‘Closer now than ever’ Historian Sergey Radchenko assesses Tucker Carlson’s claim that U.S.-Russian tensions in Ukraine risk nuclear war more than the Cuban Missile Crisis

Tucker Carlson is back in Moscow and promoting another interview with a senior state official. Ten months ago, the American right-wing pundit traveled to Russia and recorded a two-hour sitdown with Vladimir Putin, during which the president famously lectured him about the ancient historical roots of Moscow’s conflict with Kyiv. This time, Carlson says he spoke to Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov for another serving of “the Russian perspective,” which he argues is neglected in the American mainstream media. 

In his announcement shared on 𝕏, Carlson also claimed that American involvement in Ukraine’s missile strikes inside Russian territory means “we are closer to nuclear war than in any time in history — far closer than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.” To assess the accuracy of Carlson’s warning (which undoubtedly resonates with many of his followers), Meduza spoke to Dr. Sergey Radchenko, whose 2024 book “To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power” closely examines the psychology of the Kremlin’s nuclear brinksmanship in Cuba. 

— The Cuban Missile Crisis is something an American pundit can mention for an instant emotional response. It’s shorthand for “The Apocalypse — Almost.” Does the historical record support that reputation?

— Things here are a little bit uncertain because there is, as you say, this emotional response. If you take any moment in the Cold War where you'd say, “Well, this is really, really dangerous,” it seems that the Cuban Missile Crisis would fit the bill much more than almost any other moment. And the more we learn about it, the more unanswered questions we have. 

But one thing that has become clear to me in the course of writing about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that it was very unlikely that either Khrushchev or Kennedy would have deliberately authorized a preemptive nuclear strike. In fact, when Castro raised this issue in one of his missives to Khrushchev on October 26, 1962, Khrushchev's reaction was one of horror. He would talk about this for days on end, saying, “How can this guy even propose something crazy like this? Is he mad? Is he out of his mind? Does he not understand what a nuclear war would mean?”

So, for Khrushchev, nuclear war was not an option. He was not going to go that way. 

But it was still a dangerous moment because the adversaries knew nothing about each other’s intentions. For example, when the Americans had the U-2 imagery over Cuba (that’s how they found out about the presence of the IRBMs), they didn’t know that the Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons there. 

And when that came to light at one of the historical conferences on the Cuban Missile Crisis, [former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara went white because he understood there was a chance that the Soviets could have responded with tactical nuclear weapons if Kennedy, instead of delivering the quarantine speech on October 22, had ordered an airstrike on Cuba followed by an invasion.

Now, here’s an interesting thing about this: The Soviet commander in Cuba, a guy called Issa Pliev, did not have pre-delegated authority to use the IRBMs. He would have to clear it with Moscow. But there was a question of whether or not he could use the tactical nuclear weapons. There were different types, like the Frontline Combat Rockets and the Luna Complexes. 

— And he could have fired those at U.S. ships?

— Yes. For example, if there's an American invasion force, he could have used those to sink that.

Then the question is, well, what would the Americans have done? Would they have responded also with nuclear weapons? How would things have played out? 

That’s one episode where things are unclear and could have gone haywire. The moment Khrushchev realized that Kennedy was going to make the quarantine speech, he withdrew the authority from Pliev to use tactical nuclear weapons. He cabled him immediately, saying, “Do not use any nuclear weapons whatsoever,” which shows just how careful he was to make sure that there was not accidental use. But the danger was that a war could have started before he could get to Pliev with his instructions. And then, in the fog of war, Pliev could have authorized the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

So, that's one issue. And then everybody talks about the Vasily Arkhipov incident. The evidence is not particularly good for it. It's all oral history. The person who brought it out is Svetlana Savranskaya from the National Security Archive in Washington. 

