In these latter days the issue of the risk of nuclear escalation in a non-nuclear conflict and war by mistake is acutely on the agenda.
Obviously, strategic stability is in deep crisis. According to the
report which is based on the results of a situational analysis directed by Sergei A. Karaganov and held at the Russian Foreign Ministry, “it would be a mistake to think that the new military-strategic landscape is stable.
From
author’s point of view, the main threat comes from a risk of military conflict
between nuclear powers, including an unintended nuclear or non-nuclear
conflict, which can subsequently escalate into a global nuclear war, with the
probability of such escalation now being higher than before.
According
to the report, it is clear that Russia is convinced that the U.S. has been
consistently destroying its traditional architecture – the system of nuclear
arms control agreements, again considering options to use nuclear weapons in a
conventional conflict for winning the war, and refusing to begin serious
negotiations to strengthen strategic stability.
The
author is sure that this creates a vacuum in the field of nuclear weapons and
lowers the threshold for their use at a time when the risk of an armed clash
between nuclear powers in the current political and technological situation
remains quite high.
As for
Europe is concerned, the report states that more serious risks of inadvertent
military clash come from the U.S.’s continues efforts to build up its military
infrastructure, including missile defences and drones, in Eastern Europe, its
plans to increase its low-yield nuclear weapons arsenal and put those weapons
on strategic delivery systems in order to neutralize the Russian military
threat. Numerous the U.S. proposals to strengthen its military presence and
deployment of weapons in the territories of Poland and the Baltic States
clearly indicate that the U.S. allows the possibility of a regional military conflict
with Russia in Europe and is taking measures to prevent Russia from winning it
by using of tactical nuclear weapons or conventionally-armed medium-range
missiles.
The
author consider that this is a rather dangerous tendency: for Russia, the use
of tactical nuclear weapons or conventionally-armed medium-range missiles
against it would mean a strategic strike and would inevitably trigger a nuclear
second strike against the U.S. or those countries which deployed its nuclear
weapons.
Thus,
countries which are ready to deploy any kind of weapons suggested by the U.S.
will turn themselves to real targets for Russia.
Nuclear
war in Europe is no more a ghostly threat, but a very real one.