There’s strangely little discussion right now of the unbelievably dangerous situation in Ukraine. Joe Biden is under great pressure to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike deeper into Russia. That pressure is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, as well as from NATO allies. It’s also coming especially from the Labour prime minister of the U.K., Keir Starmer. Britain makes the missiles, so increasing the use of the missiles happens to be great for the British arms industry, and the company that makes them is excited about a “missile boom.” (Because we live in a deeply twisted world, the Ukraine war has been called a “showroom” or “arms fair” for weapons makers.)

Why is Biden having to be “pressured”? Because Biden has long been worried about the possibility of the U.S. and NATO being dragged into all-out war with Russia. Soon after the invasion, Biden said that “a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent." While there are good reasons to criticize Biden for his failure to pursue diplomatic options that might have prevented the war or ended it sooner, in this stance he is comparatively more sane than many people in Washington, who had urged him to “drop his ‘World War III’ red line,” i.e., to take greater risks of direct war between the world’s most heavily armed nuclear powers. Others have outright said that Biden needs to fight and win World War III against Russia and China’s “Axis of Evil,” meaning we should drive humanity toward a catastrophic nuclear conflagration that will wreck the entire world and possibly end human civilization. 

What has happened over the course of the Ukraine war is this: the Biden administration has tested how much it can aid Ukraine in fighting Russia without triggering a U.S.-Russia war. The White House was concerned about actions that “would cross a ‘red line’ that would lead Russian President Vladimir Putin to dramatically up the ante, perhaps even to employ nuclear weapons.” Putin repeatedly warned against crossing these red lines, reminding NATO countries that he has a lot of nuclear weapons. Ukraine has crossed these red lines repeatedly. Wikipedia even now keeps a helpful list of Russia’s “red lines” that have been crossed. Russia did not in fact respond to the crossing of these lines by using nuclear weapons or retaliating against NATO countries, meaning that Ukraine has been “getting bolder about punching through Russian red lines” and the Biden administration has become more confident that it can ignore Putin’s threats and warnings. Russia is starting to recognize that “the repeated use of the nuclear threat is starting to lose its potency” since “Moscow’s red lines are constantly being crossed.” 

That’s why those currently pressuring Biden to authorize the new use of the missiles inside Russia are telling him that he’s foolish to worry this will escalate the war. They believe Russia is just continuing to bluff when, for example, its deputy national security director threatens to turn Kyiv into a “molten gray mass” in response. Putin says that the authorization of the missile strikes inside Russia would be considered, by the Russian government, a direct NATO attack on Russia and thus a declaration of war. Putin’s spokesman has insisted that he means what he says, that the statement he made is “extremely clear” and “does not allow for any double readings,” imploring NATO countries to pay attention to it. 

Of course, those who want Biden to authorize the use of the missiles are waving these statements away. Blah blah, that’s what Putin always says, of course he’s saying that, he wants to scare the West into letting him defeat Ukraine. As the Financial Times reports, “[T]he hawks argue they have been vindicated as Russia’s retaliation fails to materialize.” The Washington Post editorial board, encouraging Biden to authorize the missiles, noted that in “each previous case [of Putin warning of consequences]—the delivery of tanks, then the transfer of F-16 fighter jets, then permission to attack on Russian soil—Mr. Putin has not followed through on his threats.” Putin knows that war with NATO would be disastrous for Russia, so there’s “no reason to think now he would risk a wider war.” 

But there is a reason. As Anatol Lieven writes in the Nation, Putin’s previous empty threats mean that he is now under increasing pressure to make good on what he says, because it’s clear that if he doesn’t, this is interpreted as bluster and weakness, and NATO will continue to violate his red lines with impunity. “[M]oscow sees this as a very serious escalation,” Lieven writes, “which if not checked would be a green light to the West to go further and further.” It’s because Putin has previously allowed so many red lines to be crossed that it becomes more dangerous to cross them, because his credibility is increasingly at stake, and as Lieven writes, “It is therefore not open to serious doubt that this action could indeed lead to war between the West and Russia.” Putin is being boxed into a corner, and anyone who knows Putin’s favorite story about a cornered rat knows that he may well believe that when you’re cornered, the only way out is to do something dramatic and extreme.

In fact, those who want Biden to help Ukraine cross the next Russian red line apparently may not even take the risk of nuclear war into consideration. The Washington Post quotes a European official saying that while “these decisions come with a risk that is not small,” because “you never really know” whether “it’s an escalatory risk or [Putin is] bluffing,” the “decisions are not made in fear of that.” In other words, yes, we know we’re risking a Third World War that would destroy human civilization, but we don’t know how much of a risk it is, so we ignore it. Everyone just assumes that Putin is bluffing, as he was before, and that even though he has said he will interpret this as a declaration of war, he won’t, and we can just assume it’s possible to indefinitely continue humiliating a homicidal psychopath who has his finger on the nuclear button without him getting so angry that he does something irrational.

There are compelling arguments for why Putin would not want to escalate dramatically even in response to this violation of a new red line. Unfortunately, they depend on Putin being hyper-rational. They depend, I would argue, on a highly dubious understanding of how human beings work. If we look back at, say, the Vietnam War, we know that U.S. presidents often made decisions not out of a careful calculus of how they would preserve U.S. security, but out of a fear of looking weak or losing credibility. Lyndon Johnson used to have dreams in which people chased him and called him a coward, and when a reporter once asked him why we were in Vietnam, he literally whipped out his penis and replied “this is why.” Don’t underestimate machismo, anger, and fear of humiliation as motivations for the actions that powerful men take. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought humanity to the brink of annihilation, because neither party wanted to back down and look weak. Kennedy himself said that the odds of an escalation to nuclear war during the crisis were between one-third and fifty-fifty. That’s true even though it was in the interest of neither the USSR or the U.S. to commit suicide.

Some think that those who consider the nuclear risk are giving Putin precisely what he wants. John Herbst of the Atlantic Council says that “precisely the policy impact that Putin has been seeking” is for Americans to think “we can’t take certain steps in Ukraine, because Putin might go nuclear.” Once you believe this, he says, you don’t even want to discuss the nuclear risk, because in doing so you’re giving Putin what he wants. But ignoring it is lunacy, because we know countries can stumble toward catastrophic nuclear war even when neither of them wants it to happen, because they get into a situation where neither of them feels they can back down and they feel compelled to continue escalating. Putin is determined not to lose in Ukraine. The U.S. is determined to ensure his defeat, and has avoided trying to facilitate negotiations that could leave him with even a face-saving “off-ramp” that he can spin as a victory. The goal is total humiliation, to inflict a clear defeat on Russia. But as Shlomo Ben-Ami notes, “autocrats who lose wars lose power—and, sometimes, their heads." Are we really so confident that a homicidal person like Putin will accept defeat that we are willing to stake the entire future of the world on it? 

Because that’s what’s at stake here. We don’t think or talk much about the nuclear threat, but it is very real and very alarming. The world’s most dangerous game of chicken is being played in Ukraine right now. So far, Biden has proven impressively sensible in disregarding the advice of both Democrats and Republicans that we should giddily plunge ourselves into a Third World War. But Biden is old, politically weak, and on his way out. Even if we do not end up in a direct war with Russia on his watch, with the foreign policy “blob” so willing to risk all of our lives, the next president, whether Trump or Harris, may well be less resistant to the pressures that push presidents toward taking extraordinarily risky gambles that imperil all of humanity.