we’re too busy fighting each other and spending money on ways to end humanity far faster than global warming will.

As NATO leaders realize that throwing more money into Ukraine alone is not enough to change an increasingly desperate battlefield equation, they have been finding other, more dangerous ways, to escalate in recent weeks. They have not only permitted Ukraine to attack sites within Russia with advanced NATO weapons, they have also assisted in those attacks and have openly discussed sending NATO troops, trainers, and targeters on the ground. The recent attacks on two Russian nuclear warning radar facilities have been particularly irresponsible, bringing us closer not only to full out war, but to nuclear war. And if that is not enough, Stoltenberg recently told the Telegraph that NATO is debating taking additional nuclear weapons out of storage and placing them on standby to prepare for all contingencies.

Russia has responded to these escalations with a series of explicit warnings about the imminence of a broader war and by carrying out provocative tactical nuclear war exercises on its territory bordering Ukraine, with Belarussian participation. The Foreign Ministry said the exercises would send a “sobering signal” that would “cool the hot heads in Western capitals,” making them understand “the potential catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they are generating.”

Russia then sent warships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, to Cuba, which Western commentators dismissed as a “bluff,” though the U.S. and Canada promptly sent warships into the region. Next, Putin visited Pyongyang and signed a “mutual security” pact with North Korea, committing both nuclear-armed nations to come to each other’s defense if attacked.

These developments heighten the urgency of finding a political settlement for the Ukraine war.

In a recent book titled “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” author Annie Jacobsen details the 72 minutes that unfold after the U.S. detects a North Korea launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile heading for Washington, DC, until the end of the world as we know it. The hypothesized North Korean attack quickly turns into a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, a possibility made even more likely by the Putin-Kim Jong Un agreement. In Jacobsen’s book, the two countries proceed to use a thousand or more warheads to level the other, a prospect that terrified millions of people throughout the Cold War, but which had more recently faded from the public’s consciousness.

Nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia today would bear little resemblance to the American atomic bomb attacks on Japan. Rather than killing a couple hundred thousand people, as Fat Man and Little Boy did in 1945, today’s weapons could kill and injure millions of people, and possibly hundreds of millions. Add to this count the billions around who would starve to death as a result of nuclear winter and subsequent crop failures and you have a recipe for the end of human civilization as we know it.

The concern that Russia could decide to use nuclear weapons if threatened with defeat in the Donbas or Crimea or in a direct war with NATO should not be dismissed lightly. While the U.S. would be less likely to initiate nuclear war given NATO’s conventional superiority, it may respond in kind to Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons. Alternatively, a conventional war between Russia and NATO could turn nuclear.

Arguably, an even more likely scenario than a deliberate start of a nuclear war is a blunder into oblivion, an accidental or miscalculated strike as either side wrongly assumes that it is already or will imminently be under a nuclear attack. This can easily arise due to the “launch on warning” policy that both countries have. Moreover, neither the United States nor Russia has a “no-first-use policy” that would abjure first using nuclear weapons in a crisis, making the miscalculation more likely.

MIT Professor Ted Postol, a former scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations, has warned that Russia’s missile detection capabilities are not as advanced as the ones that the United States has, which he described as a “terrible and dangerous technology shortfall.” Especially, he warns, if nuclear radar facilities are under attack, as they were recently, Russia could falsely assume it is being targeted by nuclear weapons and could unleash the full power of its 5,500+ warhead arsenal. Make that partial, it’s still enough to not only destroy the United States, but the whole world.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan jointly stated in 1985 that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Despite leaders of the five original nuclear weapon states explicitly reaffirming this in January 2022 prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of those same leaders seem to have forgotten these wise words and have recklessly pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

As former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev poignantly stated in the aftermath of the greatest previous nuclear crisis, “Peace is the most important goal in the world. If we don’t have peace and the nuclear bombs start to fall, what difference will it make whether we are Communists or Catholic or capitalists or Chinese or Russians or Americans? Who could tell us apart? Who will be left to tell us apart?”

It’s time to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation escalator before it is too late. A Swiss peace conference without Russia or China has done nothing to advance that goal. Nor have the recent G7 meetings in Italy, the NATO pronouncements, or, for that matter, the grandiose war games being conducted by both sides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Brazil and China recently issued a joint statement, declaring that “dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.” Their proposal includes a six-point plan for peace, with “no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting, and no further provocation.” China says that the proposal has now received backing from at least 45 countries.

This is a good place to start, as would be an emergency meeting of world leaders that the U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres could call for. Continuing to play nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward.


Editorial credit: Oleg Elkov / Shutterstock.com

Analysis | North America
Trump tariffs
Top image credit: Steve Travelguide via shutterstock.com

Linking tariff 'deals' to US security interests is harder than it looks

Global Crises

In its July 31 Executive Order modifying the reciprocal tariffs originally laid out in early April, the White House repeatedly invokes the close linkages between trade and national security.

The tariff treatment of different countries is linked to broader adhesion to U.S. foreign policy priorities. For example, (relatively) favorable treatment is justified for those countries that have “agreed to, or are on the verge of agreeing to, meaningful trade and security commitments with the United States, thus signaling their sincere intentions to permanently remedy … trade barriers ….and to align with the United States on economic and national security matters.”

keep readingShow less
Kurdistan drone attacks
Top photo credit: A security official stands near site of the Sarsang oilfield operated by HKN Energy, after a drone attack, in Duhok province, Iraq, July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari

Kurdistan oil is the Bermuda Triangle of international politics

Middle East

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that a strong Kurdistan Region within a federal Iraq is a "fundamental and strategic component" of U.S. policy. Two months later, that policy was set on fire.

A relentless campaign of drone attacks targeting Iraqi Kurdistan’s military, civilian, and energy infrastructure escalated dramatically in July, as a swarm of Iranian-made drones struck oil fields operated by American and Norwegian companies. Previous strikes had focused on targets like Erbil International Airport and the headquarters of the Peshmerga’s 70th Force in Sulaymaniyah.

The attacks slashed regional oil production from a pre-attack level of nearly 280,000 barrels per day to a mere 80,000.

The arrival of Iraqi National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji in Erbil personified the central paradox of the crisis. His mission was to lead an investigation into an attack that Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials had already publicly blamed on armed groups embedded within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)—components of his own government.

keep readingShow less
Sudan
Sudanese protester stands in front of a blazing fire during a demonstration against the military coup, on International Women's Day in Khartoum, Sudan March 8, 2022. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

Sudan civil war takes dark turn as RSF launches 'parallel government'

Africa

In a dramatic move last week, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) announced the selection of its own prime minister and presidential council to compete with and directly challenge the legitimacy of the Sudanese government.

News of the new parallel government comes days before a new round of peace talks was expected to begin in Washington last week. Although neither of the two civil war belligerents were going to attend, it was to be the latest effort by the United States to broker an end to the war in Sudan — and the first major effort under Trump’s presidency.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.