The Paradox of Victory: When Winning in Ukraine Raises the Nuclear Stakes
In 2022, Jeremy Shapiro warned in “ We Are on a Path to Nuclear War ” that the war between Russia and Ukraine was heading toward nuclear escalation.
2022年，杰里米·夏皮罗在《我们正走上核战争之路》中警告称，俄罗斯和乌克兰之间的战争正走向核升级。
Four years into the war, we asked him to revisit that argument.
战争结束四年后，我们请他重新审视这一论点。
In your original piece, you named nuclear escalation as “the path that we are currently on.” Instead, the past few years have brought several rounds of stalled negotiations and, more recently, a near-frozen front line.
在您的原创文章中，您将核升级称为“我们目前所走的道路”。相反，过去几年导致了几轮谈判陷入僵局，最近又出现了近乎冻结的前线。
What has kept nuclear escalation in check over the last year?
去年是什么让核升级得到控制？
We are still on that path.
我们仍然走在这条路上。
As the piece noted, “ It is likely that if the war simply bogs down into a war of attrition, that will not be enough to get to nuclear use.
正如这篇文章指出的那样，“如果战争很可能只是陷入消耗战，那将不足以发展到使用核武器。
Instead, escalation to nuclear weapons will require one side to feel that it is losing and that a military defeat will have catastrophic consequences for their regime and the personal safety of its leadership.” In the fall of 2022, it seemed that Russia might reach that point, but it managed to rally its forces and turn the tide.
相反，升级到核武器将要求一方感到自己正在失败，军事失败将对其政权及其领导人的个人安全造成灾难性后果。” 2022年秋天，俄罗斯似乎可能会达到这一点，但它成功地集结了力量并扭转了局势。
Since then, all sides have escalated considerably in a variety of different ways, but apparently, as Russia has not again been on the brink of defeat, they have not seriously reconsidered nuclear use.
自那时以来，各方都以各种不同的方式大幅升级，但显然，由于俄罗斯没有再次处于失败的边缘，因此他们没有认真地重新考虑使用核武器。
But they have also not moved much closer to any sort of compromise, settlement, or ceasefire.
但他们也没有更接近任何形式的妥协、解决或停火。
So if Ukrainian and Western plans to roll back the Russians in eastern Ukraine and Crimea somehow come to fruition, we would again be on the brink of a nuclear exchange.
因此，如果乌克兰和西方在乌克兰东部和克里米亚击退俄罗斯的计划以某种方式实现，我们将再次处于核交锋的边缘。
With front lines moving at a glacial pace, that is a much more distant possibility than in late 2022, so I feel more at ease than I did then about the possibility of nuclear escalation (even as the war remains a horror show along any number of other dimensions).
由于前线的移动速度极其缓慢，这种可能性比 2022 年底要遥远得多，因此我对核升级的可能性比当时感到更加放心（尽管战争在其他方面仍然是一场恐怖表演）。
Still, it remains strange and a little troubling that the stated Western objective, which is to defeat the Russian army in Ukraine, would, if reached, probably cause the Russians to resort to a nuclear attack, and then probably escalate into a nuclear war.
尽管如此，仍然奇怪和有点令人不安的是，西方所宣称的目标是击败乌克兰的俄罗斯军队，如果实现的话，可能会导致俄罗斯诉诸核攻击，然后可能升级为核战争。
Given the current conditions of the war in 2026, what could you foresee triggering nuclear escalation today?
鉴于 2026 年战争的现状，您认为今天什么会引发核升级？
Are these triggers different than they were in 2022?
这些触发因素与 2022 年有何不同？
No, and this points to a central reason I wrote the piece.
不，这指出了我写这篇文章的一个核心原因。
At the time, the Russians were in the habit of making nuclear threats almost willy-nilly, particularly in response to potential Western provision of new types of weapons to Ukraine.
当时，俄罗斯人几乎习惯于不情愿地发出核威胁，特别是在回应西方可能向乌克兰提供新型武器时。
Most Western analysts dismissed these threats, and they were right to.
大多数西方分析人士对这些威胁不予理睬，他们的做法是对的。
Russia was never going to go nuclear just because the United States or Europe provided some fancy, new weapons system to Ukraine.
俄罗斯永远不会仅仅因为美国或欧洲向乌克兰提供了一些奇特的新型武器系统就拥有核武器。
Still, in dismissing these empty threats, Western analysts were missing the more present and distinctly quieter nuclear threat that would come from Russia if it started to actually lose the war.
