The failure of the U.S.-Iran negotiations that took place in Pakistan marks a decisive inflection point in the current Middle Eastern security course. This is not a diplomatic setback; it is the transition from a fragile de-escalation phase into a more volatile period defined by coercive pressure, military signaling, and elevated risk of miscalculation. This risk is driven by the threat Iran continues to pose to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and by its remaining ballistic capabilities, which allow it to erratically target neighboring Arab states and regional U.S. allies.

Furthermore, the announcement of a U.S.-led maritime blockade over Iranian ports fundamentally alters the operational and strategic landscape aimed at confining the Iranian threat. The main question now is no longer whether tensions will rise, they already have, but whether the current trajectory leads toward controlled escalation, negotiated recalibration, or systemic full-scale conflict.

Structural Drivers of Escalation

At the core of the U.S.-Iran negotiations lies a set of structural but irreconcilable objectives. The U.S. continues to frame its demands around three pillars: curtailment of Iran’s nuclear development program, limitations on ballistic missile capabilities development, and the rollback of Iran’s regional proxy networks. Iran, on the opposite side, views these elements as essential to regime survival and sovereign deterrence. Accordingly, this is not a negotiation gap; it is a strategic contradiction.

Iran’s nuclear posture has evolved from a bargaining chip into a core pillar of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) and the regime’s survival. Any perceived concession risks undermining internal legitimacy and external deterrence credibility. Accordingly, ongoing diplomatic negotiations are performative rather than transformative, thus aimed at managing escalation rather than resolving underlying disputes. Additionally, the U.S. decision to impose a maritime blockade represents a calibrated escalation designed to exert economic and psychological pressure without the need to immediately resort back to kinetic operations. However, the strategic implications are profound.

Iran’s economy relies mainly on maritime oil exports. A blockade directly targets this vulnerability, threatening revenue streams, which then impacts the domestic stability, in addition to regional influence operations funded through such revenues. From Tehran’s perspective, failure to respond would signal weakness not only to the U.S. but also to its network of non-state groups across the region. This creates a classic escalation dilemma for Iran. On one hand, not responding risks strategic erosion of the IRGC and the current regime’s image. On the other hand, the response risks triggering military confrontation, which Iran cannot withstand. In such conditions, even any Iranian action such as harassment of commercial shipping, or proxy attacks carry a high probability of escalation.

Another key driver for the escalation is the pre-positioned military capabilities. Unlike previous crises, the current environment is characterized by pre-positioned military assets and operational readiness on both sides. U.S. naval, air, and ground forces in the Middle East are already configured for rapid response operations, while Iran’s IRGC maintains asymmetric capabilities are carefully tailored for maritime disruption, drone attacks, ballistic missile launches, and regional proxy warfare.

Regional Spillover Risks

The Strait of Hormuz remains the most critical geographic variable in this confrontational equation given that one-fifth of global oil trade passes through this narrow waterway. Iran has long signaled its capability and strategic intent to disrupt traffic through asymmetric means, including naval mines, drones, and anti-ship missiles. While full closure remains unlikely due to the overwhelming U.S. response it would provoke, disruption has already been taking place via targeted attacks on passing vessels, which is more than enough to deter commercial liners. Even limited interference could generate outsized economic and political effects, particularly for energy-dependent economies. All that said, the Houthis in Yemen remain on standby mode to disrupt the maritime flow via resumption of attacks on vessels passing via Bab-el Mandeb to and from the Red Sea.

Iran’s strategic depth lies not in conventional military parity but in its network of regional proxies. Groups aligned with Tehran, including those in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, provide Iran with operational flexibility. Given Israel’s successful campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah as well as the Iran-backed Iraqi militias preoccupied with the deterrence posed by the U.S. forces, the Houthis in Yemen remain the final card for Tehran. Intensified maritime threats from Houthi forces in the Red Sea are likely to reemerge at any moment. This allows Iran to impose costs on U.S. and allied interests without triggering immediate large-scale retaliation. However, the cumulative effect of a multi-chokepoint pressure strategy could compel a broader and internationally supported response.

Strategic Calculus: War vs. Controlled Escalation

Some believe that neither the U.S. nor Iran appears to seek full-scale war given that the costs (military, economic, and political) would be immense and unpredictable. For the U.S., a major conflict with Iran would disrupt global energy markets, divert resources from strategic competition with China, and risk regional destabilization affecting key allies in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC). For Iran, a continuation of a direct war would expose critical infrastructure to sustained strikes and threaten regime survivability.

