John Mearsheimer: prediction

Transcript context

…How did nuclear weapons change the calculus of offensive realism, because of mutually assured destruction? I mean, it’s not just military might. It’s just so destructive that you basically can’t use nuclear weapons unless you want complete destruction. There’s no question that the presence of nuclear weapons makes it much less likely. I’m choosing my words carefully here, much less likely that a great power would aggress against another great power. It doesn’t take that possibility off the table, but it makes it much less likely because of the reasons that you articulated. With regard to nuclear use, it’s an interesting question how you think about nuclear use in a MAD world. I mean, your point that we’re in a MAD world is … that’s mad, MAD as well as mad, small letters, but let’s stick to the capital letters. We’re in a world of mutual assured destruction. There’s no question that in that world, it’s unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used. The way you use nuclear weapons in that world is you use them for manipulation of risk purposes, demonstration effect. You put both sides out on the slippery slope. Now, what exactly am I saying here? Let me talk about NATO doctrine during the Cold War. We lived in a MAD world, United States and Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact in NATO, both had an assured destruction capability. So you had mutual assured destruction. If the Warsaw Pact were to invade Western Europe, and here we’re talking about West Germany and NATO was losing the war, we said that we would use nuclear weapons. How would we use nuclear weapons given that we were in a MAD world? The argument was that we would use a handful of nuclear weapons against the Warsaw Pact, not necessarily against their military forces. It could be in a remote area. We would use a small number of nuclear weapons to signal to the Soviets that we were deadly serious about putting an end to their offensive, and that we were throwing both sides out on the slippery slope to oblivion. In other words, we were manipulating risk and the last clear chance to avoid Armageddon rested with them. And then, we would tell them that if you retaliated with a handful of nuclear weapons and you didn’t cease your offensive against West Germany, we would launch a small, another nuclear attack. We would explode a handful more of nuclear weapons, all for the purposes of showing you our resolve. So this is the manipulation of risk strategy, and a lot of the language I just used in describing it to you is language that Thomas Schelling invented. Now fast-forward to the present, if Russia were losing in Ukraine, that’s the one scenario where I think where Russia would’ve used nuclear weapons. The question is, how would Russia have used nuclear weapons? Again, we’re assuming that the Russians are losing to the Ukrainians. I believe they would’ve pursued a manipulation of risk strategy. They would’ve used four or five, three or four, who knows, nuclear weapons- Maybe just one in a rural area that kills very few people.…

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