This is John Batchelor, a conversation with my colleague Peter Husey about why and when and how to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

Peter gives the vision of where this idea came from.

Western Europe during the worst of the Cold War, the Americans developed a defensive reason for using nuclear weapons on the

battlefield. The Russians did not. Here Peter explains in full. Remains the same. The Russians have not

changed since the Cold War. Despite their loss of the Soviet Union, it's the same doctrine. Peter Husey, more of this today.

We're saying mainly it came out of Western Europe, worried about the Russians invading through

the fold of cap into Western Europe. And we don't have the conventional capability to match the

Russians. So we use nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Our job was to stop an invasion. What the

Russians have developed is to enhance the capability to invade and keep us out of the business.

I think one of the reasons you don't see NATO forces in Ukraine is precisely because we are

worried the Russians might go nuclear if we did.

So we kind of cut the cake in the middle and say,

okay, we'll give Ukraine some weapons from our arsenals,

but God forbid we're not putting Americans there or American planes or American tanks

operated by NATO or American forces.

So John, basically, he succeeded in diminishing that capability, but that's part of his

entire operation, which is to use battlefield nuclear weapons to threaten and coerce us to stand

down. As you know, every five days he does this. And recently he said, oh, we're going to put

nuclear weapons in Baylorus just for fun.