Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, thanks so much for being with us. It's been just over seven and a half months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and this week, a Kiev resident, speaking to the BBC through a translator, said this about what has happened to life in Ukraine.

Translator: Oh, it's horrible. This is our life and just now, I don't know, an abyss has opened up in our lives.

Melissa: After a period of relative calm in the past few months, Russian missiles rained down once again on Kiev and at least 12 other cities this week. It hit workplaces, busy roads, a university, and even a playground, leaving at least 19 people dead. A young woman told ABC News this.

Young Woman: I'm still shaking while I'm talking about it.

ABC News Report: You're still shaking. I can see you're still shaking.

Young Woman It's so scary. You can drive to work and boom, and you're gone.

Melissa: Russia targeted civilian centers far from the front lines where Russian troops have recently been forced into retreat. A video published by The Telegraph captured the sounds of Russian troops surrendering to Ukrainian soldiers in Izyum on September 29th.

Ukrainian Soldier: [speaks Ukrainian]

Melissa: Meanwhile, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has made it clear that all options are on the table. In late September, he made threats to retaliate against Ukraine and its allies with nuclear weapons. Putin's comments and escalating attacks prompted President Biden to voice a startling concern that the threat of nuclear Armageddon is at its most critical juncture since the Cuban Missile Crisis. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday night, Biden clarified that he didn't believe Putin would ultimately take that step, but maintained that even the threat have a destabilizing effect.

President Biden: He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, as if that's a rational thing to do.

Melissa: With me now is Julian Zelizer, professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Welcome back to The Takeaway.

Julian Zelizer: Nice to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Melissa: I'm also joined by Nikolas Gvosdev, who is professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College. Great to have you back with us as well, Nick.

Nikolas Gvosdev: Pleasure to be with you.

Melissa: All right, Nick, let me start with you. President Putin said these attacks were revenge for the explosion of the bridge to Crimea late last week-ish. What kind of pressure is President Putin feeling at this stage of the war in Ukraine from his supporters?

Nick: The problem is, is he does not have enough manpower to control all of the territory that has been seized in Ukraine in this invasion. With Western help, Ukrainian forces have been able to dislodge Russian troops and begin to push them back from those areas of Ukraine. He's losing or is not winning on the battlefield, and so is turning to the areas where Russia still has some advantage over Ukraine, missile strikes and artillery.

The question is that if Ukraine continues to press forward and Russia continues to lose ground, at what point does he want to start using ordnance of a more powerful character? This of course brings up the question that the president was referring to, the use of tactical nuclear weapons to achieve on the battlefield what his land forces cannot achieve, which perhaps is to stem a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Melissa: All right, Nick, let's pause for just a second there, because you said tactical nuclear weapons. What exactly makes them tactical? How are they different than what we typically have thought about?

Nick: We generally have two categories of nuclear weapons. We're all familiar from movies and media with what we would call the city busters, the large, several megaton nuclear weapons that one drops and a city is destroyed. Tactical weapons are nuclear explosives, but with a very low yield. You still have a fireball, you still have a shock wave, but they were designed to be used on the battlefield to break up an enemy armored column, or to take out an air base, or to destroy a logistical hub, but to try to limit the size and scope of the damage.

Ever since the beginning of the Cold War, we've had a back-and-forth. What's very interesting is President Putin reflects some of the thinking of the 1950s that says you draw a line between tactical weapons because the damage is contained versus strategic weapons. Whereas President Biden is echoing what has been the consensus really since the late 1950s into the 1960s, that once you start using nuclear weapons of whatever size, you open the doorway to escalation, to bigger weapons being used, and then ultimately ending up in a situation where you might see what we would call the strategic nuclear weapons being put into play.

I think that is really what has guided that very dire warning that you opened with of the president, essentially pleading, don't use, don't even think about opening the doorway to using nuclear weapons.

Melissa: All right. This point, Julian, I want to dig down on a bit because this point about how President Biden is framing it, the historical reference point. Let's just take a moment, go back in time, and take a listen here to President John Kennedy speaking in 1962.

President John Kennedy: For many years, both the Soviet Union and the United States, recognizing this fact, have deployed strategic nuclear weapons with great care, never upsetting the precarious status quo, which ensured that these weapons would not be used in the absence of some vital challenge.

