Nuclear war fears loom again as Russia looks for breakthrough in Ukraine

Paris:

Hidden from the public consciousness for decades, the nightmare of nuclear war has returned to prominence with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, exposing the erosion of the Cold War global security architecture.

With Moscow on the backfoot in its attack, the military standoff has raised fears Russia could resort to its nuclear arsenal to score a breakthrough.

Russia, along with Britain, China, France and the United States, is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons powers and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

“This is the first time a nuclear power has used its position to wage a conventional war under the shadow of nuclear weapons,” said Camille Grand, former deputy secretary-general of NATO.

“One would have imagined that rogue states would adopt this kind of attitude, but suddenly it is one of the two major nuclear powers, a member of the United Nations Security Council,” he told AFP.

For now, the moral and strategic nuclear “taboo” that emerged after the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II in 1945 still persists.

But the rhetoric has escalated massively.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian TV broadcasts have repeatedly discussed nuclear attacks on Western cities such as Paris or New York.

A former Russian diplomat warned on condition of anonymity that if President Vladimir Putin believes Russia’s existence is threatened, “he will push the button”.

The year’s events have been a stark wake-up call for Europe, which for decades enjoyed the so-called Cold War “peace dividend” in a state of relative ease when it came to nuclear security.

Across the Atlantic, US President Joe Biden warned in October of a possible “Armageddon” hanging over the world.

disarmament ‘ruins’

Nobel-winning economist and strategy expert Thomas Schelling wrote in 2007, “The most spectacular event of the last half century is the one that didn’t happen.”

But the post-1945 framework that kept world leaders’ fingers off the button had been crumbling for years before Putin ordered the invasion.

In 2002, the United States abandoned the vital Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the Soviet Union in 1972, which maintained the nuclear balance of power.

Other important agreements fell through in subsequent years, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which Washington dropped in 2019, accusing Russia of non-compliance.

“With regard to disarmament, apart from New START, it is all in ruins,” Grand said, referring to a Barack Obama-era deal with Russia to reduce the number of weapons, missiles, bombers and launchers.

‘Extremely dangerous crisis’

India, North Korea and Pakistan, along with the five recognized powers, also possess nuclear weapons, while Israel is widely believed to have so, though never officially acknowledged it.

North Korea has increasingly conducted missile tests this year, continuing its pursuit of an independent nuclear deterrent that began in 2003 after pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo all believe that a seventh nuclear weapon test by Pyongyang is imminent.

The isolated dictatorship announced a new nuclear doctrine in September, making it clear it would never give up the weapons and that they could already be used.

“We are going to see a very dangerous crisis in Asia,” Chung Min Lee, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told a recent Paris conference.

Non-nuclear countries in the region fear that the security provided by the US nuclear umbrella is eroding.

“If you imagine extended resistance as a water balloon, today there are some significant holes in the water balloon and water is seeping in,” he said.

China’s nuclear stockpile is also growing, with the Pentagon estimating that it could top 1,000 warheads – roughly the same number of US bombs – within a decade.

And in the Middle East, the struggle to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, faltering from its brutal suppression of recent protests at home, has revived fears that Tehran may soon cross the “threshold” of building a bomb. State” can be formed.

spread fear

In August, a joint declaration by 191 countries at a UN conference on the future of the NPT was blocked by Russia at the last minute.

A French diplomat reported “extraordinarily aggressive nuclear rhetoric” from Moscow and “disdain” for the treaty.

“We saw a break in the attitude of Russia, which has historically been supportive of the NPT,” the diplomat said.

The diplomat said China was “very vocal”, offering “very crude condemnation” of the US-UK-Australia AUKUS Pacific alliance, which will deliver nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra.

Beijing claimed that the alliance risked further nuclear proliferation, while failing to “address doubts about the ambiguity of its own nuclear doctrine or the speed at which its arsenal is growing”.

The invasion of Ukraine, a country that voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons, by its nuclear-armed neighbor has raised fears of proliferation.

“Today, countries like Japan or South Korea can legitimately ask whether” they need a bomb of their own, said Jean-Louis Lozier, the former head of France’s nuclear forces.

“The same is true in the Middle East of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)