Putin Reminds Biden That Nuclear Deterrence Works
The U.S. president took office intending to reduce American reliance on weapons of mass destruction. Russian aggression should put that folly to rest.
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Photographer: Thibault Camus/AFP/Getty Images
One prominent casualty of Russia’s war against Ukraine is the idea that the U.S. can safely reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its foreign policy. This idea has influenced President Joe Biden’s administration in its early thinking on foreign policy; it builds on a longer post-Cold War trend of cutting the size and centrality of America’s nuclear arsenal.
But the Ukraine crisis is revealing how central nuclear weapons remain to great-power rivalry — and reminding us that the worst weapons ever invented are indispensable to upholding the most successful international order the world has ever known.