CHACRCRITIQUE OCTOBER 2024
#13
A TIMELY WARNING OF THE WORLD’S DEMISE
Published by Transworld, Hardback, 400 pages, £20, ISBN: 9781911709596
TITLE Nuclear War: A Scenario AUTHOR Annie Jacobsen
Nuclear strategy has re-emerged as a topic for discussion, in large part due to Vladimir Putin’s implicit – and at times not particularly subtle – threats of possible outcomes to external military support for Ukraine. Red lines have come and gone, most recently in the last week of September during a televised meeting of Russia’s Security Council when the Russian leader announced planned doctrinal revisions in which an attack against the country by a non-nuclear power with the “participation or support of a nuclear power” would be seen as a “joint attack on the Russian Federation”. There has been much supportive media rhetoric from Moscow along with drills and tests but red lines have been crossed ever since February 2022 and the full invasion of its neighbour. As a Carnegie expert noted earlier in the year, this nuclear escalation is not new: “Since the start
of the fighting in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense (sic) Ministry has seen nuclear weapons as the sole obstacle to a war with NATO, while the Foreign Ministry approaches them as just another diplomatic tool.” Blackmail, bullying or a more straight-forward coercive instrument which sits as a cornerstone in a finely balanced deterrence construct, the dire warnings have become a regular feature of British tabloid media reports, most often accompanied by a headline involving ‘World War 3’. The Sword of Damocles appears freshly sharpened but with little evidence of what, if anything, might blunt its force. In addition to being a pleasingly easy ‘soft’ read, Annie Jacobsen’s book presents an impressively researched and considered contribution which offers a timely reminder of what this could all actually mean. Certainly, it has continued to create considerable discussion in the
REVIEWER Professor Andrew Stewart, Head of Conflict Research, CHACR
NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO // CHACR CRITIQUE