I'm David Drucker, a senior writer with the Dispatch, and welcome to the Dispatch podcast.

For guests this week, Peter Rowell, he's a senior fellow and director center on Europe and

Eurasia at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. This week, we decided to

have Peter on so we could have a discussion about nuclear weapons and the threat they pose in the

wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and escalating competition between the United States and China,

and all things related to nuclear weapons.

Peter Rowell, thanks so much for joining us here at the Dispatch.

Thanks for having me, so I'm honored to be with you.

We wanted to have you on to discuss the prospects of nuclear war, and I don't mean to be

flipping about it, but it's just not something I think a lot of Americans have talked about in the

past 20 to 30 years. I'm a child of the Cold War. I can remember when this was a constant topic of

discussion with the United States and the Soviet Union end up in a nuclear configuration

because diplomacy failed, because one thing led to another, and there were lots of concerns about it.

The US obviously wins the Cold War, the Soviet Union disintegrates, and not until recently with

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has this become a topic of regular discussion once again.

There are concerns on the right and the left in the United States that the more the United

States does to help the Ukrainians resist Russia's invasion, the more we lead a global coalition

to help Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky resist Vladimir Putin's invasion,

the likelier it is, or the more possible it is that we end up in a nuclear war or nuclear

confrontation of some sort. How realistic is this today based on conditions on the ground?

Well, one shouldn't take it lightly, and I think it's correct for policymakers to

I don't want to say hand-ring or worry, but to think through the implications of our strategy

...