The H-bomb in the Swamp: Taking Nuclear War Seriously Again

Over the course of the Cold War, nuclear forbearance between the superpowers became a foregone conclusion, and even the nuclear ambitions of rogue states like Iran and North Korea have seemed manageable. But the revival of great-power competition has probably lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. When Russian President Vladimir Putin implicitly threatened to use them against any outside party who dared to intervene in Russia's war with Ukraine, he may have reinforced American impulses to reincorporate tactical nuclear weapons into US military doctrine, and made express nuclear threats to back up initially conventional military campaigns more attractive. In popular culture, Dr. Strangelove remains the definitive take on the tenuousness of the nuclear stand-off, but it doesn't seem to resonate with younger generations. Watchmen, the 1980s graphic novel made into a 2019 television series, could be a fresher source of inspiration for reducing nuclear threats.