Putin's Threats Highlight the Dangers of a New, Riskier Nuclear Era - The New York Times - 0 views
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After generations of stability in nuclear arms control, a warning to Russia from President Biden shows how old norms are eroding.
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“We currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russia’s occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible,” Mr. Biden wrote in a guest opinion essay in The New York Times. “Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.”
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With the Biden administration stepping up the flow of conventional weapons to Ukraine and tensions with Russia high, a senior administration official conceded that “right now it’s almost impossible to imagine” how the talks might resume before the last treaty expires in early 2026.
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The Chinese are “watching the war in Ukraine closely and will likely use nuclear coercion to their advantage” in future conflicts, the commander, Adm. Charles A. Richard, told Congress.
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Others are learning their own lessons. North Korea, which President Donald J. Trump boasted he would disarm with one-on-one diplomacy, is building new weapons.
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What is fast approaching, experts say, is a second nuclear age full of new dangers and uncertainties, less predictable than during the Cold War, with established restraints giving way to more naked threats to reach for such weapons — and a need for new strategies to keep the atomic peace.
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the dawning era would feature “both a greater risk of a nuclear arms race and heightened incentives for states to resort to nuclear weapons in a crisis.”
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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia opened the Ukraine war with a declaration that he was putting his nuclear abilities on some kind of heightened alert — a clear message to Washington to back off.
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In the years leading up to the Ukraine invasion, Mr. Putin regularly punctuated his speeches with nuclear propaganda videos, including one that showed a swarm of warheads descending on Florida.
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They are designed by the Russians to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, which strategists fear makes their use more thinkable.
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“There are a lot of things that he would do in the context of escalation before he would get to nuclear weapons,” Ms. Haines said.
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The White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies are examining the implications of any potential Russian claim that it is conducting a nuclear test or the use by its forces of a relatively small, battlefield nuclear weapon to demonstrate its ability.
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The idea would be to “signal immediate de-escalation” followed by international condemnation, said one administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide insight into classified topics.
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Henry Kissinger noted in a recent interview with The Financial Times that “there’s almost no discussion internationally about what would happen if the weapons actually became used.” He added: “We are now living in a totally new era.”
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The simplest theory is that if China is going to be a superpower, it needs a superpower-sized arsenal. But another is that Beijing recognizes that all the familiar theories of nuclear balance of power are eroding.
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“China is heralding a paradigm shift to something much less stable,” Mr. Krepinevich wrote, “a tripolar nuclear system.”