How the West Learned to Love Nuclear War

The collapse of diplomacy and the failure to respect nuclear red lines has brought the world dangerously close to catastrophic conflict.

In the waning days of the Cold War, the memory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) held a restraining influence over Western and Soviet leaders alike. Diplomacy, for all its faults, remained anchored to the existential awareness that direct provocation of a nuclear-armed state could lead to global annihilation. Today, that strategic sobriety has given way to reckless bravado. The transatlantic powers, principally the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, are dismantling the very architecture of peace that once prevented the world from spiraling into nuclear war.

This strategic unraveling did not begin in 2025. It is the culmination of decades of steady erosion in the global arms control regime. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated a class of land-based nuclear and conventional missiles, was unilaterally abandoned by the United States in 2019. The Open Skies Treaty, which allowed mutual aerial surveillance to reduce the risk of war by miscalculation, was similarly discarded. Even the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), the last remaining pillar of US-Russia strategic arms control, is now in jeopardy. These agreements once formed the diplomatic scaffolding that prevented Cold War crises from becoming catastrophes. Their collapse has removed not just restraints on weaponry, but also the trust-building mechanisms and crisis communication channels that once made diplomacy viable.

On July 11, 2025, Major General Christian Freuding, Head of Germany's Situation Centre for Ukraine, announced on the German ZDF news channel that Ukraine would begin receiving hundreds of domestically produced long-range weapon systems by the end of the month under a German-financed agreement. He stated that “we need weapons systems that can reach far into the depth of Russian territory — to hit depots, command centers, airfields and aircraft”.¹ This announcement closely follows an earlier statement made by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on May 28, 2025, in which he confirmed Berlin’s commitment to supporting the production and acquisition of “Ukrainian-made long-range weapon systems,” explicitly noting that “there will be no restrictions on long-range weapons.”²

While German officials have emphasized that these are “Ukrainian-made” systems, the distinction is largely semantic. The strategic reality remains that Germany is funding and enabling long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory. On June 18, 2025, during an interview with senior news editors in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that should Germany supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, it would constitute “direct participation of the Federal Republic in a direct armed conflict with the Russian Federation.”³ He further noted that the deployment of such systems would inevitably rely on German military personnel and Western satellite intelligence, thereby implicating Germany directly in any resulting offensive operations against Russian strategic targets.

Germany’s announcement coincides with growing signs of expanded US involvement in the Ukraine conflict under the current administration. In a marked reversal of his campaign promises, President Donald Trump declared on July 14, 2025, that the US would resume arms transfers to Ukraine, including Patriot air defense interceptors. There is speculation that a new weapons package could also include long-range missiles like the JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) with a range of 230 miles. However, this is yet to be confirmed as of the time of writing this article. Nevertheless, this shift reflects not only the volatility of the President’s decision-making, but also the extent to which neoconservative elements within his administration have reasserted influence over American foreign policy. These developments further entrench a perilous trajectory in which the illusion of strategic impunity blinds Western capitals to the escalating risk of nuclear confrontation.

The Reckless West: Funding Escalation, Not Peace

Trump’s decision is the latest step in a broader arc of unrelenting escalation that has defined Western policy toward Ukraine since 2022. What began under the Biden Administration as limited, “defensive” support, primarily in the form of Javelin anti-tank missiles and MANPADS, has by mid-2025 transformed into a campaign of offensive strategic warfare against a nuclear-armed superpower with deep NATO involvement at every stage. The following condensed timeline highlights this alarming trend:

• 2022 – Initial Phase

  • Infantry weapons: The US and NATO provided Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger MANPADS and light infantry weapons. The support was framed as “defensive aid” only.

  • Artillery: HIMARS rocket artillery and 155mm howitzer shells were delivered.

  • Air defense: US Patriot air defense systems were approved for delivery to Ukraine.

• 2023 – Battlefield Deepening

  • Main battle tanks: Transfer of Western main battle tanks began: UK Challenger 2, German Leopard II, US M1A1 Abrams.

  • French & British long-range missiles: French SCALP and British Storm Shadow missiles were delivered.

  • Use of NATO satellite targeting support was confirmed.

• Early 2024 – Long-Range Weapons and Intelligence Integration

  • Fighter jets: First Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets arrived in Ukraine.

  • US long-range missiles: Long-range ATACMS missiles (300 km range) with ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) support were deployed.

