Danger Zone

As Russia-U.S. tensions rise, a new military strategy may make nuclear war more likely

- By William M. Arkin and Marc Ambinder. Photographs by Allison Joyce, AFP, Getty, Brendan Hoffman, Sergie Supinski, Anatolii Stepanov, Sergey Voskiy

THREE THOUSAND AMERICAN TROOPS ARE headed to Europe, with thousands more on standby in response to the Kremlin’s threats against Ukraine. President Joe Biden is pondering further actions—and as U.S.-Russia tensions rise, a new American nuclear war plan, previously unknown, lurks in the background.

For the first time, the war plan fully incorporates non-nuclear weapons as an equal player. The non-nuclear options include the realm of cyber warfare, such as cyberattacks on the basic workings of society like electrical power or communications. Rather than strengthen deterrence, the emergence of countless options and hidden cyberattack schemes weakens deterrence, obscures the nuclear firebreak and makes escalation more likely. Why? Because an adversary such as Russia can be confused about where preparations for nuclear war start, and whether a multi-domain attack is merely a defense or the makings of a first strike.

It isn’t the war plan of yesterday with hair-trigger alerts, bolts from the blue and global destruction. Instead, the standalone nuclear option has become the integration of many options: nuclear, conventional and unconventional, defensive as well as offensive, “non kinetic” as well as “kinetic.”

President Biden alluded to this widened spectrum of warfare on February 7 when he warned that if Russia crossed the Ukraine border, the United States would bring an end to Nord Stream 2, the natural gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany, and one that the Russian energy economy depends on.

“There will be no longer [sic] a Nord Stream 2,” the president said. “We will bring an end to it.” When pressed, all Biden would say is, “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”