In his 1984 State of the Union address, Ronald Regan famously remarked “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Nuclear war and the subsequent fallout is arguably the biggest threat to the continued existence of our species on planet earth, and although used in war only once, nuclear weapons remain a threat.

Despite the multiple international treaties and organisations that exist to ensure that these weapons of mass destruction are never used again, and a global outlook that their use could lead to a mutually-assured extinction-level event, the threat looms high every time tensions run high between any of the 9 nuclear-armed nations or their allies and proxies. There have been far too many near misses during the Cold War for the world to sit back and relax with over 13000 operational warheads in existence.

How does that bear upon the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict? Track live updates here

A rapid Russian victory that did not materialise:

An article published on the 26th of February — only a couple of days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine — by state-owned RIA-Novosti news agency prematurely talked about how Ukraine has returned to Russia. The article was taken down, but the damage was done. No military in the world wants to fight a drawn-out, protracted war and from a Russian standpoint, military buildup and posturing followed by a sudden invasion of Ukraine with an overwhelming force was expected to lead to a rapid victory.

That did not happen in face of fierce opposition from the Ukrainians backed and supported by NATO and EU, and while the war rages on, President Vladimir Putin ratcheted up tensions a few more notches by putting Russian nuclear deterrent forces in a state of high alert. He also warned other nations of unforeseen consequences if they thought to interfere in an invasion that Russia is treating as an internal affair rather than an international event.

Things are not going according to the plan for Russia, and as the war drags on it not only puts the Russian military in a bad light for failing to end the war quickly against a significantly weaker opponent and strains its economy, but it also gives western powers more time to mobilise their resources and support Ukraine economically and militarily.

It should be remembered that the last time nuclear weapons were used, it was by the United States against Japan during WW2 to quickly bring an end to its resistance. The logic given by the Truman administration to authorise the nuclear attack was built on the premise of avoiding the high cost to America that a land-based invasion would have caused.

Put this in the current Russia-Ukraine context, and you will realise one thing: The world is closer to the threat of nuclear weapons used as a vehicle of war and wholesale destruction again than any other moment in history except the Cuban missile crisis during the cold war.

Would the invasion have happened if Ukraine was still a nuclear power?

An interesting point is that at one point in time Ukraine itself was a nuclear power. After the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine as one of its biggest successor states had the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. The country, however, was in dire straits economically at the time, and maintaining the arsenal wouldn’t have been easy. What’s more, the centralised firing control mechanism for the briefly-Ukrainian nuclear weapons remained in Moscow and whether or not Ukraine would have been able to figure a workaround and use the weapons is one of the great what-ifs of history.

However, it still took years of international political maneuvering before the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances saw Ukraine dismantle and return the arsenal to Russia, in exchange for economic aid, international recognition, and security assurances against violation of its sovereign territory signed by the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia. Russia and the US also released a joint statement right after START expired in 2009, stating that the security assurances issued in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to Ukraine would continue to hold. Ironically, just 5 years later Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula.

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The blatant violation of the treaty — which according to Russia is not a violation at all since it considered the democratically elected Ukrainian government as illegitimate — has led to many voices — both from Ukraine and elsewhere — to ask whether Russia would have been as quick to initiate an invasion against a nuclear-armed Ukraine?

We will never know, but consider that in the entirety of history there has been only one instance where two nuclear-armed nations have warred against each other (India & Pakistan at Kargil), and even there the war was fought through conventional means. The horrors associated with the sheer scale of devastation that a nuclear war would deliver on the participants, the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine and the potential of such a war to escalate into an extinction-level event are among some of the factors that have kept a nuclear war from happening. However, it also creates the danger of a nuclear-armed nation flouting international law and ignoring the global organizations and treaties to impose its will on its nuclear-less neighbors, while saber-rattling its nuclear arsenal to keep the rest of the world from direct involvement.

Impact on Non-Proliferation Treaty:

At the time the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) went into effect in 1968, there were 5 nuclear-armed nations in the world. Today, around 5-decades later, there are 9. While India, Israel, and Pakistan were never part of the NPT, North Korea bowed out in the early 2000s and since then has built up its arsenal — an arsenal that many say has allowed its authoritarian government to keep the world out of its borders.

This is not to say that the NPT is a complete failure. The world had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons during the cold war era, and that number has been significantly brought down. NPT was also successful in keeping a check on the states that successfully developed nuclear capabilities. However, despite an undertaking in 2000 to eliminate nuclear arsenals from the planet, existing nuclear powers continue upgrading their existing arsenals at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Events like the Russia-Ukraine war and the resultant perceived helplessness and erosion of trust in global organisations like the UN and international accords like the Budapest Memorandum could potentially cause a renewed surge of interest in the development of nuclear capabilities as the ultimate deterrent against invasion and guarantor of sovereignty. However, building and implementing a comprehensive control and command program is significantly more difficult than building the actual weapon, and spurred nuclear proliferation especially in developing countries could exponentially increase the risk of a catastrophic, nuclear event, accidental or deliberate.

—Mudit Mohilay is a marketing professional, author and writer. Views expressed are personal

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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)