Basically, this guy, Vasily Arkhipov, was second-in-command on one of the submarines. There were three Soviet submarines near Cuba. And when the Americans started dropping signaling depth charges, one of the captains of the submarines allegedly had a breakdown and said, “Well, I’m just going to fire a nuclear torpedo at the Americans.” And this guy, Vasily Arkhipov, said, “No, no. You cannot do that.” And he basically talked him out of it, but the evidence for [this story] is not particularly convincing.

Two years ago, when the Russian Defense Ministry declassified materials from the Cuban Missile Crisis (Vlad Zubok and I published an article in Foreign Affairs about this), one of the things I hoped for was that it would shed some light on the Arkhipov story. But there was nothing, which in itself doesn't prove anything. There still could be a post-action report from the submarine. But we have nothing except a piece of oral history that Svetlana Savranskaya unearthed.

As I argued in my thread on 𝕏, we're now in a different territory altogether because Russia and the United States know so much more about each other's nuclear arsenals than they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time, the Americans relied on U-2 imagery. They were so late in understanding that the Soviet Union shipped missiles to Cuba because of bad weather over Cuba. They couldn't see through clouds. 

Today, we have much better signal intelligence, satellite imagery, and so on. Anytime the Russians make any kind of moves in the nuclear sphere, it registers. In the fall of 2022, there was an immediate reaction. There was a conversation between the Pentagon and the Russian Defense Ministry. Questions were asked: “Why are you doing this? What are you doing? Do you recognize the consequences?” We don't know what exactly was happening, but we do know that this was one kind of nuclear scare that happened at that time, and the Americans promised a massive response that may have deterred the Russians. 

Additionally, there's now a hotline. There's constant communication — even just recently, before sending that [Oreshnik] missile against that target in Dnipro, the Russians informed the Americans about the launch.

So, when Carlson says this is much more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis, this seems to me like an uninformed take.

Listen to Sergey Radchenko discuss his book on The Naked Pravda

— You say we know too much now to slip into a nuclear war accidentally, but what about the risks of a computer error like the malfunction in September 1983 that caused a false alarm in the Soviet nuclear early warning system? Despite all the information now available, do you worry about automated vulnerabilities?

— Personally, I don't think so. The Stanislav Petrov incident is described in great detail in David Hoffman's book, The Dead Hand. He starts out this discussion with this notion: Here's this guy, Stanislav Petrov, checking for radar signals, and he sees a launch from the United States. He thinks something malfunctioned and wonders whether or not to inform his superiors. And he decides not to.

This is another one of those incidents we don’t know enough about, and I don’t know what to make of it, frankly. I think the evidence for this particular episode is a little bit unreliable — much like with Vasily Akhipov — but it’s another candidate for The Man Who Saved the World.

The early warning systems are some of the most protected systems out there. You'd think they are well protected against some mishap at the most dangerous moment. But, yes, obviously, you cannot rule it out entirely.

— What about deliberate nuclear attacks? You said we've learned that Khrushchev was actually quite cautious about managing the situation in Cuba. He was terrified by what Castro was saying, and he made sure his generals couldn't go behind his back or over his head. Do we know enough about Putin's intentions and psyche to judge the risks of a deliberate attack?

— I don't necessarily see anything like that. Even if you look at Putin's rhetoric, he's been playing the good cop to [prominent think tank scholar Sergey] Karaganov's bad cop when Karaganov says something like, “Oh, let’s nuke NATO!” Putin answers, “Well, you have to be serious with these things, you know. This is all too dangerous.”

I found this very interesting in Putin’s most recent comments on the Oreshnik system — that he would say, “This is like a nuclear weapon, except without a nuclear warhead.” He's basically saying, “Okay, I could go kind-of nuclear — but not-nuclear — by continuing to use these systems.” That is not the same as the intention to actually use nuclear weapons. 

There’s something specifically horrible and atrocious about nuclear weapons. I think it’s their sheer destructiveness and the idea that, effectively, life on earth would be wiped out.

