President Donald Trump has gained a reputation for worrying about the possibility of nuclear war. He’s been criticized by the usual hawkish suspects for his concerns, but he deserves credit for recognizing the potential of a nation-ending and even life-exterminating event. Nuclear weapons may have dissuaded the United States and Soviet Union from turning the Cold War hot, but if deterrence fails in the future, the consequences could be global destruction.
Yet the president is now escalating American involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Worse, he’s gone from rhetorical bombast to nuclear theatrics, ostentatiously sending forth two nuclear submarines, thereby “climbing—almost casually—the first rung of the nuclear escalation ladder,” in the words of the Telegraph’s senior foreign correspondent. Admittedly, this step means little in practice, given Washington’s other weapons on station and Trump’s irregular governing style. However, Moscow responded by threatening to redeploy short- and intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Dmitry Medvedev, vice chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that this decision “is the result of Nato countries’ anti-Russian policy.” With Moscow the weaker conventional power that relies on nuclear weapons to fill the resulting combat gap, President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to make any compromise suggesting weakness.
Trump’s most important duty is to keep America safe. Geography helps, having made the U.S. the most secure great power ever. Most events overseas, even bloody European wars such as the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, matter only modestly and indirectly to Americans. U.S. security is almost always best served by staying out, accepting imperfect, even unjust, results rather than making such conflicts Washington’s own.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a serious military threat to the U.S. other than a sizable attack with nuclear-tipped missiles. Plenty of foreign events are morally offensive, geopolitically costly, and/or politically inconvenient. However, that doesn’t make them vital interests warranting war, with the predictably horrific consequences that would result.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is such an event. Putin’s actions, though deplorable, do not endanger America. Over the last two centuries, European powers have thrice attacked Russia, causing enormous havoc and horror. The Western allies violated their repeated promises not to expand the transatlantic alliance to Russia’s border. After Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, the West began bringing NATO into Ukraine rather than Ukraine into NATO. Putin decided on a preventive strike. He had no interest in war with Washington or its European allies.
Indeed, fear that Russia plans a follow-up Blitzkrieg to seize the rest of Europe, or even additional neighboring states, seems fanciful. Russia lacks the necessary capability, reason, and interest. After all, despite its daily battering, Kiev has yet to capitulate. The rest of the continent would be far harder to subdue. Attempting to rule over large areas populated by non-Russians would break Moscow. And for what objective? How would Russia benefit? In contrast to his persistent focus on Ukraine, Putin has shown no interest in war elsewhere, instead curtly dismissing such talk. When asked by Tucker Carlson if he might invade Poland, the Russian president responded, “Only in one case: if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia, or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest. It’s just threat-mongering.”
While nothing that Putin says should be taken on faith, his response is more credible than the wild claims of uber-hawks in America and Europe who imagine Putin to be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. What evidence suggests that Moscow plans a lunge at continental conquest? Eastern Europeans obviously should remain wary, but Washington should not configure its defense policy to match fantastic nightmares pedaled by those determined to drag America into the ongoing conflict.
In any case, Russia has no reason to confront the U.S. other than Washington’s brutal proxy war-plus against Moscow. Admittedly, for some hysterical analysts the Cold War never ended. Argued Colin Cleary, a long-time foreign service officer: “Vladimir Putin is an avowed enemy of the United States who has used all levers of power to undermine U.S. national security and threaten the physical existence of the American people. Putin’s Russia, not Xi’s China, thus poses the most immediate danger to the United States homeland. For that reason, it is incumbent on U.S. leaders to make stopping Putin priority number one.”
Putin made his early career with the KGB, whose members tended to be the most worldly and cynical Soviet operatives. He accepted the end of the Cold War and sought to engage the West. Indeed, he was the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks and two weeks later made a conciliatory speech to the German Bundestag:
It was the political choice of the people of Russia that enabled the then leaders of the USSR to take decisions that eventually led to the razing of the Berlin Wall. It was that choice that infinitely broadened the boundaries of European humanism and that enables U.S. to say that no one will ever be able to return Russia back into the past.
As for European integration, we not just support these processes, but we are looking to them with hope. We view them as a people who have learned the lesson of the Cold War and the peril of the ideology of occupation very well. But here, I think, it would be pertinent to add that Europe did not gain from that division either.
It is my firm conviction that in today’s rapidly changing world, in a world witnessing truly dramatic demographic changes and an exceptionally high economic growth in some regions, Europe also has an immediate interest in promoting relations with Russia.
Unfortunately, Putin soon concluded that his hopes were forlorn. U.S. administrations expanded NATO, contra Washington’s multiple commitments; dismembered Serbia, a historic Russian interest; and sought to exclude Moscow from the new Balkan order, ignoring Russia’s security concerns. American officials treated Russia as of no account. Then it could do little in response, but that changed. As did his attitude toward the U.S.
