How to read Putin’s next nuclear threat

In the later stages of the Cold War, U.S. President Ronald Reagan relied on the Russian saying, "Trust, but verify,” for his guiding principle in negotiating arms control with Moscow.

Those days now seem stable, cordial even, compared with our present moment. The safety net of treaties from that era has unraveled, a war is raging in Ukraine and Russian officials say they’re about to produce a revised doctrine on nuclear weapons use — in essence, a new nuclear threat. Once that appears, I suggest adapting Reagan’s approach to "distrust and be vigilant.



” I won’t speculate on the precise alterations President Vladimir Putin and his advisers are planning. But rest assured the new document will be more threatening than the last. It will aim, as Sergey Mironov, chair of Moscow’s A Just Russia — For Truth party put it in a statement Thursday, "to deny the U.

S. the opportunity to wage war with Russia with impunity through Ukrainian proxies.”.