Nuclear Weapons Make Victory Impossible—The Limits of Great Powers Revealed by the War in Ukraine

Recently, while watching a video about international affairs, I heard an interesting argument.

The prolonged war in Ukraine is reportedly turning Russia into an “economic vassal of China.”

The Soviet Union was once the leader of the communist bloc, while China was something like its junior partner. Today, those positions have been reversed, and Russia is becoming increasingly economically dependent on China.

It may indeed be that China is one of the only major countries still willing to conduct ordinary business with Russia.

By starting the war, Russia has actually lost some of its freedom as a great power.

But another question interested me even more.

Why has Russia, with one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, spent more than four and a half years fighting Ukraine?

It possesses enough weaponry to destroy the world, yet it cannot bend a single neighboring country to its will.

This is the strange contradiction of modern warfare.

The Most Powerful Weapons Cannot Be Used

The destructive power of Russia’s nuclear weapons is overwhelming.

So why does it not use them against Ukraine?

The reason is simple: the price afterward would be far too high.

Using nuclear weapons would provoke not only the West, but would also seriously damage Russia’s relationships with China and India.

China, in particular, maintains its relationship with Russia while remaining economically connected to the West. It has no reason to support Russian nuclear use unconditionally.

If China were forced to choose between the West and Russia after a nuclear attack, it would choose the West without hesitation.

The country that used nuclear weapons would be treated as an enemy of humanity. I cannot imagine China volunteering to share that disastrous burden.

Moreover, even if a nuclear attack destroyed a city, there would be no guarantee that Ukraine would surrender.

It would more likely deepen Russia’s international isolation and make the war even less favorable for it.

For Russia, then, nuclear weapons are powerful instruments of intimidation as long as it merely possesses them, but extremely troublesome weapons when it comes to actually using them.

It is the ultimate trump card, yet playing it may cause you to lose.

Nuclear Weapons Have Placed a Ceiling on War

In earlier wars, nations mobilized their full military strength to achieve victory.

The arrival of nuclear weapons changed that.

Nuclear powers possess weapons of overwhelming destructive force. But using those weapons risks making the war itself uncontrollable.

As a result, nuclear weapons have placed a kind of ceiling on warfare.

Russia possesses nuclear weapons, yet in Ukraine it continues to fight a war of attrition with conventional forces.

Western countries, meanwhile, support Ukraine while remaining cautious about direct conflict with Russia.

Both sides limit how they fight because they fear escalation into nuclear war.

Of course, being unable to use nuclear weapons does not automatically mean that a country cannot win a conventional war.

But the overwhelming destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot simply be converted into victory in a conventional conflict.

We thought nuclear weapons would stop wars. Instead, because they cannot be used, the war has no choice but to continue.

That is the irony of modern warfare.

Able to Destroy the World, but Unable to Defeat a Neighbor

The war in Ukraine forces us to reconsider what the strength of a military superpower actually means.

Russia is one of the world’s leading nuclear powers.

But the number of nuclear weapons a country possesses and its ability to force an opponent to submit on the battlefield are two different things.

Nuclear weapons can serve as a deterrent, discouraging an enemy from launching an all-out attack.

But occupying another country’s territory or forcing it to accept political demands ultimately requires conventional military power.

And conventional warfare consumes both soldiers and weapons while imposing an ever-growing economic burden.

As a result, Russia has deepened its dependence on China and narrowed even its freedom of action as a great power.

Possessing a vast nuclear arsenal and having the freedom to act as a state wishes are entirely different things.

Nuclear weapons were once the ultimate symbol of military power.

But judging by the war in Ukraine, that ultimate power comes with a strange limitation.

It can destroy the world. But it cannot bend a neighboring country to its will.

Nuclear weapons, it seems, are most useful when no one uses them—and most troublesome when someone tries.