Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

In defence of mutually assured destruction

The horrific calculus has kept us as safe as we can be in a nuclear age

(Getty)

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.

The question of whether he would actually use these weapons is in some senses irrelevant; what matters is that we can’t be sure he wouldn’t. In much the same way that a bank teller faced with an armed robber is unlikely to push the issue of whether he’s willing to pull the trigger, Nato is unwilling to initiate a potential military conflict.

The greatest point of danger is when one side believes it can ‘win’ a nuclear exchange

To carry the analogy forward, two men with loaded weapons would be careful to interact politely and predictably, rather than making aggressive and unexpected motions.

Mutually assured destruction works because both sides believe that the use of nuclear weapons on their part would be met in kind, with any conflict entering an irreversible escalation. Because the rational response to a nuclear launch is a nuclear launch, there is no incentive to engage in one.

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