It's been a year since the Russians invaded Ukraine and launched the biggest conventional

war in Europe since the Nazis.

It's February 24th, 2022.

Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine.

One of the things that I think we've all worried about in that time is the underlying

problem of nuclear weapons.

President Putin has ordered Russia's strategic nuclear forces to be placed on high alert.

This is a nuclear armed power at war with hundreds of thousands of people in the middle

of Europe.

In just a few days Vladimir Putin has not just invaded Ukraine, he seemingly threatened

nuclear war on anyone trying to stop him.

This is the nightmare that American foreign policy has dreaded since the beginning of the

nuclear age.

And I think people have kind of put it out of their mind how potentially dangerous this

conflict is, which is understandable, but also I think takes us away from thinking about

something that is really the most important foreign policy problem in the world today.

During the Cold War we would have thought about that every day, but these days people just

don't think about it and I think they should.

My name is Tom Nichols, I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic and I've spent a lot of years

thinking about nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

For 25 years I was a professor of national security affairs at Naval War College.

For this episode of Radio Atlantic, I want to talk about nuclear weapons and what I think

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