I don’t think Putin really entertains this possibility now. In his Oreshnik comments, he seems to be suggesting that he might even try to use those missiles (which are obviously extremely expensive) to strike targets in Ukraine without a nuclear warhead. In other words, he seems to be trying almost to de-escalate with some of those comments. That’s how I interpreted it. 

But even if Putin used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, we're still not in the same ballgame as we were, for example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis because the danger then was a [direct] nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Let's say Putin used a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. There would be a conventional retaliation. You can imagine steps on the ladder of escalation that could actually lead to a full-on nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, but there are so many steps on this ladder. There are opportunities to pull back. 

It's hard to read Putin, but he doesn't strike me as an irrational person. He may have miscalculated by invading Ukraine. He's hoping now to use nuclear threats, much as Khrushchev did in the 1950s. It's a very similar tactic. He's trying to use nuclear intimidation, nuclear blackmail, to score political gains. He's obviously succeeding with people like Tucker Carlson, who seems to have internalized some of those issues.

But I have not seen evidence, so far, that Putin is actually serious about starting a nuclear war with the United States. He keeps saying it, but saying it is not the same as doing it. How, then, do we assess the danger? It's very difficult. I wouldn’t say the danger doesn’t exist because it's not even about intentions — it's about capabilities.

Is Russia not capable of wiping out much of Europe and the United States? Of course, it is. And the United States is capable of doing the same to Russia. We know this, and that's the basis of deterrence.

— Tucker Carlson claims that there has been “no backchannel or conversation” between Russia and the United States in the past two years. On 𝕏, you responded, “Backchannels are backchannels because no one knows about them.” What do we know about U.S.-Soviet backchannels that might tell us something about the ones that likely exist today?

— There are different types of backchannels. There are backchannels among intelligence [agencies]. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a backchannel involving a GRU representative in Washington — a guy called Bolshakov — and also there was a backchannel (it’s almost hard to call it a backchannel) involving Dobrynin, the ambassador, who had a direct line to RFK. Many details of the Cuban Missile Crisis deal were actually worked out through that backchannel. (In other words, key decisions were made or discussed between RFK and Dobrynin.) 

So, we have that kind of backchannel. Today, we obviously have the direct hotline, which is the “front channel,” I suppose. You also have embassies in both countries. Clearly, people in the embassy have a line to the Foreign Ministry and also to the Defense Ministry (there are always representatives of the intelligence community). I am confident that there are people (behind the scenes, at least) who know what numbers to call.

Remember the famous quip, allegedly by Kissinger, that he didn’t know what number to dial if he ever needed to call Europe. With Russia, the Americans have all the numbers. They know who to call, and they clearly use those channels. Over the last two and a half years, we’ve had a conversation between [White House National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan and [Kremlin Foreign Policy Adviser Yuri] Ushakov. We’ve had a conversation between [U.S. Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin and [Former Russian Defense Minister Sergey] Shoigu. 

We have not had direct communication between the presidents, which you may say is disturbing, but it's unnecessary because you can pass messages through all those [other channels].

And there are also other things we don't know about, the Elon-Musk-type channels that have clearly existed and, well…

— And even proliferated, maybe.

— And proliferated. Abramovich-type channels, et cetera. So, when Tucker says, “Oh, there's no backchannel,” my question is: How do you know? What makes you so sure? 

Clearly, communication has been degraded. There’s no question about it. But communication remains, and the two sides are sending signals, not all of which need to be private, by the way.

You can send public signals, too. Speeches and statements also sometimes serve a particular function. Sometimes, to misinform. Sometimes, to confuse. And sometimes, to signal your intentions. It’s always a game of signals and implicit messages on both sides.

Now, I don’t want to downplay what Carlson is saying; it is a dangerous situation. But I would not say the situation is so dangerous that we must make all these concessions to Putin right away. That’s obviously what the Russians are saying: “Surrender quickly! Otherwise, we’ll show you what’s what.” 

But this is not how it works. If you want to get anywhere in the business of dealing with Russians, you have to play this game the same way that they play and not succumb to unjustified fears.