British historian Max Hastings:

Putin's nuclear threats are sending the world back to the most dangerous chapters of the Cold War

  • Putin overturned all expectations of futurists.

    Reuters

  • A Ukrainian soldier guards a checkpoint outside the capital, Kyiv.

    AFP

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Five years ago, questions like could Russian President Vladimir Putin use a nuclear bomb?

Can a nuclear weapon be used in Ukraine?

It is a fiction, but these questions are being raised and discussed today, more than a month after the start of the Russian President's war against Ukraine.

Throughout most of the years of the Cold War, which ended in the early nineties of the twentieth century, the nuclear war scenario was the nightmare that haunted statesmen and peoples in the world.

But over the past three decades, it has seemed as if nuclear weapons no longer exist.

In 1985, the United States and the former Soviet Union issued a joint statement saying that “no side can win a nuclear war, and it should not break out in the first place,” which seemed to be the beginning of a path toward a less terrifying world, according to British military historian and strategic analyst Max Hastings. .

In an analysis published by Bloomberg News, Hastings said that humanity can laugh a lot at itself, when you see how much President Putin has overturned all the expectations of futurists, who until one month have been saying that what is worrying is terrorism, climate change and conflict in the Middle East, Disruption of the energy supply and mass migration.

He adds that the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted him to dispose of his collection of historical works on the Cold War, as most authors said or indicated in these works that the danger of nuclear war had vanished in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

different world

In 2017, Odd Arne Westad, a prominent historian at Harvard University, wrote that we now live in a different world from the world of the Soviet Union, where it is unlikely that Russian President Vladimir Putin or his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping would venture into a confrontation with the world, or Exposing their two countries to international isolation.

Indeed, they will try to obstruct American interests, impose regional hegemony, or even engage in limited local wars, but we will never return to a systemic cold war similar to the Cold War of the twentieth century.

But the Ukraine war proved this perception wrong, because President Putin has reverted to the tactics of his predecessors, the leaders of the former Soviet Union, and the threat of nuclear weapons.

Prior to the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin warned the US-led Western coalition of "consequences you have not seen in your history" if it decided to intervene in its war against Ukraine.

Since the end of World War II in 1945, no Western leader has used such a threat, but Putin has.

Of course, Putin's goal is to deter NATO from interfering in the war, and he has largely succeeded.

If Russia did not have a nuclear arsenal, the United States and its allies might have sent troops directly into Ukraine, as happened during the Korean War in 1950. Perhaps Putin would not have dared invade in the first place if he did not have this nuclear cover.

The message is understandable

For authoritarian regimes that want to survive at all costs, such as North Korea, or that seek regional expansion, such as Iran, Hastings says, the message is well understood.

For Russia, the matter is more complex and different.

Some people also believe that Ukraine erred when it agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal, which it inherited from the Soviet Union under a non-aggression pact, and turns out to be worthless.

In Russia today, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, made a serious threat when he talked about the conduct of strategic missile tests under the direction of the head of state, “You know the famous black truth and the red button in it,” in reference to the nuclear code bag that the Russian president carries, and through which he controls. in launching nuclear missiles.

Last week, Peskov said his country would use nuclear weapons only if its existence was threatened.

This threat was an answer to a question from anchor Kristen Amanpour on CNN whether he was "convinced or confident" that Putin would not use the nuclear option in Ukraine.

Hastings argues that if Russia's campaign in Ukraine falters, the Kremlin might justify the use of weapons of mass destruction against it by arguing that Russia's existence is under threat by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his people, claiming that Ukraine is developing a "dirty nuclear bomb."

Putin is likely to use biological or chemical weapons against Ukraine, but he is likely to use limited nuclear weapons in this war, especially since tactical nuclear weapons aim to inflict heavy losses on the enemy's conventional forces without causing broader consequences for the attacking state formations themselves.

The late US President Harry Truman had fired General Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, because he had advocated a call to strike China with a nuclear bomb during the Korean War.

The former US presidents, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, also decisively rejected vague recommendations from some US commanders to use America's overwhelming nuclear superiority at the time.

On the other hand, Russian President Putin, who mocks the West's supposed weakness and sensitivity to the heavy losses of military operations, may imagine that the use of any kind of weapons of mass destruction could force his American counterpart, Joe Biden, to think a lot before escalating the confrontation with Russia.

This means that we are now facing the return of the most dangerous chapters of the Cold War.

• Prior to the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Putin warned the Western alliance led by the United States of “consequences that you have not seen in your history” if it decides to intervene in its war against Ukraine.

• In 1985, the United States and the former Soviet Union issued a joint statement saying that "no party can win a nuclear war, and it should not break out" in the first place, which seemed to be the beginning of a path towards a less terrifying world.

• We now live in a world different from the world of the Soviet Union, where it is not likely that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, or his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, would venture into a confrontation with the world, or expose their two countries to international isolation.

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