Why Even a Cornered Putin Won’t Press the Red Button
A widespread view in Western debates is that Ukraine cannot and should not defeat Russia outright or fully expel it from its territory due to the risk of nuclear escalation. However, this narrative is misplaced, and a brief history of war shows that apocalyptic thinking a…
Intelligence analysis by Llama
A widespread view in Western debates is that Ukraine cannot and should not defeat Russia outright or fully expel it from its territory due to the risk of nuclear escalation. However, this narrative is misplaced, and a brief history of war shows that apocalyptic thinking about a cornered great power resorting to nuclear escalation is incorrect.
Imagine you're playing a game where you have a superpowerful card that can win you the game instantly. But, if you use it, everyone else will get really upset and might even quit the game. In this case, the superpowerful card is like a nuclear bomb, and the game is like a war. The article is saying that even if a country is really good at the game and has the superpowerful card, it's unlikely to use it because it might make everyone else upset and quit the game. Instead, the country will try to find a way to win the game without using the superpowerful card.
Analysis
Russia’s Nuclear Escalation Threat: A Misplaced Narrative
A widespread view in Western debates about how to aid Ukraine—and how the war might end—is that Ukraine cannot and should not defeat Russia outright or fully expel it from its territory. This view is based on the assumption that Russia, having nuclear weapons, would risk Armageddon and use its nuclear arms if it loses the war. However, this narrative is misplaced.
In Western debates, many prominent voices have promoted some version of this narrative. University of Chicago academic John Mearsheimer, who was adamant before February 2022 that Russia would not attack Ukraine and predicted a Russian victory multiple times since, warned the West not to push “a great power to the brink” because Russian President Vladimir Putin “might then turn to nuclear weapons.” Similarly, Harvard University’s Stephen Walt has warned various times that Russia might resort to nuclear escalation.
However, at no point did Kyiv or its Western partners remotely plan to impose a catastrophic defeat on Russia in the sense of Ukrainian troops marching into Moscow. Ukraine merely aims to liberate its own territory and restore the internationally recognized borders that Russia itself accepted in multiple treaties and agreements before 2014, when it began to invade, occupy, and illegally annex around one-fifth of Ukraine.
What’s more, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not even aim for complete liberation anytime soon. In 2025, Kyiv announced (and has since repeated) that it would accept a cease-fire agreement establishing the current front line as a future line of contact. In other words, Ukraine would accept a partial victory by Russia in order to achieve peace.
A brief history of war shows that apocalyptic thinking about a cornered great power resorting to nuclear escalation is misplaced. In the 1960s, nuclear-armed France lost a brutal colonial war in Algeria, which was not just any overseas colony but a fully annexed part of metropolitan France and home to 1.6 million European settlers. The United States lost in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan—in each case, it was a humiliating defeat that neither superpower tried to prevent with nuclear escalation. China, too, lost a war against Vietnam that it did not choose to escalate, and neither did the United States when it, like the Soviets, lost in Afghanistan.
Each time, a nuclear power faced an astounding defeat by a much smaller, non-nuclear enemy and did not press the red button. Today, nine countries possess atomic arms, and most of them are fighting or have fought wars against non-nuclear states. Yet since the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, why have these nuclear-armed states never again used weapons of mass destruction to achieve their war aims? Why have they not even credibly threatened to use them—if one discounts, as one should, Russia’s propagandistic saber-rattling since 2014?
Key points
- A widespread view in Western debates is that Ukraine cannot and should not defeat Russia outright or fully expel it from its territory due to the risk of nuclear escalation.
- However, this narrative is misplaced, and a brief history of war shows that apocalyptic thinking about a cornered great power resorting to nuclear escalation is incorrect.
- Ukraine merely aims to liberate its own territory and restore the internationally recognized borders that Russia itself accepted in multiple treaties and agreements before 2014.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not even aim for complete liberation anytime soon, and has accepted a cease-fire agreement establishing the current front line as a future line of contact.
- A brief history of war shows that apocalyptic thinking about a cornered great power resorting to nuclear escalation is misplaced, with nuclear-armed states never again using weapons of mass destruction to achieve their war aims.
If this development plays out positively, it could lead to a more peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine, with both sides accepting a partial victory and establishing a cease-fire agreement. This could pave the way for a more stable and secure future for Ukraine and its people.
However, if this development plays out negatively, it could lead to a further escalation of the conflict, with Russia resorting to nuclear escalation and Ukraine facing a catastrophic defeat. This could have devastating consequences for Ukraine and its people, and could even lead to a wider conflict involving other countries.
