In 1914, Europe stumbled into a war no one wanted and few understood;a war that destroyed empires and redefined civilization.

Today, Washington risks repeating that mistake, this time with nuclear weapons on the table. Through arrogance, ignorance, or incompetence, the United States is drifting toward direct confrontation with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, with consequences that could be apocalyptic.

President Trump last week said he has “sort of” made a decision about supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine or NATO allies.

He wants to learn more about “what they are doing with them” before making a final decision. His goal is to avoid escalating the conflict, but his words suggest he is doing anything but.

Is Trump posturing, playing 5-D chess as some claim, or joining the warmongering wing of the GOP?

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Russian Iskander tactical ballistic missiles, the short-range workhorses of the Kremlin’s arsenal, are reportedly reaching their targets with increasing accuracy, potentially in the 90% range based on Patriot missile interception rates.

According to open-source analyses, the Iskander’s circular error probability (CEP) may now be as tight as 10–20 meters when guided by optical seekers, compared to 200 meters with inertial-only systems. This level of precision makes even subsonic versions deadly against fixed military targets.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air defense network is struggling. The Financial Times recently reported that Russian missile upgrades have sharply reduced Patriot missile interception rates from roughly 37 percent in August 2025 to just 6 percent in September 2025.

Analysts at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) noted that intercepting six Iskanders can require 12–18 PAC-3 missiles, costing between $48 million and $72 million per engagement. Ukrainian stocks are depleted faster than they can be replenished.

Every Patriot missile fired in Ukraine represents one less available for America’s own defense. Every escalation that weakens U.S. readiness increases the risk that our sons and daughters could one day fight a nuclear war we didn’t choose.

Some observers have suggested that localized electromagnetic interference, possibly even low-yield EMP effects, occurred before certain missile strikes, temporarily impairing Ukrainian radar and communications.

While unconfirmed, this would fit with Russia’s doctrine of combined-arms electronic warfare. EMP warheads are a recognized capability of the Iskander weapons system.

This is the “good” news because Moscow still sees ways to achieve its military goals without using nuclear weapons.

The bad news is that Washington seems determined to eliminate those options through continued escalation.

In late September, the Pentagon suggested transferring Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, a weapon capable of striking Moscow directly from Ukrainian territory.

Specifically, the Tomahawk cruise missile can strike targets up to 1,500 miles away, even in heavily defended airspace.

As Ukraine doesn’t have submarines or a significant navy, these missiles would be ground-launched. However, this is not yet ready for prime time, as off-the-shelf ground-launched transporter erector launcher systems for the Tomahawk do not currently exist.

Nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles were canceled after the Cold War, but the U.S. Navy is now taking steps to reintroduce them. Russia is aware of this cancellation, but at some point, U.S. policy discussions turn into implementation, and Russia will likely be mindful of this shift.

Supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would deliberately cross Russia’s declared “red lines,” inviting symmetrical retaliation and pulling NATO further into the conflict.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that such a move would provoke an “appropriate” response, implying attacks on NATO infrastructure within member countries.

Since Ukraine doesn't have the naval or submarine platforms to launch Tomahawks, its only viable option is to fully develop and deploy a land-based launch system.

In 2019, the “U.S. military fired what appears to be Tomahawk Block IV missile with a range of more than 500 kilometers, likely the first such test of an American missile previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.”

Designing, building, and deploying a complete land-launched Tomahawk variant and then integrating this system into Ukraine’s command structure would take months or even years. Even then, only a few dozen missiles might be available, with other countries, such as the Philippines and Japan, waiting for these new U.S. weapons.

The U.S. Navy’s total Tomahawk stockpile is roughly 3,700–4,000 missiles, far short of the 12,000 needed to load every U.S. ship and submarine fully. Raytheon currently produces fewer than 100 missiles per year, each costing $1.9 million.

Every missile sent to Kyiv would weaken America’s naval readiness.

In other words, the U.S. would risk nuclear escalation for a symbolic gesture with little military benefit.

The Beltway assumption that new Western weapons automatically “change the battlefield” is naive.

After the delivery of HIMARS launchers in 2022, Ukraine briefly gained an advantage, only for Russia to adapt within months by dispersing depots, using camouflage, and deploying electronic warfare (EW) systems to jam GPS signals.

If Tomahawks arrive, Russia already has countermeasures. Its Buk-M3 Viking, can intercept subsonic cruise missiles. Its EW brigades can jam GPS and communications. Its drones can hunt launchers. And unlike Ukraine, Russia has the industrial depth and capacity to absorb losses and recalibrate.

Russia almost certainly has access to intelligence from one of the world’s largest fleets of surveillance and reconnaissance satellites operated by China.

In effect, Washington risks trading a fleeting tactical advantage for a long-lasting strategic threat. Moscow’s next move could be asymmetric, involving cyberattacks, strikes on NATO logistics hubs, flying swarms of unarmed drones to disrupt air traffic at major allied airports, as we recently saw in Munich, or even the use of tactical nuclear weapons to “de-escalate by shock.”

The bigger threat isn't a single decision but a pattern of gradual steps. What started with shipments of helmets has turned into tanks, then F-16s, and now possibly strategic-range cruise missiles. Each move is justified as “defensive,” but each one chips away at the line between proxy war and direct conflict.

Russia’s doctrine is clear: if attacks on its territory come from NATO-supplied systems, especially those using Western targeting data, it reserves the right to respond against the source. If that response hits a NATO base in Poland, Article 5 would require an allied response.

At that moment, the United States would face an impossible choice: either back down in humiliation or escalate toward a direct conflict with a nuclear peer. History offers little confidence that our current leadership would choose restraint.

American politicians, blinded by moral certitude and geopolitical nostalgia, are treating nuclear confrontation as a manageable risk. It is not.

As novels like William Forstchen’s “One Second After” or Annie Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War” vividly illustrate, such a conflict would end modern civilization within hours.

The precision of the Iskander, the Patriot’s exhaustion, and the range of the Tomahawk are not just ideas. They represent steps on an escalation ladder that could lead to serious danger. Russia has every reason to avoid a nuclear war; Washington seems to have forgotten that it’s even possible.

As long as Russia and its allies have a range of non-escalatory or at least non-nuclear options to respond to NATO’s provocations, the risk to the world is high but not extreme. Washington, the U.K., and Germany seem determined to remove Russia’s conventional weapon-based options by pressing forward with an existential threat to that country.

If history teaches anything, it is that great powers rarely survive the wars they begin in ignorance.

The world once teetered on the brink of disaster because leaders refused to grasp the scale of the impending destruction. We may be doing the same now, only this time, the price will not be millions of lives but civilization itself. Washington still has time to step back, but time is running out.
 

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph, and email brianjoondeph@gmail.com.