The most probable scenario over the next 2–3 weeks is a phase of controlled escalation characterized by maritime harassment incidents in the Gulf, limited proxy attacks, and intensified rhetoric and signaling. This scenario allows both sides to demonstrate resolve while avoiding irreversible steps toward war. However, it is susceptible to disruption by unforeseen incidents at any moment.

An increasingly possible scenario would be one that involves targeted military actions, such as U.S. strikes on IRGC assets or critical infrastructure vs. Iranian retaliatory indiscriminate strikes on U.S. regional allies. Such exchanges would likely be calibrated to avoid full-scale war but could easily escalate if casualties or strategic assets are impacted.

Lastly, a less likely but still possible scenario is the return to productive negotiations, driven by economic pressures including oil market volatility, as well as diplomatic intervention by third parties, including the Gulf states, China, or European actors.

The highest-impact and most consequential scenarios involve a rapid escalation into full-scale conflict, potentially triggered by Iran’s full refusal to give up on its nuclear program or ballistic missile development program. Other triggers for a full-scale conflict would include any major incident in the Strait of Hormuz, high-casualty attacks on U.S. forces, or a direct confrontation between U.S. and Iranian military assets. Such a conflict would likely expand beyond bilateral engagement, drawing in regional actors and severely disrupting global economic systems.

Key Indicators to Watch

Several indicators are going to be crucial in assessing the trajectory of the ongoing conflict. This includes maritime activity where increased Iranian harassment of shipping continues to take place. Proxy operations are also a critical indicator where the frequency and intensity of proxy attacks, and the Red Sea specifically start to rise. Finally, force posture changes remain one of the key indicators, as they are mostly based on advanced intelligence assessments, which are not available to the public or markets. That said, deployment of additional U.S. and allied assets to the region remains the clearest indicator of how the situation will move forward and provides early signs of shifts from controlled escalation to broader conflict.

For defense strategists, the imperative is clear: preparing for escalation, planning for contingencies across multiple theaters, and achieving consensus that in the current environment, the most dangerous outcomes are not those that are intended but those unintended.

Dr. Mohamed ELDoh is a business development and consulting professional in the defense and security sector. Mohamed holds a Doctorate degree from Grenoble École de Management – France, an MBA from the EU Business School- Spain, and an Advanced Certificate in Counterterrorism Studies from the University of St Andrews, UK. He regularly authors articles addressing defense cooperation, counterterrorism, geopolitics, and emerging security threats in the Middle East and Africa. The views of the author are his own.

The Escalation Trajectory of U.S.-Iran Tensions After the Collapse of the Negotiations was originally published on Global Security Review.

Whenever the United States resorts to military force, the same question echoes through Washington and beyond: Did President Trump act within the law? Recent controversies surrounding the War Powers Resolution—especially the requirement to notify Congress—have only intensified that debate. This article steps aside from that familiar battleground. Instead, it asks a more fundamental constitutional question: would an air campaign against Iran be lawful under the United States Constitution? A careful reading suggests that the answer may well be yes.

There are two sections in Article I of the Constitution that address the authority to declare war. Clause 11 of Section 8 grants Congress the power to declare war, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make rules concerning capture on land and water. It is not the only provision that discusses war-making authority.

Clause 3 of Section 10, which is rarely mentioned in war powers discussions, deprives the states of the authority to maintain a standing army or navy, or to engage in war. It is the federal government’s responsibility to provide for the nation’s common defense, with two exceptions. First, Congress may permit states to possess these powers. Second, states may go to war if they are “actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”

War Powers Act of 1973

Using general legislative authority, as well as power granted to it from Article I, Section 8, Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973. The Act came after frustration over the Korean War and the bombing campaign over Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

The Act creates several limitations on the President’s abilities to make war and requires: 1) a declaration of war, 2) specific statutory authorization, or 3) a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

“In every possible instance,” the President is required to consult with Congress prior to beginning hostilities and do so within 48 hours. Congressional approval is needed if hostilities are to continue beyond 60 days.

From a prescriptivist perspective, there are compelling arguments that certain provisions of the Act may be unconstitutional. While some argue that Congress cannot delegate its authority to make war, others argue that the Act infringes on the President’s duties as Commander in Chief. Article I, Section 10, creates exceptional circumstances for the exercise of war-making powers. Moreover, there is a strong textual argument that those powers expressly granted to the states inherently apply to the President.

