Both the US and the USSR lost major wars during the Cold War without resorting to nuking their opponent when they felt they were "at a real risk of losing a war". In Vietnam and Korea, the Soviet involvement was considerably more than the current Western involvement in countering the Ukraine invasion. Soviet pilots on Soviet planes killed Americans in American planes. Soviet operators of Soviet-made SAM sites shut down American planes as well.
The reality is that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against existential threats, and all else is a bluff. So it's not a risk of losing this war that will push Russia to commit such murder-suicide, but an existential threat to its own survival as a nation.
> The reality is that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against existential threats, and all else is a bluff. So it's not a risk of losing this war that will push Russia to commit such murder-suicide, but an existential threat to its own survival as a nation.
Note that there have been numerous documented cases of near nuclear launches, especially in the 60s and 70s, it is by no means a bluff or an idle risk.
It is certainly a bluff. Accidents or misunderstandings aside, the only time the US chose to press the issue as it were was when it faced a serious threat to having its nuclear deterrent rendered completely ineffective (Cuban missile crisis). No one's launched nukes because of non-nuclear events in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Cuba, and no one will seriously contemplate it over losing pieces of eastern Ukraine or Crimea. Even taking the war into Russia proper won't do the trick, murder-suicide is only on the table when the threat is existential.
The bluff does, however, work very well in slowing down and dissuading Western help to Ukraine by cultivating the "don't do X else nukes tomorrow" memes and propaganda talking points. Very effective foreign policy tool for a nuclear-armed fascist dictatorship, other will certainly take note for future invasions.
I mostly agree, but it does assume rational
actors in charge. If the goal of conflict is to cement the position of a dictatorial elite, it’s not clear to me that ‘smaller scale’ nuclear exchanges are ruled out, especially if leaders are isolated, paranoid etc.
Ever since the US made crystal clear that a nuclear strike against Ukraine will mean the US annihilating all Russian forces in Ukraine by conventional means, such small scale nuclear exchange is in fact ruled out. This will in effect invite Russia to simply swallow such a devastating blow, or else end it all. Russia is in fact ruled by rational actors, so it rationally backed off. Thus in effect proving its rationality and the emptiness of its "but what if we're insane" bluff. They're not insane.
The reality is that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against existential threats, and all else is a bluff. So it's not a risk of losing this war that will push Russia to commit such murder-suicide, but an existential threat to its own survival as a nation.