Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declared that the country is “revising” its nuclear doctrine, which articulates Russia’s approach to the potential use of its nuclear arsenal. It marks the latest instance in which the world finds itself on edge thanks to the remarks of a Russian official regarding nuclear weapons.
Russia’s current nuclear policy is deterrent in nature, specifying that such weapons will only be used in response to a nuclear attack or an existential threat to the state. The worry sparked by Ryabkov’s remarks is that the upcoming revision will lower that threshold, perhaps to include nuclear first-use or the use of nuclear weapons in the face of a non-existential threat, such as detonating lower-yield—or “tactical”—nuclear weapons to counter a conventional military attack on Russian territory. The latter scenario seems a plausible reason for the revision, since Ryabkov’s pronouncement comes as Ukraine’s forces continue to advance in the Russian region of Kursk.
This isn’t the first time in recent years that Russia has raised alarm about nuclear use. The world truly does seem closer to the nuclear precipice than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, when a dispute over the presence of nuclear warheads in Cuba drove both the United States and Soviet Union to the brink of preemptively launching their arsenals at one another.