Principles of Presidential War Powers

Using the two clauses of the Constitution referenced above, we can extract two principles regarding war-making authority: Consent of Congress and Imminent Danger.

1. Consent of Congress

Congress can consent in three ways. It can issue a formal declaration of war. It can also pass legislation to create conditions for the use of force. And it can give the Commander in Chief limited flexibility, as they did with the War Powers Act.

Alternatively, Congress can signal passive approval by not responding to the Presidential action at all. This last approach is controversial, but common sense and Supreme Court precedent suggest it is lawful. Moreover, Congress is the only body that can legally correct an unauthorized or undesired war. They can pass laws to restrict war-making authority, end a war, or use their impeachment power. When Congress chooses not to use these options, it is effectively granting passive consent.

2. Imminent Danger Exception

As stated in the preamble to the Constitution, the purpose of creating a constitution is to provide for the common defense of the people, among other goals. While Congress has the Article I power to declare war or legislate how the President can wage war, responsibilities are commingled. The President is the Commander in Chief per Article II, Section 2. One of the implied duties of heading the armed forces is directing them in a defensive attack or addressing imminent danger, which refers to an immediate threat that poses a risk of harm without prompt intervention. This is not a tangential power of the President, but a core constitutional power as well.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that the initial response to the War of 1812 was unauthorized because Congress could not meet to deliberate on a declaration. While it is clearly the primary duty of the federal government to repel invasion, it is also in the purview of the states to act when “actually invaded” or placed in “imminent danger.” The Founding Fathers clearly recognized the need for flexibility in responding to threats, especially in an era when communication delays were the norm. If the states are given such power in exceptional circumstances, certainly the Commander in Chief would have these powers.

What is peculiar is that the flexibility afforded to states is not restricted to times of invasion. An invasion is already an imminent danger. Neither is the exception in Section 10, Clause 3 restricted to actions on the sea for events such as intercepting a flotilla attempting to invade. It is easy to believe the Founders contemplated threats from their immediate borders with France, Britain, and Spain.

If a state had a border along a river, and an enemy nation started concentrating forces on the other bank of the river, one could argue the existence of imminent danger, especially in historic times where standing armies were statements in and of themselves.

How This Applies to Iran

There is clearly some lawful justification for offensive use of force when Congress does not provide express consent. Just War Theory and the preemption doctrine can be discussed all day long until we are blue in the face, without concluding whether the current use of force is theoretically justified. The answer is truly a matter of prudence and congressional will.

Using threats of imminent danger as justification seems to be a stretch in this scenario, particularly because many in positions of authority have hinted the imminence originates with Israel’s decision to carry out strikes and the retaliation that would bring upon American forces within the region.

One can argue that the intent of the imminent danger exception in the Constitution is limited to public defense. The War Powers Act considers imminent danger to military forces. Say that the military came across evidence of a nation trying to repeat a USS Cole-style bombing. Retaliating against that nation or striking first to reduce their capability would be the prudent thing to do, and it would be a lawful use of force under the Constitution alone, regardless of what acts of Congress say.

It is also important to consider the specific moment used to assess whether the actions are lawful. At the start of a conflict, one might not actually be in immediate danger or have given consent. Nevertheless, arguing imminent danger becomes easier in the chaos of war, especially after the first shot is fired.

It is unknown what the actual intelligence is behind the scenes, nor is it known the veracity of public comments by members of the Administration and Congress. Some say it is about nuclear weapon production, preempting retaliation that would stem from Israel’s strikes against Iran, retaliation for the alleged killings of thousands of Iranian civilians, or regime change. Others who are just as authoritative contradict these claims.

While there may be classified intelligence to the contrary, this is a rare instance in which the justification for the strikes has not been communicated to the public. Normally, the public is aware of escalating tensions and seeing the President or other officials give warnings or make demands before we see strikes. On the evening of March 3, 2026, many members of Congress took to social media to discuss their briefing on the conflict. Representatives Seth Magaziner and Stephen Lynch, Senator Richard Blumenthal, among others, indicated that the administration failed to articulate any justification, while most republicans stated support for the strikes.

