Putin’s War in Ukraine Shakes Up the Global Nuclear Order.

Humanity is just one miscalculation, one misunderstanding away from nuclear annihilation.

The latest statement of the UN Secretary-General is not reassuring.

For Antonio Guterres, “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.” “We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy or a shield to prevent geopolitical tensions from degenerating into a nuclear conflict,” he said at the opening of the conference of 191 signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Since February 24, 2022, the shadow of nuclear threats the war in Ukraine. Moscow claimed to be able to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Belarus has changed its constitution to allow Russian nuclear warheads on its soil. And military operations are taking place around nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

“Not since the height of the Cold War has there been such a danger,” says Antonio Guterres.

The Western powers are doing everything they can to calm the game, refraining from intervening directly in the conflict and avoiding responding to Russia's verbal provocations. As for the Kremlin, it has not profoundly modified its nuclear doctrine and seems above all to want to use the nuclear threat to frighten the West and dissuade it from becoming more involved.

In Moscow, nuclear blackmail is linked to the notion of an “existential threat” to Russia. This “red line” of the Kremlin has not yet been crossed. But what if the Ukrainians try to retake the annexed Crimea, while Moscow has made it known that an attack on its territory could pose an “existential threat”?

“The pandemic taught us that low-probability events can occur, with little or no warning, with catastrophic consequences for the world. The same is true for nuclear weapons,” warns Gustavo Zlanvinen, the Argentine president of the NPT review conference.

Beyond the direct nuclear threat from Moscow, the war in Ukraine is already having lasting impacts on deterrence and nuclear weapons proliferation. The deterrence of Western countries, forced to limit their engagement with Ukraine by Russian summonses, has weakened since February 24, 2022.

In 1999, they had not hesitated to intervene militarily to make the Serbian forces in Kosovo back down and put an end to their exactions... Serbia was not nuclear power. The procrastination of the Biden administration also cast doubt on the determination of the American president to respond to a possible Russian tactical nuclear attack in Europe with something other than conventional weapons...

On the other hand, the Russian deterrent has gained in strength and credibility, since the Kremlin has been able, thanks to its nuclear umbrella, to attack Ukraine twice, but also Georgia and Chechnya

Apart from the trivialization of nuclear discourse by the Russian leadership, which breaks the rules of restraint in terms of deterrence, the whole world has learned the lesson of the Budapest Protocol of 1994, which was supposed to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine after it agreed to get rid of its nuclear warheads at the time of its independence in 1991.

“What message does this send to countries around the world that might think they need to possess nuclear weapons to protect, defend their sovereignty and independence and deter aggression against them? The worst possible message” commented U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the opening of the conference.

It can be summed up in one sentence: when a country gives up its nuclear weapons, it is attacked. Before Ukraine, Iraq had already paid the price …

An irresponsible attitude of Russia

So nuclear proliferation is likely to have a bright future. North Korea is preparing for its seventh nuclear test. Shiite Iran has recently claimed that it has enough fissile material to make a nuclear bomb, making it a threshold country. In the Sunni world, several powers, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, could quickly learn the lesson that these countries must in turn achieve nuclear weapons.

The United States, France, and the United Kingdom have called on Russia to end its “nuclear rhetoric and its irresponsible and dangerous attitude.” “A nuclear war must never take place,” the three UN Security Council powers reaffirmed in a joint statement.

But if the non-proliferation treaty, which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to promote complete disarmament, has long “made the world safer,” as the American Secretary of State said, it is now extremely fragile. The Western powers hope that the New York meeting will be an opportunity to strengthen the NPT. But the gap between the hopes of fighting proliferation and the strategic reality has never seemed so wide …