Preventing Putin from using nuclear weapons

In recent days, there has been a growing chorus of concern among analysts and pundits that Russian President Vladimir Putin might just use tactical nuclear weapons in his war with Ukraine. Given the NATO-backed Ukrainian military’s impressive performance on the battlefield, Putin may just be pushed into a corner and Russia may be the first country to use offensive nuclear weapons since the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagaskai in 1945. 

Such a move would cause an incalculable toll with regard to loss of human life and ecological impacts as well as potentially trigger a nuclear response from the U.S. or other NATO nuclear powers. This worst-case scenario then might spiral into a broader doomsday outcome that has been largely inconceivable since the end of the Cold War.

The good news is that the core conflict that underlies this conflict can be resolved peacefully, and we can avoid global thermonuclear war.

Putin’s central grievance that motivated the Russian invasion of Ukraine stemmed from an agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine in November 2021. In that document, the Charter on Strategic Partnership, the U.S. formally asserted support for Ukrainian NATO membership. Just one month later, in a letter to the U.S. and its allies, Russia demanded that they rescind that agreement and guarantee in writing that Ukraine be barred from joining NATO. 

When the U.S. refused to back down, Russia invaded and has been fighting a war of attrition for the last eight months. The current U.S. policy of arming Ukraine with lethal weapons and imposing unprecedented economic sanctions has attempted to make the costs of war so high that Putin yields. But it has arguably just prolonged the conflict, extending the pain and suffering of the Ukrainian people, as such proxy wars have done elsewhere. Take Syria as an example: Russian-backed pro-government forces have battled U.S.-supported opposition militias for over a decade — resulting in an estimated 115,000 civilian deaths.

Putin’s inflammatory rhetoric around using nuclear weapons, even positing that the U.S. itself set the precedent for doing so, should make the whole world very nervous. 

There is another path: The U.S. and NATO members should sit down at a negotiating table with Russia. This war has never been about a beef between Russia and Ukraine, it has been about a much larger struggle between Russia and NATO and it’s increasing march Eastward toward the Russian border. 

Ukraine’s planned application to join NATO disrupts the detente that has existed in Europe since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Warsaw Pact alliance (of U.S.S.R. and Eastern European nations) soon crumbled and the rough parity that had existed between them and NATO suddenly vanished, leaving NATO standing alone. Putin’s grievances derive from a fundamental asymmetry between NATO and Russia and future expansions of NATO further eastward has certainly exacerbate that imbalance. 

The U.S. and NATO have a chance now to extend an olive branch to Putin, offer to revoke the Charter on Strategic Partnership and take down the temperature in the room. (Billionaire Elon Musk has even suggested reaching a peace deal by officially ceding Crimea to Russia.)

It is not in the U.S.’s interests to engage in a nuclear war with Russia and providing appropriate security guarantees to allow Putin to maintain a sphere of influence in Eastern Ukraine is a small price to pay for achieving peace on earth.

Justin B. Hollander is a professor at Tufts University, where he teaches public policy and planning.

This piece has been updated.