Spectre of escalation over the Ukraine war

Over-estimating Russia’s readiness to unleash a nuclear war and yielding to Putin’s blackmail would indeed be a greater mistake than ignoring the threat and assuming that common strategic sense will always prevail in Moscow. Multi-optional risk assessments must be updated with every twist and turn in the trajectory of the ever-changing war, and messaging, which is the key instrument in the mind game of deterrence, needs to be fine-tuned accordingly. Putin is an anxious, ambitious and often misinformed counter-part in the fluid confrontation, in which his grasp on power is staked against the survival of humankind. NATO can master resources for denying him a victory in the war of his making, but a much broader coalition needs to be built for exorcising the spectre of nuclear catastrophe.