It’s been a long time since the threat of nuclear weapons was raised so openly by a world leader, but Vladimir Putin just did it, warning in a speech that Russia has the weapons available if anyone dares to use the military of the means to try to stop the invasion of Ukraine.

The threat may be empty, a mere show of fangs by the Russian president, but it showed. He sparked visions of a nightmarish outcome where Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.

“As for military matters, even after the dissolution of the USSR and the loss of a considerable part of its capabilities, today’s Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states,” Putin said in his speech ahead of the conference. invasion on Thursday morning.

“Furthermore, (Russia) has a certain advantage in several state-of-the-art weapons. In this context, there should be no doubt for anyone that any potential aggressor will face defeat and sinister consequences if he directly attacks our country.”

By simply hinting at a nuclear response, Putin brought into play the ominous possibility that the current fighting in Ukraine will ultimately escalate into an atomic confrontation between Russia and the United States.

That doomsday scenario is familiar to those who grew up during the Cold War, a time when American students were told to duck under their desks if nuclear sirens sounded, but that danger gradually faded from the collective imagination after the fall. of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the two powers seemed to be on a path to disarmament, democracy, and prosperity.

Before that, even the young understood the terrifying idea behind the strategy of mutually assured destruction, a balance in nuclear capabilities that was meant to keep hands on either side away from the red button, knowing that its use could end in annihilation. of both sides in a conflict.

Surprisingly, no country has used nuclear weapons since 1945, when US President Harry Truman dropped bombs on Japan in the belief that it was the surest way to quickly end World War II. He did, but at a loss of around 200,000 lives, mostly civilians, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around the world, even today, many consider it a crime against humanity and wonder if it was worth it.

For a short time after the war, the United States had a nuclear monopoly, but the Soviet Union announced its own nuclear bomb a few years later, and the two sides of the Cold War embarked on an arms race to build and develop ever larger weapons. strong for decades to come.

With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and its transition to a long-awaited democracy under Boris Yeltsin, the United States and Russia agreed to limit their arsenals. Other post-Soviet nations, such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, voluntarily relinquished nuclear weapons from their territory after the dissolution of the USSR.

In recent years, when nuclear weapons were discussed, it used to be in the context of curbing their proliferation in countries like North Korea and Iran. (Iran denies wanting to possess them, and North Korea has been slowly and steadily developing both its nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms.

When former US President Donald Trump implicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons against North Korea in August 2017, many were outraged.

Before the diplomacy and his unsuccessful summits with Kim began the following year, Trump had already spoken on the matter: “North Korea had better not threaten the United States anymore,” he said at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. . “They will be answered with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” But North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is much smaller than Russia’s.

Since the Ukraine crisis arose, President Joe Biden has been aware of the danger of a nuclear war between Russia and NATO. From the beginning, he claimed that NATO would not send troops to Ukraine because it could trigger a direct fight between the United States and Russia, leading to nuclear escalation and possibly World War III.

It was an almost implicit admission that the United States would not confront the Russians militarily over Ukraine and would instead resort to extraordinary sanctions to gradually collapse the Russian economy.

But the admission also included another truth: When it comes to fighting a Russian invasion, Ukraine would be left alone because it is not a member of the treaty and cannot benefit from NATO’s nuclear protection.

However, if Putin tried to attack one of the United States’ allies in NATO, the situation would be different, because the pact is fully committed to mutual defense, according to Biden.

Destruction and exodus of people: this is Ukraine on the second day of the Russian invasion

Knowing that Biden had already ruled out a military response, why did Putin bother to bring it up in his speech?

In part, he may have wanted to keep the West off balance, to prevent it from taking aggressive action to defend Ukraine against Putin’s blitzkrieg campaign to take over the country.

But the deeper context seems to be his great desire to show the world that Russia is a powerful nation that should not be ignored. Putin repeatedly speaks of Russia’s humiliation after the Soviet collapse. In wielding the nuclear argument, he emulated the bluster with which the Soviet Union had confronted the United States and earned, in his opinion, respect.