Western officials who salivate over the prospect of inflicting a decisive, humiliating defeat on Russia in its war with Ukraine remain oblivious to the dangers entailed in that scenario. As I pointed out early in the conflict, Russian leaders consider Ukraine to be the most vital of vital national security interests and they are likely to adopt whatever measures are necessary to prevent such a defeat. Not even the option of using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine is off the table. So far, the danger of such a potentially catastrophic escalation has remained modest. Deficiencies in Moscow’s lumbering military, combined with recklessly expansive NATO military assistance to Kyiv, have caused the Kremlin’s war effort to be much slower and more costly in blood and treasure than Vladimir Putin and his colleagues anticipated. Nevertheless, Russian forces have seized and retained significant chunks of Ukraine’s territory and inflicted massive casualties on Ukrainian forces. As long as that situation continues, the danger of Moscow resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons is not great.
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