“The most acute period of our military conflict with the West in Ukraine is entering its final stage. The piece was credited to Sergei Karaganov, long considered to be a pseudonym used by Russian President Vladimir Putin. AdvertisementPutin’s answer was: nuclear weapons, and that’s it. If geopolitical circumstances become dire enough, a nuclear power looking to change the status-quo and possessing exceptional political will, along with a certain amount of recklessness, can achieve substantial foreign policy goals merely by threatening to use nuclear weapons. The Putin agenda for World War IV, articulated by the man himself on that day in March 2014, did not call for the destruction of the loathsome United States, which truly could have only been achieved via mutual suicide during a full-scale nuclear war.