View from Washington: The U.S. is playing ‘nuclear chicken’ in Ukraine

Tensions have never been higher. The degradation in U.S. relations with Russia and the mutual engagement in nuclear brinkmanship between the two during the past several decades means that this fact carries real danger. The war in Ukraine is no longer simply a regional conflict; what may have started off as a fight over historically disputed lines on the map now has the real potential of spiraling into something much larger, writes Dominick Sansone, a doctoral student at the Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship and a NextGen Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, at ‘The American Conservative’.

Ukraine has been lobbying hard for the lifting of all restrictions on weapons use. Zelensky himself will travel to Washington this month to present Biden with a “victory plan” that will reportedly outline Kiev’s path to achieving its war aims. Such a plan will undoubtedly include the acquisition and use of more long-range weaponry with offensive capabilities for striking Russia proper.

As of right now, it hasn’t happened. The likely reason is that even our otherwise myopic policy makers understand that Kiev’s dire situation on the battlefield leaves it with one strategic option: getting the United States more involved. Moscow has subsequently been signaling that the threshold between proxy war and open engagement has been reached. Whether this threshold will be crossed is dependent on the decisions arrived at in the halls of Washington (and perhaps Brussels) over the next several weeks.

The present peril has been significantly exacerbated in the past several weeks by reported changes to the respective nuclear strategies of both Russia and the United States.

As Ukraine has lobbied for further long-range capacities, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took the occasion to further chide the West for “playing with fire.” The United States was “asking for trouble" by allowing for strikes on Russian territory, he stated, and it would be irresponsible of those “entrusted with nuclear weapons” to engage in such reckless brinkmanship.

As things currently stand the Ukrainian fighting position in the east appears increasingly precarious. Kiev is in desperate need of changing the strategic dynamics of the conflict, which currently favor Russia’s industrial production capacities and its ability to keep fresh men cycling into frontline units. One of the intentions behind Kiev’s ongoing Kursk offensive is to reassure its allies in their support of the Ukrainian war effort, and subsequently use any alleged success to lobby for the expanded use of Western-supplied weapons.

But this is only logical if Russia views the commitment to its newly annexed territories and the neutrality of Ukraine as negotiable positions, rather than existential considerations for the Russian state. All signs point to the latter being the case. Putin has continually referred to his readiness to use “all available means” to protect Russia and its territory, including, in October 2022, at the state ceremony formalizing the annexation of the four eastern oblasts — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Betting on Russia bluffing is a risky gamble. It is no coincidence that Russian media is seizing on recently released reports of the Biden administration’s “Nuclear Employment Guidance” to warn that the U.S. is seeking to “increase its deployment of nuclear weapons after existing limitations under a bilateral reduction treaty with Russia expire in February 2026.”

Some of the details of this NEG were also recently covered in the New York Times as well. Washington’s recalibrated “deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal” is intended to address a world in which the nation’s enemies are coordinating to undermine America’s international position. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are all identified as nuclear-armed states that could pose a unified threat to the United States. The new strategy therefore aims to provide a framework for effectively responding to coinciding crises across multiple regional theaters that include the potential use of both nuclear and nonnuclear weapons. Yet it is of course Russia — the country with the most nuclear warheads in the world — that is singled out as the most irresponsible actor in international politics.

The Times quotes foreign policy pundit Richard Haass, who stated that the West is “dealing with a Russia that is radicalized,” and that it is therefore no longer safe to discount the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict. The operative term in this statement is, of course, “radicalized,” implying a normative framework for right — rational, even — action from which Russia has subsequently departed. Quoting a nuclear strategist from MIT, the Times reports that it is now the West’s “responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be... It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as nuclear intermission.”

While both countries played their role in this process, the United States certainly took advantage of its position of relative strength following the Cold War to increase tensions. This was a missed opportunity, as that same position could have allowed for it to take a very different track in promoting international security and non-proliferation.

Tensions have never been higher. The degradation in U.S. relations with Russia and the mutual engagement in nuclear brinkmanship between the two during the past several decades means that this fact carries real danger. The war in Ukraine is no longer simply a regional conflict; what may have started off as a fight over historically disputed lines on the map now has the real potential of spiraling into something much larger.

Of course, the United States doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) want such escalation. The use of Kiev as proxy is perceived to be a relatively low-cost means of weakening a geopolitical rival and ideological obstacle — while also keeping the coffers of defense contractors full and opening up the potential of further exploitation of Ukrainian natural resources — even if that relies upon a cynical strategy of bleeding the Ukrainian nation white. But whether Washington can reel in its dependent is at this point another matter entirely.

The war may end with a significantly more dangerous and unstable security environment, on the European continent in particular and in the world more generally. But conversely, it may also provide opportunity to revisit the subject matter of some of the various treaties listed above.

Issues such as nuclear disarmament, arms control and limiting nuclear proliferation, opening up new and better lines of communication between nations that do not depend upon an ideological commitment to any particular regime type, limiting the scope and breadth of military exercises, and other bilateral actions between the United States and Russia specifically that move away from a hair-trigger nuclear threshold are more important now than ever before.

But for this to happen, leaders in the Western world must first be willing to take off their ideological blinders, Dominick Sansone stresses.

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