Just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of politics. Commentary is often on partisan lines; it is an election year, and members often vote against public statements, and to the chagrin of public opinion. It is also common for members to offer support privately and behind the scenes while publicly posturing against matters. What matters is what Congress does as a body. Congress has not yet revoked the President’s war-making ability. Until they do so, they are at least providing passive consent for the President to use force against Iran. While some may find the prudence of this conflict distasteful, until Congress votes otherwise, the war and that the President’s actions are lawful per the Constitution itself.

Michael Fincher is a Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Is The Air Campaign Against Iran an Illegal Use of Force? was originally published on Global Security Review.

As a strategy, MAD was considered but jettisoned by the United States 65 years ago. For example, President John F. Kennedy noted, “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy, or of a collective death-wish for the world.” Kennedy succeeded in adopting a strategy short of all-out retaliation that came to be known as “flexible response,” which, in 1974, was fully developed by James Schlesinger and eventually codified in Presidential Defense Directive 59.

Whether the United States has 10,000 or 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons, American forces were designed to have a secure retaliatory capability at any level of conflict. The objective was to end any conflict as soon as possible and at the lowest level of destruction. The American objective was not to burn an adversary’s cities to the ground. American deterrence strategy was to hold at risk what the adversary valued most.

Critics of current deterrence strategy assume that no nuclear-armed adversary of the United States believes in “fighting” a nuclear war. So, the US should drop its long-held deterrence strategy and go back to MAD or something like it. At the same time, many of these critics join nuclear abolitionists to support nuclear weapons but only to deter, not engage, in warfighting. If conflict breaks out and these weapons will not be used in retaliation, then nuclear forces are off the table and reduced to a bluff.

The mistaken notion that the US has a MAD strategy plays into the hands of Russia and China. These two nations both seek to escalate or threaten to escalate in a crisis or conflict with the limited use of nuclear weapons. The objective is to get the United States to stand down and not come to the defense of her allies, a restraint to give Russia and China a strategic advantage.

Unfortunately, much of the current commentary on nuclear threats still assumes the US and its adversaries maintain a mutually assured destruction strategy as the best means to avoid any use of nuclear weapons. Annie Jacobson’s recent book, On Nuclear War: A Scenario, describes a mutually assured destruction strategy, which she assumes the US maintains, as simply MAD or crazy. She posits that any initial use of nuclear weapons would almost automatically result in the all-out use of such weapons, leading to nuclear winter and killing billions. As such, she calls for the entirety of American nuclear deterrence to be jettisoned.

Being in the deterrence business, it is important for Congress, the media, the executive decisionmakers in the military and Department of Defense to fully understand what deterrence, as practiced by the United States, entails and why it must be sustained.

To explain this requires a review of history and an understanding that adversaries of the United States and the West sought military advantage through enhanced nuclear weapons technology. Over time the challenge for the US to sustain deterrence changed. The Soviets sought to put nuclear weapons in space, then built a huge first-strike missile force, then deployed thousands of medium-range SS-20s to intimidate and split NATO, and, most recently, built a theater-strike capability to keep the United States and NATO from winning the war in Ukraine.

The US nuclear deterrent was never one size fits all and automatically fit for purpose. For example, the US and NATO faced a huge conventional military threat from the Soviet Union from the beginning of the Cold War on the plains of central Europe, a place called the Fulda Gap. The Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks were not matched by American conventional forces. President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not wish to bankrupt the US treasury by building such a large and costly conventional military. The available alternative was to establish a nuclear umbrella over Europe, primarily aimed at Soviet tank armies. Thus, in the initial Cold War period, the US assumed a nuclear conflict would most probably grow out of an initial conventional war.

As technology improved, however, a threat emerged that could markedly change the correlation of forces between the United States and the USSR. The US still sought to deter a potential Soviet push into central Europe, but an additional threat was a potential Soviet pre-emptive first strike seeking to eliminate much of the American extended deterrent, followed up by a subsequent conventional invasion of Europe.

In 1963, the American strategic nuclear deterrent consisted of 6,000 nuclear warheads while the Russians had 600 warheads. As President Kennedy remarked, this strength, and particularly the newly deployed Minuteman missiles, were “my ace in the hole” that gave the United States the strategic advantage that peacefully ended the Cuban Missile Crisis.

However, by the time the next decade ended, the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) “arms control” treaty process was implemented and the USSR largely caught up, deploying 7,800 warheads compared to the US force of 8,700 warheads. Most worrisome was the new Soviet land-based missile force of 3,000 warheads on highly accurate SS-18s—with the overall Soviet nuclear force projected to grow to over 24,000 warheads by 1993.

As Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird told Congress in 1974, “the Soviets are going for a first strike force and there is no doubt about it.” The SS-18 eventually held at risk the entirety of the US land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force. This was the only American deterrent force that was sufficiently accurate to target key Soviet leadership and military targets without requiring “city busting.”

The US stopped deploying land-based missiles at 1,050 and associated warheads at around 2,000—assuming the USSR would show equal restraint. But Moscow built a huge land-based ICBM force that could take out the nation’s Minuteman missiles, leaving the US without the ability to hold key Soviet assets at risk. This perceived imbalance was known as the “window of vulnerability” where the US faced the prospects of a Soviet-initiated first strike that would leave US leaders exactly where President Kennedy worried it would.

The US solved the strategic equation of the window of vulnerability, the Soviet empire collapsed, the US added the Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile and Peacekeeper land-based ICBM, Soviet SS-20s were banned, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) arms control process brought Russian warheads down to under 2,000.

In April 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, economically unable to rebuild a Soviet-era nuclear force, decreed that Moscow develop highly accurate, small, low-yield, battlefield nuclear weapons, which his successor, Vladimir Putin, did in earnest. As former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten warned, these theater nuclear weapons were designed to “escalate to win” a conventional conflict or crisis between Moscow and Washington.

Putin thinks the US will not respond to the small-scale use of nuclear weapons because the US will not want to risk escalation and the possibility of strategic nuclear exchange. That is why Putin made exactly these threats over NATO’s intervention in the war against Ukraine.

Both Russia and China assume the relative weak theater nuclear forces the US maintains are now insufficient to match escalatory threats from Moscow and possibly Beijing. This point was emphasized by the 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report in laying out the opening of a new window of vulnerability.

The US is indeed now developing a greater theater nuclear deterrent to close the technology gap. However, simply adding to America’s conventional deterrent is not sufficient. As military leadership has repeatedly emphasized, if adversarial nuclear forces are introduced into a conventional conflict, the American advantage ceases. In short, conventional military leverage disappears.

The central tenets of mutually assured destruction no longer apply. MAD was jettisoned long ago. More importantly, America’s adversaries employ credible threats with the nuclear forces. New technology and expanding adversary arsenals are undermining the limited deterrent value of the American nuclear arsenal, a fact that must change if the United States seeks to ensure it does not find itself embroiled in a conflict where capitulation or Armageddon are the nation’s only options.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Mutually Assured Destruction was originally published on Global Security Review.

The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the US Military defines deterrence as “the prevention from action by fear of the consequences. Deterrence is a state of mind brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction.” From this, readers can deduce that deterrence is a state of mind and a product of rational decision-making.

Basing security policy on either of these assumptions is foolhardy. It is challenging to calibrate deterrence. This requires distinguishing enough deterrence, where credible fear of counteraction keeps the peace, from too much deterrence, where credible fear of an opponent’s motives can lead to a preemptive attack.

First, some practical examples. Returning to October 7, 2023, it is possible to say Israeli deterrence failed. Since 1948 Israel has sought to maintain a level of strength and preparedness sufficient to prevent its enemies from planning and executing attacks, using the threat of overwhelmingly force to maintain deterrence against its enemies.

The first major sign of trouble with this approach came in 1968, months after Israel’s defeat of its Arab neighbors in the Six-Day War, when Egypt began preparing a response. This came in October 1973 with Operation Badr, the attack which kicked off the Yom Kippur War. Similarly, Hamas began planning its 2023 attack immediately after a major defeat nine years before in the Gaza War of July–August 2014.

In both cases, deterrence failed years before the actual attacks. Israel’s overwhelming military superiority simply delayed the inevitable response to a situation its adversaries saw as absolutely unacceptable. Israel, overconfident in its deterrent capability, discounted the danger when intelligence assets began to report trouble. Thus, a single-minded reliance on deterrence actually led to future conflict.

So much for recent practice. On the theoretical side, scholars and practitioners alike have sought to chart the proximate triggers of war. The Athenian general Thucydides offered a multi-dimensional explanation in his History of the Peloponnesian War. He believed conflict resulted from three factors: Phobos (fear), kerdos (self-interest), and/or doxa (honor or reputation).

