More Nuclear Weapons Are Required to Deter Russia and China

Reduce US vulnerability to Russia-China nuclear blackmail

An armed man stands at the Independent Square (Maidan) in the center of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 2, 2022. Ukraine’s leader decried Russia's escalation of attacks on crowded cities as a blatant terror campaign, while U.S. President Joe Biden warned that if the Russian leader didn't “pay a price” for the invasion, the aggression wouldn’t stop with one country. Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo

Commentary

America has failed to deter Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. His looming military failure, and the coalescing opposition of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led to Putin’s Feb. 27 order to put his nuclear forces on “high alert,” a general nuclear threat against the United States and NATO.

Very soon, that failure to deter could extend to the Taiwan Strait.