The biggest risk of nuclear war at the moment is probably not the use of city-busting “strategic” weapons, like we were all terrified of from the 1960s to the 1980s, but a decision by some party that the use of smaller “tactical” weapons on the “battlefield” is worth the risk. The U.S., Israel, Russia, and European NATO allies all seem like possible perpetrators. Their use wouldn’t necessarily be a civilization-threatening event, just a really big bang. And that is the risk – that these weapons erode the nuclear taboo, taking a nuclear attack from something thinkable to something that might be considered a viable strategy. And once we let this genie out of the bottle, it could escalate to more frequent use by more parties and more powerful weapons from there. So let’s not. Maybe international nuclear disarmament is too much to hope for at this point, but maybe an international no-first-use agreement could be something to shoot for, when and if current tensions in the Middle East and Europe finally die down.
This analysis is from something called the “Reality Based Analysis Group“, which is not a professional journalistic outlet but does not seem to have a political axe to grind.
…nuclear weapons are more likely to be used than not. Russian deterrence failed, and these attacks have led to escalation, which many have argued was precisely the objective. Every attack above [referring to Ukrainian attacks inside Russia’s borders], as well as many more, was met with a firm and at times overwhelming conventional response, including new and innovative weapons systems such as the jet-powered Geran-4 drones (based on the original Iranian Shaheds) and the still somewhat mysterious Oreshnik. However, possession of the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal did not prevent these attacks and did not produce a nuclear response. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that a nuclear deterrent deters regime change operations but nothing more, and even here deterrence has failed. Strategic weapons have become too powerful and mutually assured destruction has set the stakes too high, thus if everyone knows that a country is unlikely to end life as we know it, the weapons fail to deter anything but the end of the world. Unless, of course, smaller, tactical nuclear weapons are brought into the equation and normalized for use. Which is exactly what is happening now…
States rarely move swiftly and the change was a long time coming. Publicly, it originated with Dr. Sergei Karaganov, professor and honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and his June 2023 article “A Difficult but Necessary Decision.” In this Karaganov explained that the existential fear of nuclear weapons had dissipated since the end of the Cold War and that the decades following the dissolution of the Soviet Union had resulted in a steady strategic carelessness which, to Karaganov, proved that nuclear weapons were no longer deterring the behavior they were designed to deter. His reasoning was compelling but his conclusion was swiftly rejected, with President Putin publicly distancing himself, and thus the State, from Karaganov’s suggestion: in order to restore deterrence, Russia should lower its threshold for nuclear weapons usage and demonstrate clear willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons against European and NATO targets. The distance between President Putin’s 2023 public stance and Russia’s current policy has been shrinking steadily ever since Karaganov’s paper, in large part due to the abovementioned steady escalation of Ukrainian/NATO strikes against Russian territory and strategic targets.
In early August 2026, the United States moved publicly in the same direction. Remorselessly coinciding with the 81st anniversary of the US atomic attack on civilian Hiroshima, Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s “Under Secretary of War for Policy,” revealed a new potential strategy for nuclear weapons, shifting the emphasis to shorter-range, regional use rather than large-scale strategic launches. While refraining from using the word “tactical,” the logic was explained that deterrence required an adversary to believe that nuclear weapons could and would be used, which is not the case with the larger “strategic” arsenal and doctrine. Basically, if a country’s use of nuclear weapons ensures the destruction of that country’s cities, an adversary knows that they will not be used for anything other than a truly existential threat. Thus, strategic nuclear weapons (those which destroy a city) are not a deterrent in regional conflicts, however serious. Lower-yield weapons (tactical weapons) which can obliterate an airport, a military base, or a neighborhood, on the other hand, are very easy for an adversary to envisage being used. As such, tactical nuclear weapons are a threat an enemy can believe in and thus wish to avoid. Hence, their possible use renews the nuclear deterrent. It also makes their usage much more likely, irrespective of the human cost or the Law of War. Thirty years ago, in 1996, the International Court of Justice found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons was contrary to the Law of War, with one possible exception on which it declined to rule: the case of extreme self-defense in which “the very survival of a State would be at stake.” Tactical nuclear weapons, normalized for regional conflict, obviate this legal finding and undo at a stroke the legal limitations put in place since the Second World War.
Meanwhile, China has been making…entirely reasonable public statements pointing out how insane all of this is. Once again, they seem to be the grownup in the room at the moment.