Deterrence, as we have seen, relies on threats of force which induce phobos, and therein lies a huge problem: it ignores the crucial elements of self-interest and honor or reputation. Thucydides named phobos as a principal trigger for conflict, even as definitions of deterrence, the current paradigm for conflict prevention, cite its reliance on instilling phobos. As the French might say, not only does deterrence fail in practice, but even worse, it does not work in theory.

Nuclear Deterrence and Global Devastation 

The shortcomings of conventional deterrence are well documented. Then there is its younger brother, nuclear deterrence. The story there is much simpler. Recent research on nuclear winter has lowered estimates of the megatonnage of nuclear detonations needed to trigger the phenomenon. Significant global effects leading to the starvation of over a billion people could be triggered by the use of as few as one hundred “small” Hiroshima-sized (total 1.5 megatons) explosions over urban targets.

This is extraordinarily bad news for the nuclear weapons priesthood, which has been chanting slogans of escalation dominance in government ears since the 1960s. The only rational nuclear deterrence that can be relied upon, it now seems, is self-deterrence, where a conflict which seems unwinnable by conventional means is now far more likely to appear unthinkable in nuclear terms.

Seeking a Realistic, Effective Alternative

Eliminating all nuclear weapons is clearly a necessary part of the journey towards lasting peace. But focusing on particular weapons is miscasting the problem and thus misunderstanding the nature of the solution. The world needs a transition away from the deterrence-based para bellum paradigm, the idea that achieving peace requires constant preparation for war, toward a new way of looking at conflict. This article proposes a radically different paradigm, Trinitarian Realism, which rests upon three principal assumptions.

First, in a concept borrowed from the Christian Trinity, one’s individual confession (peccavi) is important, but the collective and universal confession (peccavimus) is crucial in international peacebuilding. All need to recognize that each has sinned and fallen short, that no one comes to the table, any table, anywhere, with completely clean hands. Second, readers must truly grasp Carl von Clausewitz’s “remarkable trinity” in war, combining the irrational (war moves a citizenry to violence, hatred, and enmity); the non-rational (commanders face “the play of chance and probability”); and the über-rational (governments attempt to “subordinat[e war] as an instrument of policy”).

This guarantees wholly unknowable results. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out, “What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when engaging in deadly conflicts; wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it).” Finally, that the July 16, 1945, Trinity event at White Sands, New Mexico, the first nuclear explosion, introduced a global catastrophic risk arising from the multiple and wide-ranging ecological effects of nuclear winter.

A transition away from deterrence can begin by not reflexively demonizing anyone with whom there is a serious disagreement. Softening morality projections and focusing judgment on a better understanding of complex collective emotions is also helpful. We can do this with far greater humility, including recognition that we will get our assessments wrong.

Writing of diplomatic historian and Christian apologist Herbert Butterfield, political scientist Paul Sharp provided the bare bones of a three-dimensional replacement for deterrence which we call strategic compassion: “Butterfield’s writings on Christianity and international relations suggest…the moral principles of self-restraint [as antidote for fear/phobos], empathy [honor/doxa] and charity [self-interest/kerdos] upon which an effective diplomacy should be based.”

Finally, we believe that nations must abandon their attachment to nuclear deterrence postures for the reasons outlined above and must accept the eradication of all nuclear weapons—before they eradicate all of us.

Paul Ingram is a Research Affiliate and former Academic Programme Manager with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at Cambridge University. Edmond E. (Ted) Seay III is a retired Foreign Service Officer with 26 years’ experience in arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. His final assignment was as principal arms control advisor to US NATO Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council Ivo Daalder.

Deconstructing Deterrence was originally published on Global Security Review.

Russia continued its bombardment of Ukraine with drone and missile strikes, and the US weighed the possibility of additional economic sanctions on Russia, including secondary sanctions against states trading with Russia. Debates among the Washington cognoscenti about possible peace settlements focused on two “baskets” of topics: what kind of “land swap” might be agreeable to Ukraine and Russia and what sort of security guarantees would be necessary for a postwar Ukraine. Amid all of this, one elephant in the room received little attention: the status of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in future relationships between Ukraine and Russia and between Russia and NATO.

President Donald Trump posted on social media in late July 2025, that Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s former president, was a “failed former President of Russia” who had better “watch his words.” Trump was responding to earlier remarks by Medvedev, after Trump threatened economic sanctions against Russia unless Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to a temporary ceasefire and expedited peace talks with Ukraine.

