Major escalation is occurring between Ukraine, its Nato backers, and Russia. In response to the US decision to allow Ukraine to use US Army Tactical Missile Systems — ATACMS — to strike deep into Russian territory, Moscow has fired what it says is a new ballistic missile onto Dnipro in Ukraine. While the Russian missile carried conventional warheads, it is capable of delivering a nuclear payload, sending an ominous signal to Ukraine and the West.

Just as alarmingly, in a move undertaken in response to Washington’s consideration of these deeper strikes, Vladimir Putin this week lowered Russia’s threshold for nuclear weapons use in its official doctrine. The change says that Russia might use nuclear weapons to respond to a conventional attack on its territory by a nation that is supported by a nuclear power. Moscow is, in other words, warning that it might resort to nuclear war over Washington letting Ukraine fire US missiles at Russia.

Foreign policy elites in Washington and Europe largely dismiss escalation danger in Ukraine. They argue that crossing various Russian red lines — by sending tanks, F-16s, allowing the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to hit Russian territory, and tolerating Ukraine’s assassinations and drone attacks in Russia — has already called Putin’s bluff, and we need not worry about escalation, even the nuclear sort.

Coming from Ukraine, this cavalier attitude is more understandable. Facing an existential danger, heightened risk of escalation may seem relatively less significant. But the Western nations helping Ukraine have very different interests to those of Kyiv. Blowing off escalation risks, especially with the ATACMS decision, is strategic malpractice. There are several reasons why.

First, it is reckless to assume that Russia’s failure to respond to past violations with nuclear weapons in Ukraine or by inflicting serious pain directly on the United States means it is simply bluffing. It is, in fact, wrong to say Russia has not already responded to enforce its stated red lines. It responded to past actions by increasing the intensity of the war inside Ukraine, especially by air strikes against civilians and Ukraine’s key infrastructure offensives. Russia has also likely escalated horizontally by widening the scope of conflict, including by helping Yemen’s Houthis target Western ships, acts of sabotage in Europe, and most recently potentially cutting fiberoptic telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea.

Second, the threat of nuclear war should be given a wide berth. It is simple expected utility reasoning to note that even if there is a low probability chance of an extremely destructive outcome, you should still take great care to avoid it. In any case, US intelligence apparently finds the odds of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine to be quite significant. According to David Ignatius in the Washington Post, intelligence officials believed there was a 50-50 chance Russia would use nuclear weapons in October 2022 to stop Ukraine’s advances in Kherson and Kharkiv. CIA Director William Burns publicly confirmed that in the autumn of 2022, the risk of nuclear use was considered very real. US intelligence agencies similarly warned that long-range strikes into Russia could prompt a dangerous counter-escalation from Moscow.

Third, while the risks of firing ATACMS into Russia are high, the security pay-off is tiny. As Jennifer Kavanaugh writes, the tactical benefit from allowing Ukraine to strike into Russia is negligible. Ukraine does not get enough missiles, given Western stockpile challenges, or enough useful targets in range to much effect the balance on the battlefield. Longer-range ATACMS strikes may have some benefit in complicating Russian offensives and shoring up Ukraine’s fraying front lines. But what Ukraine really needs is more trained manpower, more local firepower, and to commit to defensive strategy, as opposed to offensive excursions such as in Kursk.

Crossing Russian red lines, particularly with ATACMS strikes, also serves no concrete security interest for the United States and its Nato allies. Not only is US and European security threatened by courting Russian countermeasures, but allowing Ukraine to use an already limited supply of ATACMS further diminishes dwindling weapons stockpiles. Western aid to Ukraine and its success in hurting Russia has already shown that violations of sovereignty norms are not taken lightly. And with Russian forces bottled up in Eastern Ukraine, there is no reason to believe attacks inside Russian territory are necessary for containing its further aggression.

We are in the early days of policy that would have been unthinkable at any other time since the dawn of the nuclear age — a US proxy firing American missiles into Russian territory with the explicit approval of the White House. So far, the results have been awful: escalation and heightened risk of nuclear war for no clear benefit. The ATACMS decision may be unlikely to bring Armageddon, but it shows a recklessness among US leaders that is itself alarming.

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Christopher McCallion is a fellow and Benjamin H. Friedman is policy director at Defense Priorities.

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