This thought-provoking article from Vox explains why the risk of nuclear war is higher today than it ever was during the Cold War.
Apart from the risk of accidental nuclear war, which always has been and still is very great, Russia under Putin is far more likely to escalate a local conventional war into a global nuclear exchange than his Soviet predecessors ever were. Here’s why:
In a nutshell, during the Cold War the Soviet Union outgunned the West in conventional forces, so the U.S. and its allies had to rely on tactical nuclear weapons to deter a Soviet invasion of Europe, or stop one if it occurred. Today, the situation is reversed; a weakened and paranoid Russia, which fears being encircled by a West bent upon its destruction, is doing something cautious Soviet leaders never did: Embracing a military doctrine that calls for using nuclear weapons even in limited, local, and conventional confrontations, including frontier defense.
Russia doesn’t have its massive Soviet-era tank armies anymore, and can’t afford to rebuild them. What it does have is lots of nuclear weapons in warehouses, including low-yield weapons suitable for taking out the conventional NATO forces that Russia would have to fight in a confrontation in the eastern European borderlands.
And contrary to what most Americans and many Europeans might assume, the likely flash point is not the Middle East, but the tiny Baltic state of Estonia, which is only a short tank drive away from Moscow and therefore an ideal base for NATO’s conventional forces — and a dagger pointed at Russia’s throat.
Putin feels threatened, and he’s pushing back hard, sending Russian planes to buzz Swedish and NATO jets over the Baltic Sea and ballistic missile subs to patrol American shores. He gets a political payoff at home: The more aggressive he gets, the higher his popularity soars.
Some Western strategists are convinced Putin is pursuing a high-risk strategy to dismantle NATO by engaging in dangerous provocations to test Western reactions. For example, last year Russian commandos crossed the Estonian border and kidnapped an Estonian security agent just days after President Obama visited Estonia to offer its government Western security guarantees.
Putin’s game is to test whether Western leaders, and particularly European leaders, are willing to risk nuclear war over small slices of territory and relatively trivial issues. He’s betting they’re not, and that if he pushes hard enough, NATO will unravel when its members see their neighbors backing down.
Putin probably doesn’t intend to grab Western Europe; he just wants NATO off his back. Like a cornered dog, he’ll stop growling when the threat goes away. The problem is, a miscalculation on either side, even a small one, could trigger World War 3 under these circumstances.
Many experts see the current situation paralleling 1914, when the Great Powers stumbled into a calamity no one wanted or expected. That probably explains President Obama’s cautious reaction to Russia’s seizure of Crimea, intervention in Ukraine, and meddling in Syria. One can’t help wondering if any of the GOP presidential candidates understand what’s happening, the gravity of the risks it poses, or would be as careful in their foreign and military policies. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of room for error.