President Joe Biden said on Monday the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real”, days after denouncing Russia’s deployment of such weapons in Belarus. On Saturday, Biden called Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus “absolutely irresponsible”.
No, but common sense dictates it should be. Nuclear weapons aren’t required; NATO can easily and quickly disable Russia’s military with conventional weaponry, and that’s the strategic goal.
The reason the classic response to nukes is nukes, is that in the Cold War paradigm there was an assumption that neither country could win (or would be willing to try) a conventional war.