As the U.S. turns its back on security commitments, Germany faces a profound shift in its post-war defense policy. Can it still rely on France and the UK?
Germany is at a crossroads when it comes to its security policy — one of the deepest upheavals of the post-War era.
There was a sincere risk of Russia using nuclear weapons earlier in the conflict, around the winter of 2022/2023 when the first major Russian mobilization of 600k failed to achieve the desired outcomes and the North Western front started to collapse. The released intelligence info put it at about 50/50.
This is why, at the time, the Biden administration made several clearly coded messages/announcements that nuclear weapons usage in Ukraine would result in an overwhelming conventional retaliation that would remove Russian military capability from the board. It’s also part of the reason nations were so slow to provide advanced support capabilities. There was a fear (justified, imo) that immediately opening the floodgates and giving Ukraine tanks, jets, advanced missiles, and using those missiles to strike deep in Russian territory would result in usage of nuclear weapons. It still is a risk, honestly. If Ukraine started doing heavy damage to Moscow, there’s a real chance Putin might decide to flip the table over rather than lose the game.
For sure, it wasn’t super widely reported at the time. Nuclear weapons and foreign policy just happen to be “special interests” for me so I tend to follow things like that.
I wonder if Putin would have bet on them not being used and attacked anyway.
Just like Putin has not used any nuke, there’s a huge deterrent to use them at all.
I could definitely see Putin making calculated decisions like that.
Of course Ukraine would have had a stronger stand with them either way.
There was a sincere risk of Russia using nuclear weapons earlier in the conflict, around the winter of 2022/2023 when the first major Russian mobilization of 600k failed to achieve the desired outcomes and the North Western front started to collapse. The released intelligence info put it at about 50/50.
This is why, at the time, the Biden administration made several clearly coded messages/announcements that nuclear weapons usage in Ukraine would result in an overwhelming conventional retaliation that would remove Russian military capability from the board. It’s also part of the reason nations were so slow to provide advanced support capabilities. There was a fear (justified, imo) that immediately opening the floodgates and giving Ukraine tanks, jets, advanced missiles, and using those missiles to strike deep in Russian territory would result in usage of nuclear weapons. It still is a risk, honestly. If Ukraine started doing heavy damage to Moscow, there’s a real chance Putin might decide to flip the table over rather than lose the game.
I must have missed that back then. Thank you for the context.
For sure, it wasn’t super widely reported at the time. Nuclear weapons and foreign policy just happen to be “special interests” for me so I tend to follow things like that.
I would expect the blowback for using nukes in defense of your sovereign territory to be a lot less than for conquering another country.
But you can also see the hesitance from european leaders due to his nukes