International security

Escalate to de-escalate? US and Russia trade jabs on nuclear arms use

If anyone had any doubt left, a panel discussion today at the Munich Security Conference showcased with brutal clarity that the United States and Russia have very little common ground for a rapprochement on nuclear weapons — or much else, for that matter.

Seated on a podium here at the stately Bayerischer Hof hotel, John Sullivan, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, found himself treading familiar waters with Sergey Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador in Washington and now first deputy chairman of the committee on foreign affairs in the parliament’s upper chamber.

At issue were the morbid intricacies of the circumstances under which each country would unleash atomic arms on the other. Specifically, exactly how close to the brink of destruction by way of a conventional attack must one country be before it would shoot back with nukes.