Is Putin Crazy Enough to Want Nuclear Armageddon?
An interview with foreign-policy expert Graham Allison on the escalating stakes in the Ukraine conflict and beyond.
Tsar Strangelove?
Photographer: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images
As we all know, President Joe Biden has the tendency to say things off the cuff that make his advisers (and a good portion of the electorate) cringe. Last week he came up with a doozy: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
He was referring, of course, to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s not-very-veiled threats to use nukes to reverse the course of his floundering Ukraine invasion. Is the man in the Kremlin is bluffing? Answering that question is an unwinnable party game for wonks. But I played anyway, with someone who could bring a lot of historical perspective to the contest: Graham Allison. Considered the “founding dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Allison continues to teach at age 82, and to write. His best-seller Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? has been one of the most-discussed books in foreign-policy circles since it was published in 2017. Allison has also done his share of public service, and under President Bill Clinton helped negotiate the removal of nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics including Ukraine.