• May 2024 – Strategic Infrastructure Strikes Begin

  • May 22-27: Ukrainian drones, reportedly with Western intelligence support, struck Russian early-warning radar systems in Armavir and Orsk. These radars are part of Russia’s nuclear early warning network.

  • November 19, 25: Long-range ATACMS missiles struck Bryansk and Kursk situated in pre-2014 Russian territory.

• 2025 – Strategic and Nuclear Provocations

  • June 1: Ukraine launched Operation Spider Web, targeting Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers (Tu-95, Tu-160) with Western assistance. The bomber force is part of Russia’s strategic nuclear triad.

  • June 30: Germany announced that it will co-fund long-range strikes inside Russian territory.

  • July 10–11: Trump Administration announced its intention to resume arms transfers; Germany prepares to deliver domestically produced long-range systems.

  • July 14: In a major reversal of policy, Trump announced resumption of arms sales to Ukraine.

At no point has the West paused to reassess. It has pursued escalation through and through without diplomatic milestones, de-escalatory measures, or meaningful engagement with the risks of striking at the command-and-control systems of a nuclear-armed state. The Trump Administration’s brief overture toward negotiations in the past few months, centered around the Kellogg ceasefire proposal, was less a genuine shift in policy than a strategic performance aimed at projecting the image of peacemaking. From Moscow’s perspective, the plan lacked credibility, as it demanded Russian concessions while maintaining the architecture of Western military support for Ukraine. Far from signaling a new diplomatic track, it merely reinforced the perception that the US remains committed to escalation under the guise of diplomacy.

The illusion that escalation can be undertaken without consequence, that deterrence will forever hold, reflects not realism but delusion. The Cold War’s grim logic of mutual restraint in the shadow of mutually assured destruction has been cast aside. In its place stands a dangerously optimistic belief that Russia will remain passive even as its most sensitive infrastructure is dismantled with Western help. The result is a strategic environment in which catastrophe is not just possible but being courted.

Proponents of continued Western military support to Ukraine argue that restraint would amount to appeasement, inviting further Russian aggression and undermining the credibility of NATO’s security guarantees. From this perspective, the arming of Ukraine, escalatory as it may seem, is portrayed as a necessary strategy to raise the costs of invasion, deter future belligerence and preserve the liberal international order. However, this logic rests on the perilous assumption that nuclear-armed states will accept indefinite degradation of their deterrent capabilities without responding. Deterrence is not maintained through moral resolve or punitive aid packages. It is preserved through mutual recognition of existential red lines. By systematically crossing those lines while dismissing the potential for escalation as mere bluster, the West risks transforming a regional war into a wider conflagration.

A Cold War Memory: When Diplomacy Had Boundaries

To understand just how far the West has drifted from the logic of nuclear restraint, it is worth revisiting episodes from the Cold War when superpowers came dangerously close to confrontation yet ultimately chose diplomacy over escalation. The following three cases illustrate how, unlike today’s high-stakes theatrics, backchannel negotiations, strategic signaling and mutual respect for red lines helped prevent potential nuclear flashpoints from spiraling into war.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

Perhaps the most dramatic and well-known instance of Cold War diplomacy was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. After the United States discovered Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy ignored calls from his Joint Chiefs of Staff to strike Soviet missile sites on the island, recognizing that the logic of escalation has no off-ramp once initiated. Instead, he opted for a naval blockade and pursued backchannel communications with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The confrontation reached a perilous peak when Soviet ships approached the blockade line and US forces prepared for potential nuclear exchange. Ultimately, both sides stepped back. The Soviets agreed to withdraw the missiles from Cuba and the US quietly pledged to remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and US President John F. Kennedy, Vienna, June 1961 (Source: The Australian)

This episode underscored the vital importance of restraint, empathy and private diplomacy. Both leaders understood that a single misstep could lead to total annihilation. The peaceful resolution of the crisis laid the groundwork for future arms control agreements, including the establishment of the Moscow–Washington hotline in 1963.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War and the US-Soviet Nuclear Alert

During the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. As the war progressed, the US resupplied Israel through Operation Nickel Grass, a major airlift, while the Soviet Union began providing significant support to its Arab allies. As Israeli forces advanced deep into Egypt and surrounded it’s Third Army, the Soviets feared a total Egyptian collapse. In response, Moscow threatened to unilaterally intervene militarily, potentially bringing Soviet troops into the region.

