Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rewritten conventional thinking about nuclear weapons in at least two important related ways.

Putin’s threat on February 25 of a nuclear response if the United States or NATO “interferes with us” represents a major change in the concept of “no first use,” a pledge or a policy by a nuclear weapons power not to be the first to use nuclear weapons. And this threat of first use by a nuclear weapons power who initiates a war with conventional weapons severely weakens, perhaps fatally, the adherence of non-nuclear weapon parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)!

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