In defence of mutually assured destruction

The slow return of the 1980s has reached its logical conclusion. The prospect of nuclear annihilation is haunting our nightmares once again. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been marked by a willingness to engage in blatant nuclear sabre-rattling of a sort not seen since the end of the Cold War. 

From his statement that anyone ‘interfering from outside’ would ‘face consequences greater than any you have faced in history’ to his placing Russia’s nuclear forces on ‘a special combat duty regime’, Putin’s strategy has been to threaten nuclear war to keep the West out of what he sees as his business.

But these threats don’t mean that Putin is about to send missiles soaring over Europe at any moment. Nuclear analyst Pavel Podvig believes that the ‘special combat duty’ is nothing more than an elevated state of vigilance rather than an instruction to make Russia’s system ‘ready to fire’. Putin’s words are instead an attempt to disincentivise certain western behaviours.