This refers to an approach to armed conflict whereby a country escalates to violence to intimidate the adversary, more specifically in the context of using nuclear weapons.
Russia putting its nuclear forces into high alert, reacting to Western pressure in the war with Ukraine, and Belarus creating the legal conditions to become a nuclear nation, reminds of this approach. When Russia would face defeat or much bigger problems than anticipated in a military conflict, it could use tactical nuclear weapons.Russia has incorporated a limited, knockout, nuclear strike into military exercises since 2000.
The precise meaning and the modalities of this approach are disputed, but it seems that we no longer live in an era where using nuclear weapons is only an option when a country is threatened in its very existence. The hard **boundary** between an all-out catastrophic nuclear world conflict and conventional wars is, at least in the minds of some strategists, becoming blurred. They believe nuclear weapons can function on the battlefield among other, conventional weapons.
SOURCE: Russia Matters 
and Financial Times and Business Insider
TAGS: RUSSIA WAR UKRAINE NUCLEARWAR
A possible future scenario:
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