In the earlier exchange, Medvedev called Trump’s ultimatum about peace talks a threat and a step toward war. Most recently, Medvedev again warned against nuclear danger by referring to the American television series The Walking Dead and reminded Trump that Russia retains the Soviet “Dead Hand” system for automatic nuclear launch even under the most extreme postattack conditions.

In response, President Trump posted on social media that he ordered two nuclear submarines to be repositioned in response to Medvedev’s threats. Trump said he ordered the submarines “to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.” In addition, the President noted that “[w]ords are very important and can often lead to unintended consequences. I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

Nuclear submarine movements are among the most highly classified information pertinent to military operations. If the reference was to American nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), this public announcement was unprecedented.

At one level, these interchanges between Medvedev and Trump are as much performative as they are substantive. During the early stages of Russia’s war against Ukraine beginning in February 2022, Putin issued frequent warnings about the possibility of Russian nuclear first use in response to actions taken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that might be unacceptable to Russia. These warnings were dismissed by many Western political leaders and military experts as bluff to conceal Russia’s frustration at the prolonged military deadlock it faced in Ukraine, as well as distractions from looking too closely at Russia’s disappointing battlefield performances.

As Russia’s military operations on the ground seemed to improve in 2024 and 2025, nuclear threats became less frequent and less explicit. At present, Russia seems confident of maximizing its forward progress in military reach and operational control over the Donbass and other districts in the east and south of Ukraine.

Even a “small” nuclear war fought with tactical nuclear weapons would be a self-defeating endeavor for Russia. Fighting a conventional war under the shadow of possible nuclear escalation is sufficiently risky. If Russia were to cross the bridge into nuclear first use there would be a strong likelihood of a NATO nuclear response.

Russians need to interrogate their own military literature from the Cold War with respect to the challenge of conducting military operations in a nuclear environment. Troops seeking an operational breakthrough against enemy defenses would be fighting against the prompt and delayed effects of nuclear detonations that slow operational movement, inflict significant numbers of casualties, and corrupt the coordination and cohesion of combined arms. The Soviet Union could draw upon its ideological indoctrination and favorable memories of its victory in the Great Patriotic War (World War II) to maintain morale and avoid mass desertion, Russia cannot.

Nor would the economy of Europe, including Russia, survive anything beyond the very restrictive use of a few ultra-low-yield or low-yield in the sub-five kiloton range. In today’s world of social media and globally transmitted visual images, the meltdown of major financial and other institutions in Europe would trigger a global crash of markets, disrupt supply chains, let loose armed formations of criminals, and drive many leading politicians to abdication. Some in NATO might hope that Putin’s mistaken decision for nuclear first use would finally convince Russia’s military and security forces to overthrow their president and sue for peace, but Putin is not Lenin, and he is as likely to double down on escalation as he is to acquiesce to a nuclear ceasefire.

And therein lies the second danger, escalation to strategic nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Putin might calculate that he could hive off the nuclear deterrents of the British and French from their American allies and bully the former into submission while frightening the American government and public with separate threats of mass destruction. This would be a dangerous miscalculation because the nuclear forces of the United States are politically and operationally coupled to those of their European allies.

American nuclear weapons and American personnel deployed in Europe are effectively tied to the continent under Article V of the NATO charter. The idea that selective use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe by Russia could be sealed off from wider and more deadly destruction, is beyond optimism.

In addition to misplaced optimism about escalation control during a major European war, there is also a lack of appreciation for the challenge of skillful crisis management that might avoid war altogether. Experience teaches that the requirements for nuclear and other crisis management include shared understandings and expectations about the risks of war and a willingness to consider the danger of misperceptions held by leaders in stressful situations. They may misjudge other national leaders as irrevocably committed to acts of conquest or aggression, when in fact those other heads of state may be undecided about their final judgments for or against war.

Communication between and among leaders may be incomplete and intelligence assessments can be blinkered by insufficient information or political bias. Examples of these and other maladies in crisis are provided by the July crisis of 1914 leading to the outbreak of World War I, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and by numerous other crises.

Russians playing with the rhetoric of Armageddon are legitimizing nuclear coercion in a time of troubles. The arrangement of a prompt ceasefire and peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia is of the highest significance for many reasons. These include putting an end to the loss of life and the destruction of national infrastructure. This objective should be pursued with aggressive diplomacy and without the distraction of references to the possibility of a war that would have no precedent in its capacity to do irreparable harm to civilization.

