Putin plays nuclear poker with conventional cards

Eighty years ago, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ushering in the nuclear age. Many analysts claimed those weapons forever changed the nature of war. They were wrong.

Two centuries earlier, Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined war as a violent clash of wills — a cyclical struggle of action, reaction, chance, and chaos. That description fits every era, from Thucydides to today.

Putin has nothing to lose by threatening to use nuclear weapons. He has everything to lose by actually using them.

The nature of war doesn’t change. What does change is its character, shaped by technology , geography, and culture. Nuclear weapons altered that character profoundly, preventing a U.S.-Soviet clash but never abolishing Clausewitz’s law of the battlefield.