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Opinion How to avert a nuclear war

July 10, 2023 at 2:04 p.m. EDT
Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 24 in Moscow. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters)

The July 6 front-page article “Renewed fears of a nuclear horror” correctly described concerns over the potential Russian use of nuclear weapons.

In the Kremlin, there is a belief that the United States and NATO can be coerced by nuclear threats and will probably not respond with a direct strike for fear of further escalation. Thus far, our actions give credence to this view. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest gambit of moving nuclear weapons into Belarus is unabashedly provocative, yet there has been no significant response from the West. This is the next chapter in a transparent playbook that became apparent when Russia invaded Ukraine and Mr. Putin implied that he might use nuclear weapons. The United States immediately applied constraints on arms to be provided Ukraine — long-range missiles and modern fighter planes in particular — so as not to “provoke” Mr. Putin. The effects of this policy are evident in the slow pace of the Ukrainian offensive, which is struggling because it has been denied the full cadre of weapons needed for true combined arms operations, a necessity if Ukraine is to win.

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Our current policy is encouraging further preemptive behavior by Mr. Putin, the opposite of the intended purpose.

NATO and the United States must cite Mr. Putin’s latest nuclear move and openly declare in no uncertain terms that any use of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear, in Ukraine or elsewhere will be met with an overwhelming and decisive response. Confirming this, long-range missiles and accelerated air power (F-16s) should be immediately provided to Ukraine. “Peace through strength” has kept the nuclear genie tamped down for 75 years. Openly and decisively reinforcing that policy is the surest way to avoid a terrible miscalculation and unthinkable consequences for the world.

R. Noel Longuemare, Silver Spring

The writer is a former deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology and a retired executive of Westinghouse Electric.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, fear that the conflict, which Ukraine is fighting with Western weaponry, might escalate into outright NATO-Russia conflict has been documented on both Russian and Western sides, and state deterioration in Russia would do nothing to diminish it.

The July 6 front-page article “Renewed fears of a nuclear horror” referred to a recent essay, “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” by Sergei Karaganov, a veteran Kremlin insider, which advocates consideration of a preemptive Russian tactical nuclear strike on a NATO country. Mr. Karaganov is a card-carrying hard-liner — and has been so for decades. Not so is Dmitry Trenin, whom the article described as “a hawkish Moscow-based military analyst” and supporter of Mr. Karaganov’s views.

Mr. Trenin was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a post he had held for more than a decade when it was dissolved last year. (Disclosure: As head of the program at Carnegie Corporation of New York, which helped set up the center, I met Mr. Trenin on several occasions and found him to be diplomatic, insightful and measured in manner and thought, appropriate for a Moscow-based employee of a U.S. entity dedicated to peaceful international relations.)

If one reads Mr. Trenin’s recent writings in full, his dismay is clear that we in the United States might not have been sufficiently concerned about the prospect of first use by Moscow. His call is not one to the Kremlin to “use nuclear arms” but rather a call to the West to take the catastrophic scenario seriously.

David C. Speedie, Charlottesville

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