Just now that Hollywood is celebrating the epic of Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, nuclear war is once again a threat to Europe. Pentagon strategists assess the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin launching an attack at 50%. They claim that in the fall of 2022, seeing how his army retreated in Ukraine, he was about to do it. The world had not been this close to nuclear conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
After announcing the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin threatened the atomic bomb and put his nuclear forces on high alert. Since then, he has reiterated the message several times, the last time, the day before yesterday, in a televised interview. He insists he will strike first if he sees Russia’s strategic interests at risk.
This threat has slowed the shipment of weapons to Ukraine and has so far avoided direct NATO intervention. “The fear of an escalation – said the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky – is the main obstacle to the defense of Ukraine. Resno has harmed our coalition more”.
The prospect of Donald Trump regaining the White House in November has revived plans for a common European military, including a nuclear deterrent.
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner believes that Europe must have its own nuclear arsenal. The former German Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer and Sigmar Gabriel share the same opinion. “If the United States does not increase aid to Ukraine, some countries will consider developing their own atomic bombs,” warned Radoslaw Sikorski, head of Polish diplomacy.
This would mean violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which all EU countries have signed, including Poland. “Building a bomb would be illegal,” explains analyst Philipp Sauter of the Max Planck Institute. “The only option Europe has to defend itself without the American umbrella that has protected it until now – he adds – would be for France to commit to defending any EU country with its atomic weapons.”
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, does not want to commit so much. It prefers to maintain ambiguity about the use of the 300 atomic bombs in its arsenal. He did say, however, that it would be convenient to start preparing to send troops to Ukraine.
Putin responded to this strategy by saying on February 29 in Moscow during the annual State of the Union address that greater NATO involvement in Ukraine raises the risk of a nuclear confrontation. He was ready to push the button in the fall of 2022.
Ukraine had launched an offensive that seemed unstoppable. Even Crimea was under threat. Putin, as the Pentagon found out, gave the order to prepare the detonation of a tactical nuclear bomb if the peninsula’s defenses fell. Ukraine and also Poland prepared for the worst. The United States sent them anti-radiation material.
China, India and Turkey tried to dissuade Putin. The US warned Zelenski of the consequences. Ukrainian forces then halted on the western bank of the Dnieper and did not continue into Crimea. Putin canceled the nuclear attack.
The world had not been this close to nuclear war since the crisis of 1962, when the USSR placed missiles in Cuba. Back then, the channels of communication between Washington and Moscow were open and very fluid. Today, however, they are practically mute. Of the nuclear agreements that were signed after that crisis, only one remains in force, New Start, although last year Putin suspended Russia’s participation.
Russia has about two thousand tactical nuclear bombs in its arsenal, distributed in several bases. The United States has deployed a hundred of them in six European countries. Both have a power twenty times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. Just one would cause tens of thousands of deaths, even if it fell in an open field.
The United States can respond to a Russian first attack with a conventional one in Belarus or Russia itself, but, as the expert Peter Dickinson of the Atlantic Council maintains, controlling the escalation “will be very difficult.” The Pentagon updated its “nuclear escalation scenarios” two years ago, but there is no indication that a conventional response to a nuclear attack would serve to deter Putin, and the same can be said if he strikes back with a tactical nuclear bomb similar to the one that Russia detonated.