Melissa: All right, help us to understand, Julian, this context. What, in that moment, what Kennedy is saying, and how it is connected to what Biden is saying?

Julian: This is a famous moment in the 13 days that shook the world in October of 1962 when the United States and the Soviets have a standoff over missiles that have been placed in Cuba. The United States and the whole world is watching where the threat could be global nuclear war as opposed to the tactical weapons that we're discussing. It's a terrifying period for Americans as they watch how the standoff is going to unfold.

There's stories about Americans making escape routes from the cities in which they live, stocking up bomb shelters, getting transistor radios and radiation kits, and ultimately it is resolved. There is a breakthrough and a war is averted, but it's a traumatic turning point where the threat of a total nuclear war is on the table. I think President Biden doesn't foresee that in the immediate future, but his warning is if tactical nuclear weapons are used, if the door is opened, you open the door to going back where we were in those dangerous days of October of 1962.

Melissa: Julian, help me to understand how I should as an American citizen, thinks about this framework, given that the country, in our global history, that used strategic, enormous, deadly nuclear weapons against civilian populations, was us. We did it at the end of World War II against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How should we think about, even our capacity, ethically, morally to be in this position relative to Putin?

Julian: That was many, many decades ago, but that was when this kind of weaponry was used right off the bat. Historians debate the ethical decision to use that relative to the death that would ensue from not having used it, but as we hear President Biden, to talk today about the possibility of this escalating, we should remember we were there and the weapons were deployed. This was atomic bombs and the results were devastating. There's the moral question of the country having used them, but there's also simply the fact that they can be used. There's evidence on the table that this is not an impossibility even for rational actors.

Melissa: All right. To that point of rational actors, Nick, let me come to that. The decades since that moment, even through those frightening moments of the 13 days of October 1962, there has been this notion of rational actors and that even if they are our opponents on the world stage, that you can predict in important ways. What is in the interests of these superpowers who were in the deterrence game? Is that certainty gone? Is Putin not a rational actor in the same way?

Nick: I think we've seen that Putin is not irrational as an individual. He may have misguided information, and this, of course, is always a risk that you run. Certainly, the invasion of Ukraine itself is a colossal intelligence failure. That even though his thought process might be working perfectly fine, you can still make bad decisions based on bad information.

Beyond that, I think we have to see that certainly, he's interested in regime survival, state survival, his own personal survival. These are all factors that come into play. Since he's issued these threats, of course, and again, you opened the program with, the Russians have intensified their conventional strikes. Essentially, it's almost as if they wave the nuclear flag and then said, "Fine, if we don't use nuclear weapons, but we stick to conventional forces, you, the West are going to stay out of this."

So far, our response has been to commiserate with Ukrainians about the losses that they're taking, continue the existing arms flow, but the president has, on repeated occasions, noted he is very reluctant to provide weapons to Ukraine that would allow Ukrainians to be able to strike deep inside Russia. Also, again, not wanting to trigger an unintended escalatory response.

Let me just end with this last point because I think it's critical. We often hear people saying, "Well, why don't we bomb Moscow?" "Why doesn't someone try to take Putin out?" The problem with those kinds of proposals, and again, why the United States has been reluctant, say, to give longer range systems to Ukraine, is that from the perspective of a strategic establishment, it can be very difficult to tell when you have an incoming attack. Missiles are in the air, planes are in the air. Is this a conventional attack or is this something designed to cripple our nuclear response?

I think, again, President Biden, like President Kennedy before him, is navigating very carefully about how do you make a forceful response, but you don't take steps, which you don't intend to be provocative, but which could be interpreted by the strategic establishment of the other side, as a prelude, perhaps, to a nuclear decapitation.

Melissa: Pause with me here, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation about this scary moment in October of 2022, and how we should be thinking about the politics of it and the possibilities for deescalation. It's The Takeaway, stick with us.

Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and I've been speaking with Julian Zelizer, professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Nikolas Gvosdev, who is a professor of National Security Affairs, and we're trying to unpack a bit of the reality behind some of Vladimir Putin's recent comments about using nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

Nick was taking us through this moment and Julian, I want to think a little bit about the politics of this moment in terms of a more recent presidential history. In this context, President Obama making a clear public discourse about a red line relative to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, and then the Syrian regime using those chemical weapons, and the US not responding. I'm wondering how, again, having been part of that administration, that might be affecting how President Biden is thinking about this moment.

