Professor Roy Allison (St Antony’s College, Oxford University; Oxford School of Global and Area Studies) has published a new article 'Averting acute escalation in Russia's war against Ukraine' for the journal International Affairs, Volume 101, Issue 5, September 2025, Pages 1769–1791 (https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaf137).
Since 2022 Russia’s war against Ukraine has continued to raise dangerous risks of conflict escalation to the use of nuclear weapons or to NATO state territory. This has been fuelled by Russian nuclear threats to deter western military assistance to Ukraine. Western powers have sought to mitigate such risks through deliberate signalling of resolve, coupled with restraints in the form of tacit ground rules of escalation control and incremental change in military commitments to Ukraine. This approach is consistent with past strategic thinking about escalation dynamics between nuclear-armed powers. This article argues that facing down Russian nuclear threats has been essential for deterrence. Yet overcautious restraints on western military support for Ukraine enabled Russia to further subvert the Ukrainian state and the European security order, which leaves a range of escalation risks in the medium-term.
You can access the article in full here.
