What is the Russian nuclear power?
3:18
(CNN) --
The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues with violence and death.
Facing stronger than expected resistance from the Ukrainians, Russia is also experiencing intensified isolation from much of the rest of the world:
A larger part of Russia has been cut off from the global banking system.
The value of the ruble has collapsed, losing about a quarter of its value.
The Russian Central Bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%.
Even some Russian oligarchs are pressuring President Vladimir Putin to end the war.
Russia-Ukraine War: Breaking News and Negotiations and Invasion
But Putin's rhetoric has also escalated to include direct references to his nation's vast nuclear arsenal, placing the country on its highest alert status and forcing an assessment of the balance that prevents nuclear-armed countries from destroying themselves. and to the world.
What did Putin say?
"Senior officials of leading NATO countries have indulged in aggressive remarks about our country, therefore I am ordering the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff to put the Russian Army Deterrence Force on combat alert." Putin said in a televised meeting with senior Russian defense officials on Sunday.
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Russia's nuclear weapons are part of its "deterrence" strategy.
Russia took control of the arms of other former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Belarus, in the 1990s.
Now Russia has invaded Ukraine, and Belarus, which is an ally of Moscow, plans to give up its non-nuclear status and could theoretically allow Russia to bring nuclear weapons to the country again.
Should people be worried?
President Joe Biden had a simple answer Monday when asked by reporters whether Americans should worry about the prospect of nuclear war.
"Did not say.
Is this nuclear threat unprecedented?
The threat is unprecedented.
I spoke with Matthew Fuhrmann, who, along with Todd Sechser, wrote the 2017 book, "Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy."
They documented 19 instances of nuclear threats and coercive language in the post-World War II era.
These include Soviet leaders like Nikita Khrushchev, who told the then US ambassador in 1959: "The West seems to forget that a few Russian missiles could destroy all of Europe."
They also include former US President Richard Nixon, using his insane foreign policy theory, who wanted the North Vietnamese to be told what his advisers supposedly thought of him: "We can't contain him when he's angry... and he has his hand on the nuclear button.
White House calls Putin's actions "manufactured threats" 2:05
Will Putin's threats work now?
"The nuclear blackmail record is not very good," Fuhrmann said in an email.
"In many cases, attempts to intimidate other countries by raising the specter of nuclear war clearly failed, as in Khrushchev's threats over Berlin. In other cases, such as the crises between the United States and China over Taiwan in the 1990s, 1950, a country got away with it after making nuclear threats, but it's not clear that those threats played a decisive role."
That said, the United States has certainly not entered Russia's war against Ukraine, and has not created a no-fly zone.
Putin must realize that the use of nuclear weapons would turn them against him and his people.
"Threatening nuclear weapons costs you nothing. Using them will cost you everything," former commander of US Army forces in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, said in an appearance on CNN on Monday.
What is Russia's nuclear arsenal?
Russia's total nuclear arsenal is larger than that of the United States, with about 6,250 nuclear warheads in all, according to the Arms Control Association.
The United States has more than 5,500.
Which countries have the most nuclear weapons?
How many does Russia have?
facts and numbers
Most of those warheads in both countries are not deployed on missiles or bases.
According to an assessment by the Arms Control Association, in terms of nuclear warheads deployed:
Russia has 1,458 warheads on 527 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and bombers.
Meanwhile, the US has 1,389 warheads on 665 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and bombers.
No other country known or believed to have nuclear weapons (the UK, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, China and North Korea) has anywhere near that number of nuclear warheads.
Petro Poroshenko: Putin is a threat to the world, more than Bin Laden was 1:37
Does Putin understand the implications of nuclear war?
"It gives you the feeling that you don't care or that you're not completely in touch with reality," said Tom Collina, policy director of the Ploughshares Fund, which advocates eliminating the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
“Does he fully understand the consequences of what he is doing or has he become one of those autocrats who is so divorced from reality,” Collina asked in a phone call when asked how Putin's rhetoric has changed in the past week. .
Sechser says Putin may not have thought it through.
“Russia has already played most of its escalation cards and does not have many tools left to resolve this crisis in its favor.
The nuclear alert seems more like an act of frustration than a calculated tactical move,” he said in an email.
"If the nuclear alert was intended to force the United States and Europe to ease economic sanctions or leave Ukraine, it failed. If anything, it served to further inflame world opinion against Russia," Sechser added.
The US has nuclear weapons in Europe
What has bothered Putin very much is that the US has around 100 nuclear weapons stored in Europe at NATO bases in Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands.
He fears that the United States could place nuclear weapons in NATO countries further east, closer to Russia.
US weapons in Europe are believed not to be live, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, but stored underground.
They would have to be transported on fighter planes for use.
A new version of the START Treaty first enacted in 2011 and extended in 2021 limits the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads each.
There are thousands of additional warheads that could be activated.
The US responds to Putin before the UN Security Council 3:26
What is Russia's policy on nuclear weapons?
While Russia employed a "no first use" policy with respect to nuclear weapons during the Cold War, a number of published policy positions on the subject have suggested since the 1990s that the country could use nuclear weapons in a localized war or if it felt that its sovereignty or national integrity was threatened.
Putin backed a new "deterrence" strategy in June 2020 that allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack on Russia that threatens its existence.
It is remarkable that Russia, in the US view, lied about the threats posed to it by Ukraine and the West.
What does the Biden administration say?
The Biden administration is being very careful to support Ukraine without getting directly involved in the military fight.
And he has made it very clear that the United States has not changed its own nuclear threat level.
Everything the administration says is focused on pushing Russia to withdraw without using the US military.
That is why the United States has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's request to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
"What we want to do now is reduce the rhetoric and de-escalate," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.
These are the countries with the most nuclear weapons in 2022 1:28
What is the US policy on the use of nuclear weapons?
The United States also does not have a "no-first-mover" policy and allows by the president's "sole authority" the use of nuclear weapons, and most presidents have said the "sole purpose" would be nuclear deterrence.
Former President Donald Trump appeared to expand the universe of possible nuclear scenarios to include "significant non-nuclear strategic strikes."
You've probably read about the so-called nuclear soccer ball (or nuclear briefcase) that is carried near the president at all times.
If you haven't, you should.
The Biden administration is expected to complete its own broad Nuclear Posture Review, which is traditionally conducted by new presidents, early this year.
The review sets out an administration's approach to nuclear weapons policy.
These reviews are often heavily classified.
As a candidate, Biden suggested that he would pursue a "single-purpose" nuclear strategy, meaning nuclear force can only be used to deter or retaliate against a nuclear attack against the United States and its allies.
Just before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, experts did not expect a major departure from the policies of previous presidents.
There is no room for error
Collina says her fear is a nuclear war started by accident.
"My concern is that as they raise the alert level, or the readiness level of their nuclear forces, if they do, then it's going to be easier to stumble into a nuclear war by mistake," he said, noting that it's already 77 years since that the US became the first and only country to detonate an atomic bomb.
A nuclear weapon detonated during a war would now provoke a reappraisal by the powers that have several of them.
"It would just be a devastating catastrophic event on the ground for the people there, but also for the future of the world," he said.
Nuclear weapons