Once again there is a lot of loose talk about the possibility, and practicality of nuclear war — in northern Europe, the Middle East, and maybe even the United States. “There is serious concern now that the old theories of deterrence are failing, and nuclear war is now a viable concept,’ a senior Whitehall official confided to me this week.
Dimitri Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, has warned that if a Nato power, meaning Britain, America or France, permitted the use of its weapons for Ukraine to strike deep into Russia, then Russia would feel entitled to reply with nuclear weaponry. This is a change in Russia’s “nuclear doctrine” against striking first with nukes — a central plank nuclear deterrence back in the Cold War of 1946 to 1989.