尽管如此，西方分析人士在驳斥这些空洞的威胁时，忽略了如果俄罗斯真正输掉这场战争，就会出现更现实、更安静的核威胁。
That meant the West could escalate as much as it wanted without fear of nuclear reprisal, unless it started to win the war (which was, in theory, the point of escalation).
这意味着西方可以随心所欲地升级，而不必担心核报复，除非它开始赢得战争（理论上，这就是升级的关键）。
In short, what the Russians said never mattered.
简而言之，俄罗斯人说什么并不重要。
It mattered what happened on the battlefield.
战场上发生的事情很重要。
It still does.
现在仍然如此。
Finally, with the benefit of hindsight, what would you change about your original argument?
最后，事后看来，你会改变你最初的论点吗？
There are many things — there always are, alas.
有很多事情——唉，总是有的。
I would highlight two that I hope have informed my subsequent work.
我想强调两个我希望对我后续工作有所帮助的内容。
First, the article underestimated Russian flexibility, which is a common error that we keep making nonetheless.
首先，这篇文章低估了俄罗斯的灵活性，但这是我们不断犯的一个常见错误。
The Russian regime has proved incredibly adept at absorbing setbacks and redefining defeat without regarding each reversal as a threat to its survival.
事实证明，俄罗斯政权非常善于吸收挫折并重新定义失败，而不将每次逆转视为对其生存的威胁。
That doesn’t mean that if it truly saw something as an existential threat to the regime it wouldn’t go nuclear, but it does mean that the threshold may be higher than we think.
这并不意味着如果它真的认为某件事对政权构成生存威胁，它就不会发展核武器，但这确实意味着门槛可能比我们想象的要高。
A second regret is the article’s tendency to confuse, at least in its language, the scenario’s internal logic for its likelihood.
第二个遗憾是这篇文章至少在语言上倾向于混淆场景的内部逻辑及其可能性。
In the scenario, each step follows plausibly from the preceding one.
在该场景中，每一步似乎都遵循前一步。
Russian defeat produces existential threat and tactical nuclear use.
俄罗斯的失败产生了生存威胁和战术核使用。
Nuclear use produces U.S. retaliation.
使用核武器会引起美国的报复。
U.S. retaliation produces Russian attacks on NATO.
美国的报复导致俄罗斯对北约的攻击。
Those attacks produce general war, but the plausibility of this narrative does not determine its probability.
这些袭击引发了全面战争，但这种叙述的合理性并不能决定其发生的可能性。
Indeed, each step creates an opportunity to change course that informed leaders could seize.
事实上，每一步都创造了一个改变方向的机会，知情的领导人可以抓住这个机会。
On one level, the article was meant to highlight these opportunities, but the language of the scenario often implies inevitability rather than contingency.
一方面，这篇文章的目的是强调这些机会，但场景的语言通常暗示着必然性而不是偶然性。
This language was in part a rhetorical strategy.
这种语言在某种程度上是一种修辞策略。
It is rare, probably because it is surpassingly stupid, for analysts to make such a bold, falsifiable prediction.
分析师很少做出如此大胆、可证伪的预测，这可能是因为它极其愚蠢。
I knew that despite all the caveats in the article about the lack of inevitability, etc., most people would understand the article as predicting a nuclear war.
我知道，尽管文章中提出了关于缺乏必然性等的所有警告，但大多数人都会将这篇文章理解为预测核战争。
But I felt at the time that people were underappreciating the danger we were in and that I had a duty to name it.
但当时我觉得人们低估了我们所面临的危险，而我有责任指出这一点。
That required a rhetorical clarity that borders on stupidity, which is sort of my specialty as a writer.
这需要一种近乎愚蠢的修辞清晰度，而这正是我作为作家的专长。
War on the Rocks was of course the natural outlet for such idiotic clarity.
岩石上的战争当然是这种愚蠢的清晰的自然发泄方式。
I deeply appreciate the War on the Rocks editors’ willingness to publish it and to give it such a clarifying headline.
我非常感谢《岩石之战》的编辑们愿意出版它并给它一个如此清晰的标题。
I would also like to think the article had some effect on how people saw that situation and perhaps reduced the danger we were in, but honestly, I have no idea whether it did or not.
我还想认为这篇文章对人们如何看待这种情况产生了一些影响，并可能减少了我们所处的危险，但说实话，我不知道它是否起到了作用。
Jeremy Shapiro is the director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
杰里米·夏皮罗（Jeremy Shapiro）是欧洲外交关系委员会研究主任，也是布鲁金斯学会非常驻高级研究员。
He served in the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2013.
2009年至2013年，他在美国国务院任职。