https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war.html
As Russia Digs In, What's the Risk of Nuclear War? 'It's Not Zero.'
A series of shifts in Russian statements about using nuclear weapons has led some analysts to believe that the Kremlin sees a nuclear exchange as a viable strategy.
A major war raging on Russia's and NATO's borders. Increasingly bold Western military support. Russian threats of direct retaliation. A mood of siege and desperation in the Kremlin. Growing uncertainty around each side's red lines.
As Russia and NATO escalate their standoff over Ukraine, nuclear strategists and former U.S. officials warn that there is a remote but growing risk of an unintended slide into direct conflict even, in some scenarios, a nuclear exchange.
"The prospect of nuclear war," Antnio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, warned this week, "is now back within the realm of possibility."
Leaders on both sides emphasize that they consider such a war unthinkable, even as they make preparations and issue declarations for how they might carry it out. But the fear, experts stress, is not a deliberate escalation to war, but a misunderstanding or a provocation gone too far that, as each side scrambles to respond, spirals out of control.
The war in Ukraine heightens these risks to a level not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in some ways is potentially more dangerous than that, some experts say.
NATO forces, intended as defensive, are massing near Russian borders that, with much of Russia's military bogged down in Ukraine, are unusually vulnerable. Increasingly paranoid Kremlin leaders, faced with economic devastation and domestic unrest, may believe that a Western plot to remove them is already underway.
Russia has said that it considers the weapons and other increased military aid that Western governments are sending to Ukraine tantamount to war, and has implied that it might strike NATO convoys. Over the weekend, Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian base mere miles from Polish territory.
"The chance for nuclear weapons employment is extremely low. But it's not zero. It's real, and it might even increase," he said. "Those things could happen."
The Kremlin has turned to nuclear saber-rattling that may not be entirely empty of threat. Russian war planners, obsessed with fears of NATO invasion, have implied in recent policy documents and war games that they may believe that Russia could turn back such a force through a single nuclear strike a gambit that Soviet-era leaders rejected as unthinkable.
The outcome of such a strike would be impossible to predict. A recent Princeton University simulation, projecting out each side's war plans and other indicators, estimated that it would be likely to trigger a tit-for-tat exchange that, in escalating to strategic weapons like intercontinental missiles, could kill 34 million people within a few hours.
Alexander Vershbow, NATO's deputy secretary general from 2012 to 2016, said that Western leaders had concluded that Russian plans to use nuclear weapons in a major crisis were sincere, raising the risk from any accident or misstep that the Kremlin mistook for war.
With Russian forces struggling in a Ukraine conflict that Moscow's leaders have portrayed as existential, Mr. Vershbow added, "That risk has definitely grown in the last two and a half weeks."
As Russia Digs In, What's the Risk of Nuclear War? 'It's Not Zero.'
A series of shifts in Russian statements about using nuclear weapons has led some analysts to believe that the Kremlin sees a nuclear exchange as a viable strategy.
A major war raging on Russia's and NATO's borders. Increasingly bold Western military support. Russian threats of direct retaliation. A mood of siege and desperation in the Kremlin. Growing uncertainty around each side's red lines.
As Russia and NATO escalate their standoff over Ukraine, nuclear strategists and former U.S. officials warn that there is a remote but growing risk of an unintended slide into direct conflict even, in some scenarios, a nuclear exchange.
"The prospect of nuclear war," Antnio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, warned this week, "is now back within the realm of possibility."
Leaders on both sides emphasize that they consider such a war unthinkable, even as they make preparations and issue declarations for how they might carry it out. But the fear, experts stress, is not a deliberate escalation to war, but a misunderstanding or a provocation gone too far that, as each side scrambles to respond, spirals out of control.
The war in Ukraine heightens these risks to a level not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in some ways is potentially more dangerous than that, some experts say.
NATO forces, intended as defensive, are massing near Russian borders that, with much of Russia's military bogged down in Ukraine, are unusually vulnerable. Increasingly paranoid Kremlin leaders, faced with economic devastation and domestic unrest, may believe that a Western plot to remove them is already underway.
Russia has said that it considers the weapons and other increased military aid that Western governments are sending to Ukraine tantamount to war, and has implied that it might strike NATO convoys. Over the weekend, Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian base mere miles from Polish territory.
"The chance for nuclear weapons employment is extremely low. But it's not zero. It's real, and it might even increase," he said. "Those things could happen."
The Kremlin has turned to nuclear saber-rattling that may not be entirely empty of threat. Russian war planners, obsessed with fears of NATO invasion, have implied in recent policy documents and war games that they may believe that Russia could turn back such a force through a single nuclear strike a gambit that Soviet-era leaders rejected as unthinkable.
The outcome of such a strike would be impossible to predict. A recent Princeton University simulation, projecting out each side's war plans and other indicators, estimated that it would be likely to trigger a tit-for-tat exchange that, in escalating to strategic weapons like intercontinental missiles, could kill 34 million people within a few hours.
Alexander Vershbow, NATO's deputy secretary general from 2012 to 2016, said that Western leaders had concluded that Russian plans to use nuclear weapons in a major crisis were sincere, raising the risk from any accident or misstep that the Kremlin mistook for war.
With Russian forces struggling in a Ukraine conflict that Moscow's leaders have portrayed as existential, Mr. Vershbow added, "That risk has definitely grown in the last two and a half weeks."