Julian: I think it's very relevant. That was a big moment in terms of the politics of foreign policy for President Obama. He was often criticized for the way that unfolded and for going back and forth, both in terms of strategy that when you argue that there's a red line and it's crossed and you don't do anything, it undermines the credibility of US threats, and some would argue actually increases the odds for getting into a conflict. Then politically, it just became a moment for his critics, vacillation, rather than deliberation.

I'm sure that's still on President Biden's mind, and as we are talking about, he's also very cognizant about making statements that will be hard to walk back from and that will send a signal to Putin and Russia that the conflict is escalating. It's a very tough moment. Here, we're talking about nuclear weapons and responding to nuclear weapons, which is even greater than what we were talking about in some ways with Obama, although that was obviously very serious and devastating as well.

Melissa: Nick, in the context of Julian's point that these are nuclear weapons, and it has been our understanding for decades now that this leads to a set of escalatory behaviors and actions. If Putin were to make use of tactical nuclear weapons in this case, does that change not only what the US must do, but does that change Europe? Does that change folks who might even be allies of Putin right now? How much does that potentially isolate Russia?

Nick: It really opens the door to the unknown because could NATO allies, for instance, in Eastern Europe, depending on where the weapons are used, if they're affected by the use of those weapons is that trigger the alliance to have to act, or India and for China, which have been signaling very clearly over the last several weeks that they would like to see this war ended, they would like to see some sort of diplomatic process started. That could be very critical because India and China in particular, are providing critical economic lifelines to Russia to help mitigate the impact of Western sanctions.

It's not clear that Putin could survive having even India and China turn against Russia if nuclear weapons, again, even if small-scale weapons are used. Finally, the question of the US and Western response.

If tactical weapons are used, it doesn't mean that the United States, if it chooses to respond, would necessarily have to respond with nuclear weapons but you would probably have a real intensification of US efforts to identify a target and then destroy Russian military assets in Ukraine in the Black Sea to retaliate for that, but then that does open up the possibility of is it a tit for tat, and then we say, we can now deescalate, or, and this was always the fear in the Cold War, is that you don't just simply say, "You use something, we responded, and now the scales are even," but that one side then continues to escalate forward.

Then you reach a logic that says, we have to go to rung 44 of Herman Kahn's famous ladder of escalation which is, as he put it, everyone pushes the buttons and goes home. That's definitely what we would like to avoid. Again, we don't have a roadmap for this because we've never fought a war other than using the two atomic bombs at the end of World War II to end that war. We've never actually fought a conflict with nuclear weapons. We have no guidelines, no past precedence that tells us how to manage this.

Melissa: Julian, I want to talk for a second about fear. Fear in that moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is in part invoked by President Biden, the fear that I think so many are feeling in this moment. As political science professor, I often talk to my students about the state having this monopoly on the legitimate use of violent force and coercion, and understanding the difference between war and terrorism, in part, because it's the state that is the actor.

I am wondering in this case, if part of what is happening is about the fear, is the provocation of fear in not only the Ukrainian population but across the globe. Even though this is a state actor, this constitutes in that sense, an act of terrorism in that it is generating this kind of fear response.

Julian: Well, I think that's a good point. We've moved away from the era when that fear was prevalent in American society. We've talked about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's really from the end of World War II through the 90s, the possibility of nuclear war was something very real for Americans. That ranges from school kids in the 1950s who had to do the duck-and-cover drills during the day, simulating and preparing for the possibility of nuclear war, to the movie that aired in 1983 on ABC, The Day After, which was about the effects of a nuclear war in Kansas that terrified the country. There was a nuclear freeze movement that had international standing.

The point was, anyone living through that era, and I'm one of them, remembers that, and I think it's faded. I think we have shifted in foreign policy to fears of terrorism, pandemics, but the nuclear weapons have not gone away. They have proliferated in many ways. More countries have access to them. I think part of what's happening at some level is that fear is coming back as a result of this confrontation and we're starting to reckon with the reality that nuclear weapons are still out there, and they can be as devastating as they were in 1962.

Melissa: Julian Zelizer is Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Thanks so much for joining us today, Julian.

Julian: Thanks for having me.

Melissa: Nikolas Gvosdev is Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College. Thank you, Nick, for being here.

Nick: Thank you.

[00:20:20] [END OF AUDIO]

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