Russian Roulette: The nuclear edition.

The new game from Milton-Bradley (plutonium not included)

Sunday Agenda

“Most people say there is no such thing as a non-strategic nuclear weapon,” says Sebastian Brixey-Williams, co-director of the Basic thinktank, in a recent edition of The Guardian.

Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has deployed a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in a conventional strike on Ukraine, to accentuate the current “heightened alert” state of their strategic nuclear forces, defense experts are still struggling to figure out whether he might fall back on his country’s alleged “escalate-to-de-escalate” strike doctrine and unleash a tactical nuke. Something on par, in terms of magnitude, with Hiroshima or Nagasaki—to crush the Ukrainians into submission and, more importantly, frighten off NATO.

U.S. government officials have been warning about Russia’s strike doctrine for most of the last decade, primarily while lobbying to modernize and replenish America’s own low-yield nuke arsenal to match the Russians. (Never mind that any use of tactical or sub-kiloton yield nuclear weapons on the battlefield—or elsewhere—will inevitably lead to a massive strike from either side, involving silo, submarine and mobile-launched ICBMs. Feasibly within hours of first use.)

As the fighting in Ukraine intensifies, look for the Kremlin to continue playing this highly dangerous nuclear version of Russian Roulette, ominously spinning potential nuke-use into each new hypersonic missile-strike—is it loaded or unloaded? Whether this translates into Putin actually pulling that trigger remains to be seen.

Like Cuba during the thirteen days of the 1962 missile crisis, Ukraine has become a nuclear powder keg—but one whose fuse is already lit.