In our day it is difficult for some, perhaps many, to recall that the West’s Cold War policy of nuclear deterrence—anchored in traditional just war moral principles of just cause, right intention, proportionality, and discrimination—helped avert war rather than increase the prospects of nuclear conflagration.

With Vladimir Putin’s planned two-day war to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government now in its third month and Russian casualties piling into the tens of thousands, concerns abound that Putin might take increasingly drastic steps to alter the disastrous situation he faces on the battlefield. To prevent those grim prospects—or at least contain their effects—President Joe Biden should turn to the playbook his predecessors drafted.

John F. Kennedy never flinched, but he showed his mettle during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was his finest hour. Will this one be ours?

Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement to place his nation’s nuclear deterrent forces on a state of heightened alert invites those of us in the free world—and surely the United States—to revisit the just war assumptions that served as a deterrence during the Cold War.

“The resistance to Russian expansion in Europe is right. The spectacle of American progressives supporting Wallace in opposing that resistance brings dismay to most European democrats.”

While the Trump administration took on China and the Biden administration continued many of those policies, including investments in Pacific allies to deter Chinese abuses, efforts are falling woefully short.

“It is time to take the full measure of certain arguments widely cherished by churchmen to excuse Soviet practice and minimize the Soviet threat” – Henry P. Van Dusen in 1946, responding to Christians who thought the West’s actions caused tensions with the USSR.

Toward the end of World War II, Americans contemplated the possibility of “world government” to prevent another catastrophe, especially after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

President Biden’s decision to fully extend the treaty without condition was mostly met with a figurative sigh of relief from arms control advocates and those who seek a world “free of nuclear weapons.” But Americans should be sober-minded about the real impact of the treaty, and not be lulled into believing New START, or any one treaty, will moderate US adversaries or better position the United States in our competition with either Russia or China.