Determining the Fate of the U.S. Nuclear Umbrella in the Context of the Russia-Ukraine War

NATO Allies helping train Ukrainian recruits in the UK, AS90’s, 155mm mobile artillery systems, lined up to fire. Photo by The North Atlantic Treaty Organization  

On February 21, 2023, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, revealed his intentions to dissolve Russia’s involvement in the New START nuclear arms treaty with the United States. Aimed at encouraging safer nuclear containment policies, the treaty limited how many intercontinental-range nuclear weapons could be stockpiled by the United States and Russia and permitted the two nations to inspect one another’s nuclear storage sites. Despite assurances from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Putin’s decision to suspend Russia’s participation in the New START treaty is reversible, the treaty’s nullification marks a significant step backwards in ensuring safe and peaceful relations between the U.S. and Russia, the two nations with the world’s largest nuclear capacities.

The Russian foreign ministry further stipulated that in order to renew treaty negotiations, the U.S. must support the de-escalation of the Ukraine Crisis. Putin is using nuclear non-proliferation as a bargaining chip to warn off U.S. support for Ukraine. By placing responsibility on the U.S. for Russia’s possible use of nuclear warfare, Putin may be insinuating his willingness to take offensive nuclear action in order to secure Russia’s victory in the war—one he had expected to win upon invading the militarily inferior Ukraine over a year ago. Putin’s connection between his dissipation of the New START treaty controlling nuclear weaponry and U.S involvement in the war in Ukraine reflects a dangerously desperate shift towards embracing a far more aggressive stance regarding the potentiality of nuclear warfare. The question, however, is just how real is this potentiality? 

While Russia is clearly using nuclear non-proliferation cooperation with the U.S. as a bargaining chip in their Ukrainian war effort, this bargaining chip only holds if Russia is actually willing to use nuclear weapons. From a liberalist perspective, the only way to ensure peace in a world with the existence of nuclear weapons is not just through the management of nuclear capacities but rather through the establishment of norms to guarantee lawfulness between nations. 

Interest in the use of nuclear weapons is informed by identity and ideology. Nuclear weapons in Russia constitute a wholly distinct threat to the United States than nuclear weapons possessed by democratic allies like the United Kingdom. This distinction, according to a liberalist, is the result of shared democratic norms between the United States and the United Kingdom, which in turn reinforce the relationship between the nations, strengthening their alliance and diminishing the threat of nuclear warfare. 

However, a nation with distinct norms, like Russia, poses an entirely different threat in that the U.S. and Russia’s governmental systems are fundamentally and ideologically different, making the latter’s actions far more unpredictable. After the end of World War II, the U.S. and other allied powers worked to establish global governance institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade directed toward encouraging economic prosperity and preventing further conflict of this scale. Over the course of the Cold War, the former Soviet Union in turn established various contrary institutions such as the Cominform aimed at providing an ideological system of governance separate from Western norms. Putin’s glorification of the Soviet system and subsequent governmental reforms in this light have reignited such ideological and normative differences, heighteninging instability and unpredictability in the U.S.-Russia relationship. 

Particularly, Putin’s authoritarian government significantly lacks the checks and balances inherent to a more democratic system like the U.S. This provides Putin with far greater unilateral power than democratic leaders, making him susceptible to erraticism and Russia’s government in turn severely more susceptible to the fallout of that erraticism. Democratic nations’ systems of checks and balances provide a safety net by preventing leaders from enacting threatening policy decisions unilaterally, ensuring individual erraticism will be diluted before it can uproot relations between nations. However, the lack of checks and balances in Putin’s government increases the likelihood of his erratic decision-making having widespread impact.

Putin’s ideologically driven erraticism, visible through his decision to invade Ukraine during a state of near-isolation while neglecting the consultation of experts who perceived said invasion as lunacy, has dangerously elevated the potential threat that nuclear weapons in Russian hands pose. The use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine has become an increasingly likely reality. Interestingly, should Russia use nuclear weapons upon the U.S.’s possible refusal to support the de-escalation of the Ukraine War, Russia could paradoxically be faced with the U.S. providing even more support to Ukraine. In addition to the $400 million the U.S. has already sent to Ukraine, which includes Javelins anti-armor systems, Stinger air defense weapons, Howitzers, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and ammunition, this budget may be expanded, sparking the rise of a greater ideological battle.

The most dangerous uncertainty in all this theoretical analysis is whether Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons could trigger a response from the U.S. beyond simply providing new technologies to Ukraine. Would the U.S. in fact retaliate with nuclear weapons? After the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), control of nuclear armaments was placed in the hands of a few post-World War II major powers. This led to Ukraine’s relinquishing of their nuclear capacities to the U.S., and raises the question—does the U.S. now have a greater ideological responsibility to support Ukraine with the use of nuclear weapons? The U.S. possesses increased technology considering they are one of the nine nations that hold the nuclear weapons of the world, and that does arguably contribute to their responsibilities as world policeman, specifically with respect to nuclear weapons. With the use of nuclear weapons potentially in the picture for Russia, the U.S. has an ideological imperative to, at the very least, increase support for Ukraine through greater technological and tactical measures.

Lokaa Krishna is a Staff Writer at CPR. She is a sophomore studying History and Political Science at Columbia College.