People seem to have gotten comfortable with the idea of Ukraine as a low-tempo conventional war, but it could very quickly turn into something much more significant.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/07/us-nucl...
Not only is this orders of magnitude more impactful than the other conflicts, but perhaps even more concerning is what in the world the endgame might be? By effectively throwing its entire influence into this war, the US has now effectively staked that influence on the outcome of the war. And it's the exact same situation for Russia. The two most nuclear armed nations are now in a conflict that is a must-win for both of them.
IMO this conflict ending up going nuclear is still highly improbable, but highly improbable is far closer to nuclear war than we've ever been.
No. It's Russian invasion on Ukraine directly responsible for the deaths.
Supporting Ukraine is not even significantly risking U.S. influence or standing in the EU. Getting Finland and Sweden into NATO is a benefit to the U.S. that will endure even if Ukraine completely falls (which it won’t).
I guess there is a chance that Russia could initiate a nuclear exchange if Putin is 100% suicidally insane. I don’t believe that he is.
I suspect it would be easiest to just take the nuclear material out of the unusable missiles and construct a different weapon using it. Russia is adjacent to them so any sort of nuclear weapon launch-able from an artillery or plane still sounds useful.
But the general thought is that NATO would have had to protect them (I don't buy it, but that's the theory).