Steve Cimbala is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Nuclear Danger Remains in Ukraine Peace Settlement was originally published on Global Security Review.

Deterrence Is Domain Agnostic  

Thomas Schelling, in Arms and Influence, writes, “Deterrence involves a threat to keep an adversary ‘from starting something,’ or ‘to prevent [an adversary] from action by fear of consequences.’” That threat must include not only a capability but the political will to use that capability if an adversary decides to “start something” despite the capability being threatened.

If an adversary decides the political will does not exist to use the capability, there is no deterrence. Conflating deterrence with academic concepts such as hard deterrence, soft-deterrence, or integrated deterrence does not create deterrence. Rather, these concepts deny the fundamental truth of what deterrence is and what it takes to achieve it; a nation must possess the capability and will to use force.

In the space domain, this means the United States must have the capability and will to apply force in outer space. It is also important to remember that adversaries like Russia and China may view deterrence differently.

The United States is consistently guilty of mirror imaging when it comes to its views on deterrence—assuming the Russians and Chinese think in similar terms about costs and rewards. This creates the false belief among Americans that a capability designed to deter will do so, when, in fact, the adversary thinks very differently. For the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), for example, preemption or compellance is a deterrence doctrine. What does this mean for deterrence in outer space? Consider the following scenario.

The PLA launches a limited kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) attack on American space assets or those of an ally. The attack destroys key space assets vital to mount military operations prior to an invasion of Taiwan. Simultaneously, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) utilizes ASAT capabilities in geosynchronous orbit to interfere and disable commercial space assets, which affect the general population of the United States.

Following these attacks, the PRC employs hybrid warfare to encourage the US to avoid interfering with its annexation of Taiwan or risk the loss of further space assets. The loss of these space assets, while not debilitating, coupled with the PRC’s messaging, creates a psychological response that compels the president to sit out the conflict. In short, the lack of American offensive and defensive space capabilities forces the United States to capitulate when it cannot deter Chinese aggression.

A second scenario involves the PRC employing fractional orbital bombardment systems (FOBS) utilizing nuclear-armed hypersonic glide vehicles. The PRC employs multiple FOBS as a first strike against the United States’ nuclear arsenal. With no space-based capabilities to deter or defend against such systems, the US loses critical second-strike assets.

After the attack, the PRC takes advantage of the psychological impact of a first strike to fracture the confidence of the American people and compel the president to restrain from using the nation’s ballistic missile submarines, which are still needed to deter Russia and additional strikes from China. In short, the lack of effective space-based deterrence capabilities once again play a critical role in American decision-making.

In both cases, deterrence failed because of assumptions about the PRC rooted in mirror imaging. The lack of acknowledgment of the PRC’s stance on deterrence, which is compellance, results in the political failure to deploy a capability to deter attack and, if deterrence fails, respond with overwhelming force.

Resilience Is Not Deterrence

Over the past decade, many space professionals turned to resilience as the best method for deterrence in space. The theory of resilience relies on the redundancy of American space assets as the means for deterring adversary attack. This view also mirror images adversary thinking and makes assumptions about adversary behavior that is rooted in idealism and not realism.

Resilience is not deterrence. It is a quiet acknowledgement of inadequate defensive/offensive capabilities and a façade for a lack of space-based deterrence capabilities and the will to use them. At present, the United States lacks the capability needed to hold adversary space assets at risk and, by default, deter those adversaries from harming American interests in space.

Conclusion

Deterrence is not complicated. The formula is simple. Effective deterrence = capability x will x communication. Norms, resilience, and other alternatives to this simple formula never set the conditions for effective deterrence. At best, they give the allusion of deterrence and allow politicians to temporarily escape hard decisions.

However, that time is quickly coming to an end. President Biden and future presidents will undoubtedly face increasing risk in space and must make the tough decisions. The United States cannot afford to lose the next war because it is left blind and deaf because of attacks on its space assets. Now is the time to take a hard look at Russian and Chinese views on space warfare and stop assuming they have the same aspirations as Americans.

Michael J. Listner is a licensed attorney in the State of New Hampshire and the founder and principal of Space Law and Policy Solutions. He is a subject matter expert in outer space law, outer space policy, and lawfare strategy and the author and editor of the space law and policy briefing-letter, The Précis.

Deterrence in Space: It’s Not Complicated was originally published on Global Security Review.