In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait in a war of territorial aggression. The following year, the United States and its allies intervened with the support of the United Nations Security Council to repel an invasion of Iraq. Today, when Russia is engaged in a similar war of aggression against Ukraine, the United States has not acted similarly, but has only adopted escalating economic sanctions.
There are many differences between the situation in 1991 and 2022, but the biggest difference is that Saddam Hussein is known to have no nuclear weapons; while Putin has nearly 6,000. If there is a reason, this is the reason.
Before and after the invasion, the Biden administration has ruled out the deployment of U.S. troops to Ukraine. In his speech on Thursday, the president said: "Let me repeat: our military does not have and will not be involved in a conflict with Russia in Ukraine in the future." Despite the warnings of commentators on the right and "anti-imperialist" left that the United States will be involved, there is no indication that this policy will change. Nuclear weapons are the main cause.
To some extent, the Cold War-era logic of "mutually assured destruction" remains valid: Russia's arsenal leads to a risk of direct intervention in Ukraine beyond the tolerance of any rational American leader. So, in a sense, Russia's nuclear weapons make it less likely that the conflict will escalate into World War III.
But in another sense, Russia's nuclear arsenal also created the conditions for Putin's invasion.
Political scientists call it the "stability-instability paradox," meaning that nuclear deterrence has a paradoxical effect that could make certain conventional wars more likely. Russia can be relatively confident that the United States and its allies will not directly protect Ukraine because such a conflict would pose the threat of nuclear war.
Putin himself made the same idea. In a declaration of war speech on Wednesday night, he warned that "anyone considering intervening from the outside" would "face more serious consequences than at any time in history" — a threat that has been disguised: If the United States and its NATO allies dare to intervene, they will be confronted with nuclear weapons.
Caitlin Talmadge, a professor of nuclear weapons at Georgetown University, wrote of Putin's speech: "This is the clearest evidence of the stability-instability paradox I have ever seen. Putin's actions suggest that they can use strategic nuclear forces as a shield for conventional aggression because they know their nuclear threat could deter external intervention. ”
As one of the hallmark features of the Cold War, the nuclear balance between the United States and Russia is returning to the forefront of international politics. We can only hope that things don't get any worse.
Nuclear weapons make it difficult for the United States to send troops to Ukraine
Nuclear weapons are the only weapons ever invented by mankind that, when used on a large scale, can quickly wipe out our entire species. The risk of conflict between two nuclear-armed Powers is extremely high, so any rational leader should theoretically try to avoid a conflict.
This is especially true for the United States and Russia, which together control about 90 percent of the world's nuclear warheads. The problem is not only the size of the two countries' nuclear arsenals, but also their structure — both countries have a strong "second strike" capability, which means that both sides can withstand the other's devastating nuclear strikes and still retaliate. The United States and Russia maintain secondary strike capabilities in part through so-called "nuclear triads": bombers armed with nuclear bombs, submarines equipped with nuclear missiles, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.
As a result, neither the United States nor Russia can expect to "win" a nuclear war. Even if one country attacks first, destroying major military bases and population centers, another country can still launch a nuclear counterattack, such as a submarine from the sea to launch a counterattack against its enemy. The only way to win a nuclear war on this scale is not to participate in the war.
This may be why the Biden administration is so determined to avoid getting involved in Ukraine: the risks of direct intervention are too high, for the people, for the country, and for all of humanity.
A nuclear test conducted by the United States in 1954.
A conventional war between nuclear powers doesn't necessarily escalate into a nuclear conflict: look at the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999, or the 2018 battle between U.S. special forces and Russian mercenaries in Syria. However, there is always a risk that a conflict will escalate into the use of nuclear weapons, especially when one party considers that national interests or its survival are at stake.
For Putin, the war in Ukraine seems to have met that requirement. Geographically, a major U.S. or NATO intervention in the conflict would pose a threat to the territorial integrity of Russia's homeland. If NATO intervention can turn the tide of war in Ukraine's favor, Russia is likely to use its nuclear arsenal against NATO's enemies.
Nick Miller, a nuclear weapons expert at Dartmouth University, explains: "Their nuclear strategy envisions that if they lose in a conventional conflict or face an existential threat, they may be the first to use nuclear weapons." ”
It is unpredictable whether the deployment of U.S. troops in Ukraine will essentially lead to nuclear war. But the stakes are high, and it is likely to surpass the most dangerous moments of the Cold War, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. In some cases, such as protecting U.S. soil, a U.S. leader may still come into conflict with a nuclear-armed country, but defending a country like Ukraine, which is not even a full U.S. ally, should not be one of them.
How nuclear weapons made war in Ukraine possible
Some authoritative scholars have studied the logic of deterrence and concluded that nuclear weapons are actually a good thing for the world. The leading scholar supporting this theory of a "nuclear revolution" is the political scientist Kenneth Waltz, who argues that the proliferation of nuclear weapons will spread peace through expanded deterrence. The more countries place acts of aggression at unimaginable risk, the less likely it is that war will occur.
The evidence for this theory is mixed. While nuclear deterrence does seem to have played a role in preventing the Cold War from heating up, studying other cases, including smaller states with nuclear weapons such as India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, leads to a much more complex conclusion.
The stability-instability paradox is one of these complications. The most classic form of this paradox is that two nuclear-armed States are more likely to be involved in skirmishes. Because both sides know that the other side does not want to take a greater risk of war given the nuclear risks, they can be more confident in making smaller provocations and attacks. It seems that nuclear weapons bring stability, but in fact breed greater instability.
Ukraine is not a nuclear-weapon bearer, but NATO has three countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France). Because NATO members do not want a broader war with Russia and the risk of a nuclear conflict, they are unlikely to intervene in a conflict that could otherwise join. Putin knows this; his public threat to use nuclear weapons against any country that interferes suggests he anticipated that.
So what we're seeing now is a perversion of the classic paradox: Putin relies on fear of a nuclear strike to get away with it when he invades a country (Ukraine) that a nuclear-armed third party (NATO) might want to defend.
This was common during the Cold War. This is also why the Soviet Union could send troops to Hungary in 1956 and To Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress anti-communist uprisings without really worrying about Western interference.
To be clear, the stability-instability paradox is not ironclad evidence of international relations, and scholars disagree on the frequency of conflicts caused by such behavior. But nuclear deterrence is also unfounded: there are several examples of near-nuclear war.
In 1983, for example, Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov received an early warning system warning that the United States might launch a nuclear strike. If Petrov had informed his superiors, they would most likely have fired missiles in response. However, Petrov and his men correctly concluded that it was purely a false alarm, and chose not to report anything. Their judgment may have saved hundreds of millions, if not billions, of lives.
Nuclear deterrence depends on both sides having access to relatively accurate information and making rational decisions. But the conflict in Ukraine is taking place near the borders of NATO members, and the risk of accidents, misunderstandings and miscalculations increases. For example, Miller said, "you can imagine a Russian plane accidentally straying into NATO airspace" and sparking a broader conflict.
If NATO does not enter the territory of Ukraine, the risk of such a catastrophe remains very low. Miller warned that "both sides have a strong incentive to avoid direct conflict and to avoid escalation of events." ”
But the current back-and-forth discussion of the prospect of the use of nuclear weapons has shown how nuclear weapons can make the world we live in more dangerous and fragile. While nuclear weapons may have played an important role in preventing the United States from directly intervening in the Ukraine conflict, it has also helped create the conditions for Russia to wage war — which, in the worst case, could escalate into a complete catastrophe.
Source: New York Chinese Information Network
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