On October 24, 1973, the US responded by raising its nuclear readiness to DEFCON 3, one of the highest levels of alert short of war. President Richard Nixon, despite being embroiled in the Watergate scandal, and Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, used urgent diplomatic backchannels to communicate directly with the Soviets. The result was a mutual agreement for a UN-sponsored ceasefire. Both sides backed down and the idea of direct US-Soviet military confrontation in the Middle East was avoided.

The incident led to a new level of caution in US-Soviet interactions. It prompted the creation of more robust crisis management mechanisms such as the expansion of the “hotline” system. It also led to a new phase of détente and ultimately the Geneva Peace Conference on the Middle East in 1973.

Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and US President Richard Nixon drink champagne at the White House in June 1973. The two leaders signed the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War (Credit: Bettman / Contributor: GettyImages)

The 1983 Able Archer NATO Exercise

In November 1983, NATO conducted a command post exercise known as Able Archer 83, simulating the escalation to nuclear war. The exercise was unusually realistic and involved encrypted communications, high-level official participation, including simulated nuclear release procedures and the movement of military units. The Soviet Union, under General Secretary Yuri Andropov, believed that this might be a cover for a real nuclear first strike and began preparing its forces for possible preemptive action. According to declassified CIA and KGB documents, some Soviet officials were seriously alarmed.

Unknown to NATO at the time, diplomatic inertia itself saved the situation because no Western leaders escalated further. However, when intelligence later revealed the Soviet reaction, Western leaders including President Ronald Reagan were deeply shaken. Reagan began to rethink the tone of US rhetoric and policy. By 1984, secret backchannels were opened, and in 1985, arms control negotiations resumed. This near miss underscored the dangers of misperception and led to more serious consideration of Soviet threat assessments.

These Cold War episodes demonstrate that Western and Soviet leaders, however adversarial, shared a common interest in avoiding nuclear war. This was manifestly clear in the landmark Arms Control treaties that were concluded during this period. The 1972 SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) agreement, the Helsinki Accords of 1975 and the 1987 INF Treaty served as symbols of a shared understanding that nuclear states must never corner each other. Today, that understanding has collapsed. The notion of diplomacy as an art of compromise has been replaced by maximalist demands and moralistic condemnations that leave no space for negotiated outcomes. The West acts as if history has ended and only its values matter.

The Folly of Dismissing Nuclear Warnings

This erosion of caution also reflects a broader ideological shift in Western statecraft from strategic realism to moral absolutism. Framing conflicts as existential battles between “democracy and autocracy” has allowed policymakers to dismiss adversaries' red lines as illegitimate rather than interpret them through the lens of strategic deterrence.

The insistence of Western politicians that to heed Russia’s nuclear warnings is to allow nuclear blackmail to prevail is a dangerous misreading of deterrence theory. Deterrence works not because one side wants to use nuclear weapons, but because each side believes the other might. Rational actors avoid crossing lines not because they fear irrationality, but because they recognize how uncertainty multiplies the risks.

Escalation theory, as developed during the Cold War by thinkers like Herman Kahn and Thomas Schelling, emphasized “the ladder of escalation.” Once war moves beyond a certain rung, especially with direct strikes on homeland targets, nuclear retaliation becomes more likely, not less. The West's current strategy of incremental escalation from using ATACMS today, F-16s tomorrow to NATO troops the day after, is precisely the kind of gradualist provocation that made Cold War strategists deeply nervous.

The notion that Russia will “never use nukes” because “it would be suicidal” assumes a level of strategic passivity and political irrationality that history does not support. Empires in decline have made catastrophic miscalculations before and so too can nations that feel cornered.

A New Generation Devoid of Memory

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the present moment is the generational amnesia surrounding nuclear weapons. For those who lived through the Cold War, the threat of thermonuclear conflict was not abstract. Civil defense drills, films like The Day After and the omnipresence of nuclear anxiety instilled a visceral understanding of what was at stake.

Still from the 1983 television film The Day After postulating a fictional conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union (Source: 1983 ABC Circle Films)

This civilizational amnesia is not merely generational but institutional, embedded in a Western political class dominated by post-Cold War elites who never internalized the existential logic of nuclear deterrence. Having come of age in an era of unchallenged American primacy, many Western politicians view nuclear deterrence as a bluff, a Cold War relic that can be safely ignored. Statements by NATO officials and European leaders routinely downplay the possibility of Russian nuclear retaliation, dismissing such warnings as “blackmail.”