At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin trenchantly criticized the “unipolar world”:
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.
After denouncing the neoconservatives’ hegemonic dreamworld, he asked: “Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?” Not many people outside of Washington, especially after the Iraq catastrophe, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died as a result of the George W. Bush administration’s reckless hubris.
Even then, Washington and Moscow had no serious conflicts, whether territorial, ideological, security, or economic. There were no disputes of the sort that typically led to military confrontation and war. Russia backed America’s nonproliferation efforts against both Iran and North Korea, played a minimal role in Latin America, Washington’s unabashed and jealously guarded sphere of interest, and didn’t even pretend to threaten Europe. Some U.S. analysts treated Russian support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as a vital threat, but Damascus, a Moscow client for decades, mattered little to Washington.
Of course, none of this should obscure Putin’s dictatorial and corrupt rule. However, U.S. analysts were ever ready to overlook similar grotesque behavior when it came to Mideast killer princes, Central Asian tyrants, and friendly authoritarians elsewhere. Prior to 2014 no one imagined a threat of conflict, let alone a nuclear exchange, between the U.S. and Russia. Then came Western backing for regime change in Kiev, even though Russia’s influence there posed no threat to the U.S., nor was it meant to. Washington sought to overthrow a democratically elected, albeit corrupt, regime, disenfranchising millions of Ukrainians who did not support Kiev’s Maidan protest, a much more complicated event than commonly presented.
Although this conduct did not justify Moscow’s violent response, Russia’s most fanatical enemies in Washington would never have acquiesced to similar events in the Western Hemisphere. Imagine Russian or Chinese support for a street putsch against Mexico’s or Canada’s elected government, discussion in Moscow or Beijing as to who should take control in the newly “liberated” capital, and invitation to the new rulers to join the modern equivalent of the Warsaw Pact. Hysteria would sweep Washington, conservative media would be aflame with calls for war, and the dispatch of the 101stAirborne and much more would not long have been delayed.
After nearly a decade of increasingly close Western military relations with and continued promises of NATO membership for Ukraine, Putin pressed for negotiations—not what one would expect from a dedicated enemy of America—which Washington rebuffed. Then Moscow struck. His iniquity cannot erase the blame that rests upon American and allied policymakers, who recklessly and arrogantly ignored warnings of the storm to come.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is now paying a heavy price as well. Washington is providing substantial aid payments to Ukraine and emptying American arsenals of critical weapons. Moscow is challenging U.S. policy toward Iran and North Korea. Indeed, Russia is subsidizing Pyongyang, upgrading the North’s conventional military forces, and perhaps providing technical missile and nuclear assistance. Unfriendly this conduct is, but no more so than Washington’s provision of intelligence and weapons that have caused thousands of Russian deaths. Indeed, U.S. officials have anonymously but ostentatiously claimed credit for killing Russian generals and sinking Russian ships. American politicians, including candidate Joe Biden, reacted with anger to what turned out to be erroneous reports that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill Americans in Afghanistan. Putin is no friend of America, but he would argue that Uncle Sam started the fight.
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So it is with Trump’s nuclear gamesmanship. Moscow has not gratuitously threatened America. Rather, Russian officials have responded to the U.S., which has steadily intensified its expensive and expansive proxy war against Moscow. Most recent was Trump’s announcement of sanctions against Russia and its trading partners. To this Medvedev responded with his trademark nuclear threats. Putin mostly ignores the former’s presumed advice, but the situation could grow much more dangerous if Moscow’s military offensive falters. Indeed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is again calling on the allies to pursue “regime change.” In that case one should not rule out Russian employment of nuclear weapons, though so far that remains unlikely.
Trump, having chosen to reverse course and jump back into the ongoing proxy war—demanding a ceasefire, which, without agreement on peace terms favors Ukraine—also turned up the nuclear heat. Surely, he would not initiate a nuclear war to force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire. If not, he shouldn’t invite Putin to engage in a mindless game of nuclear chicken over the issue while incongruously attempting to Make Ukraine Great Again.
Backing down is never easy, especially for someone with Trump’s temperament. However, if he genuinely fears the consequences of nuclear war, he shouldn’t threaten the same. He should quietly bring the subs home and stop treating Russia as an enemy. The Russo–Ukrainian War is terrible and needs to end. That requires serious negotiation over substantive issues, which Putin, though apparently not Trump, realizes—not calls for a ceasefire that would provide but a temporary respite as the parties prepared for more war. Most importantly, the president should drop the nuclear brinkmanship, which threatens all of us.
