Joe Biden is one of the few world leaders who will vividly remember the Cuban missile crisis. He was a student, almost 20 years old, when the US and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war. Now, as US president, Biden has half-mused, half-warned that the world is currently closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the crisis that unfolded in October 1962 — exactly 60 years ago.
There has been some tut-tutting that Biden should not be saying such things. The argument is that by publicly discussing nuclear war, the US president is playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands. Russia’s president and his army are in an increasingly desperate situation. Western intelligence services believe that the Russians are running out of ammunition and that this has only recently become apparent to Putin. By threatening to use nuclear weapons, Putin is using one of his remaining tools — trying to terrify Ukraine and its western backers into concessions.
Biden, however, is not alone in talking publicly about the nuclear threat. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also said that Putin is psychologically preparing the Russian people for the use of nuclear weapons. As Ukraine’s leader put it, this is “very dangerous”.