Could Putin’s Invasion Go Nuclear?

A Former NATO War Planner Assesses the Odds

Will a nuclear war start in Ukraine? Is that even possible? Maybe we’re just watching a Netflix re-run of Dr. Strangelove.

No. It’s possible. As someone who once planned nuclear war for NATO, I can tell you that events in Ukraine have moved us closer to Armageddon than anything since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Putin said two weeks ago that he’d placed Russian nuclear forces in “a high state of readiness,” but NATO intelligence has picked up no sign as yet of the actual movement of warheads and launch vehicles out of locations where they are stored. That’s a good thing.

But the possibility of nuclear war is still what motivates NATO’s refusal to create a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, a move that would carry the risk of widening the war beyond Ukraine, up to and including a nuclear response from an irrational and unpredictable Russian leader.

Here’s how I’d assess the current odds on a nuclear war starting in Ukraine:

First, the stakes in this war get higher with every public comment made by the leaders of NATO, Russia and Ukraine, ratcheting up tensions and providing incentives for increasingly risky behavior.

Putin has made it plain he sees the war in Ukraine as an existential crisis where a Russian defeat would threaten the very existence of the Russian state. He sees Ukraine as an integral part of Russia, intertwined by over 1,000 years of history…