{"id":58250,"date":"2018-02-17T21:27:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T21:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/02\/17\/escalate-to-de-escalate-us-and-russia-trade-jabs-on-nuclear-arms-use\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:16:08","slug":"escalate-to-de-escalate-us-and-russia-trade-jabs-on-nuclear-arms-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/smr\/munich-security-forum\/2018\/02\/17\/escalate-to-de-escalate-us-and-russia-trade-jabs-on-nuclear-arms-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Escalate to de-escalate? US and Russia trade jabs on nuclear arms use"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MUNICH \u2014 If anyone had any doubt left, a panel discussion today at the Munich Security Conference showcased with brutal clarity that the United States and Russia have very little common ground for a rapprochement on nuclear weapons \u2014 or much else, for that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seated on a podium here at the stately Bayerischer Hof hotel, John Sullivan, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, found himself treading familiar waters with Sergey Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador in Washington and now first deputy chairman of the committee on foreign affairs in the parliament\u2019s upper chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At issue were the morbid intricacies of the circumstances under which each country would unleash atomic arms<\/a> on the other. Specifically, exactly how close to the brink of destruction by way of a conventional attack must one country be before it would shoot back with nukes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sullivan and Kisliyak accused one another of following a doctrine of \u201cescalate to de-escalate,\u201d which means something like placing a nuclear punch just tiny enough to make a full-blown atomic war seem disproportionate in response, but powerful enough to end whatever skirmish is in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Strangelovian was the conversation at times that the speaker immediately following, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, joked that she needed a drink when entering the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s Nuclear Posture Review,<\/a> a new policy document on the nation\u2019s atomic-weapons strategy and nonproliferation plans, was the object Kislyak\u2019s ire and that of the representative from China, Fu Ying, chairwoman of the committee on foreign affairs of the National People\u2019s Congress, who joined at times in attacking Sullivan.<\/p>\n\n\n\t