Paradoxically Fear is the Foundation of Stability; Deterrence Works

Alastair Crooke, 20 May 2026

Professor Sergei Karaganov has written a paper — How to Win a World War — that advocates a limited nuclear strike on an adversary by Russia as the means of preventing a World War.

On the face of it, this may seem to be an oxymoron — a nuclear strike precisely done to prevent World War. A number of western commentators have reacted with unalloyed hostility, with Professor Karaganov being presented as a political outlier, advocating fringe policies that could open Pandora’s box to wider nuclear conflict.

Is it bluff or a revolutionary re-think of Russia’s defence strategy?

Yet, the West should take Professor Karaganov’s thesis very seriously for two reasons: Firstly, because it has substance, touching on the psyche underlying our era, together with the toxic societal contradictions it has birthed; and more directly, because his paper, and the many interviews arising from it, have produced a significant shift in Russian political and security thinking.

How then can this not be a matter for serious reflection, especially by Europeans whom it may affect directly?

At its core, is a very obvious proposition: Russia, after having been attacked by Germany and almost all of Europe had, with great effort, from the mid-1950s created a nuclear weapon “to ensure their sovereignty and security, and thus achieved nuclear parity … Without realizing it at the time, we thereby dismantled European/Western military superiority, the foundation of its colonialism and ideological domination”.

Russian deterrence had had its effect — fear of nuclear war began to tip the balance of power ... for a while. The implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, tilted it back.

But then, from 2000 onwards, as the US sought revanchism to revive its dominance, credence about the reality of Russian nuclear deterrence incrementally sunk. No western state truly feared Russia’s nuclear arsenal as western neo-cons loudly proclaimed it to be a bluff: that Russia would never dare to use it. The ‘bluff narrative’ of an overly cautious and weak Russia became embedded.

Professor Karaganov openly admits that Russia has some share of blame for the loss of deterrence. He elaborates on its passing, the mistakes made, and reflects on the reality that Russia has ended up with the imposition of a framework of economic and military attrition imposed on it through the West’s Ukrainian proxy.

This Ukrainian conflict nonetheless is but the visible surface part to an iceberg, whose submerged bulk is war — including the European obsession for fracturing and defeating Russia; constraining China; and the US-Israeli attempt at dismembering the Middle East.

Russia “needs a new policy”, Karaganov concludes.