Since retaking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed concern that Russia’s war on Ukraine could spiral into World War III. The U.S. intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment recently warned about the “catastrophic damage” Russia’s nuclear forces could inflict on America.
Russian president Vladimir Putin understands that Washington fears nuclear escalation, and since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has used nuclear threats to manipulate Kyiv’s Western allies into hesitating over military support. But rather than falling victim to Moscow’s hollow rhetoric, Trump should call Putin’s bluff and increase pressure on the Kremlin.
Russia has a long history of using information operations to influence its adversaries’ decision-making. Decades ago, the Soviet Union pioneered a technique known as reflexive control, flooding its enemies’ news ecosystems with propaganda to influence US perceptions of the nuclear balance of power. As summarized by Russia’s Ministry of Defense, information warfare involves “a massive psychological manipulation of the population to destabilize the
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