This nonchalance toward existential risk is not just foolish, it is suicidal. Russia’s official military doctrine explicitly reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to existential threats, including attacks on strategic assets. When NATO-backed Ukrainian drones strike Russian early warning radars or airbases hosting nuclear bombers, it’s not merely symbolic. It is a direct assault on Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

Strategic Myopia and the End of the Peace Dividend

The tragedy of the post-Cold War era is that the peace dividend has been squandered. Rather than demilitarizing and building a multipolar order grounded in diplomacy, the United States and its allies chose to expand NATO, violate past security assurances to Russia and convert economic globalization into a tool of coercion. Sanctions, color revolutions, regime change wars and military encirclement became the standard toolkit of Western policy.

What we are witnessing now is not just a proxy war in Ukraine but the collapse of a geopolitical consensus that held for 75 years. International law does not apply equally. Diplomatic channels have been replaced with drone strikes and reactive posturing, often on social media platforms like Truth Social. Worst of all, the principle of mutual restraint among nuclear powers is being replaced by fantasies of regime change in Moscow. No serious nation with nuclear weapons will ever allow its government to be toppled by outside forces without contemplating existential retaliation. That is the brutal logic of deterrence and ignoring it invites catastrophe.

What Future for International Relations?

The collapse of diplomacy carries profound and cascading implications for the international system. Foremost among them is the erosion of the principle of nuclear non-proliferation. If NATO can undertake actions that directly threaten the strategic stability of a nuclear-armed state like Russia without incurring meaningful consequences, the credibility of global non-proliferation norms is fundamentally undermined. States like Iran and North Korea will have little incentive to pursue disarmament or restraint when the implicit lesson is that nuclear deterrence alone guarantees sovereignty and survival.

Second, neutral or non-aligned powers like India, Brazil and South Africa will drift further away from Western alliances, seeing them as reckless, dangerous and hypocritical. As BRICS expands and a multipolar world solidifies, the West is well on its way to isolating itself, not Russia.

Third, the prospect of future conflict between nuclear-armed powers whether over Taiwan, the South China Sea, or Eastern Europe becomes more likely. If the Ukraine war proves anything, it is that red lines are no longer respected. The taboo against direct confrontation between nuclear states is being eroded. If this becomes normalized, the world could face a war with China or Russia that no side can win.

Just as Russia drew a red line over NATO’s eastward drift toward Ukraine, China has made it unmistakably clear that Taiwan is non-negotiable. Western dismissals of Beijing’s warnings particularly regarding arms sales, official visits, or moves toward Taiwanese independence, risk igniting a second front in a nuclear chessboard already tipping toward chaos.

A Return to Realism and Restraint

The only way back from the brink is a return to realist statecraft. That means restoring diplomatic backchannels, recognizing the legitimate security interests of rival powers and reaffirming the taboo against direct attacks on nuclear deterrents. It means decoupling moralism from strategy and recognizing that Russia, like the US, possesses the means to end civilization in under thirty minutes. As George Kennan, the architect of the Cold War containment doctrine, warned in 1997:

“Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post–Cold War era... Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion.”⁴

That prophecy has been fulfilled and exceeded. The liberal international order is now in its terminal phase not as a result of the conflict in Ukraine but due to the West’s enduring conviction that it can unilaterally shape global outcomes without strategic consequence. Germany’s decision to support long-range strikes into Russian territory, NATO’s escalating posture and America’s deepening involvement in Ukraine under the Trump Administration are not isolated developments. They reflect a broader erosion of strategic prudence and a growing detachment from the realities of nuclear deterrence.

The collapse of diplomacy should not be mistaken for a mere rhetorical shift. It marks a structural unraveling of the institutional frameworks and crisis management mechanisms that have safeguarded global stability since the end of the Second World War. The unreflective exercise of power, the impunity of favored states and the systematic dismissal of the perspectives of adversaries have created the conditions for a far more fragmented and perilous international system.

As nuclear powers are cornered without off-ramps and international law becomes a fig leaf for geopolitical interest, the danger is not just conflict but catastrophe. It is still possible to turn back. However, doing so requires courageous leadership, honest reflection and the revival of diplomacy not as theater, but as the last, best hope for our civilization.

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1. The Kyiv Independent, “Germany-funded long-range weapons to arrive in Ukraine by late July, general says”, July 12, 2025.

2. The Kyiv Independent, “Germany to help finance Ukrainian-made long-range systems”, May 28, 2025.

3. Reuters. “Putin cautions Germany over any Taurus missile supplies to Ukraine”, June 18, 2025.

4. George F. Kennan, “A Fateful Error”, The New York Times, February 5, 1997.