On the 1,000th day of the war in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky took advantage of Washington’s new willingness to allow long-range missiles to be shot deep into Russia. Until this weekend, President Biden had declined to allow such strikes using American weapons, out of fear they could prompt World War III.

在乌克兰战争的第1000天，得到向俄罗斯境内使用导弹许可的泽连斯基总统将华盛顿的这一态度改变转化成了实际行动。在这个周末之前，拜登总统一直拒绝授权使用美国武器进行此类打击，担心这可能引发第三次世界大战。

On the same day, Russia formally announced a new nuclear doctrine that it had signaled two months ago, declaring for the first time that it would use nuclear weapons not only in response to an attack that threatened its survival, but also in response to any attack that posed a “critical threat” to its sovereignty and territorial integrity — a situation very similar to what was playing out in the Kursk region, as American-made ballistic missiles struck Russian weapons arsenals.

就在同一天，俄罗斯正式宣布了两个月前该国就曾发出信号将遵守的核武器使用新原则，首次对外表明俄罗斯不仅将使用核武器来应对威胁其生存的攻击，还将使用核武器来应对任何对其主权和领土完整构成“严重威胁”的攻击——库尔斯克地区俄罗斯武器库遭到美制弹道导弹袭击的情况与这一描述非常接近。

And there was another wrinkle to Russia’s guidelines for nuclear use: For the first time, it declared the right to use nuclear weapons against a state that only possesses conventional arms — if it is backed by a nuclear power. Ukraine, backed by the United States, Britain and France — three of the five original nuclear-armed states — seems to be the country Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, had in mind.

俄罗斯的核使用指导方针还有另一个问题：该国首次宣布自己有权对一个只拥有常规武器的国家使用核武器——前提是这个国家得到核大国的支持。乌克兰获得了美国、英国和法国的支持（这是五个最初拥核国家中的三个），该国似乎正是俄罗斯总统普京所指的国家。

Yet it was telling that the reaction in Washington on Tuesday was just short of a yawn. Officials dismissed the doctrine as the nothingburger of nuclear threats. Instead, the city was rife with speculation over who would prevail as Treasury secretary, or whether Matt Gaetz, a former congressman surrounded by sex-and-drug allegations though never charged, could survive the confirmation process to become attorney general.

然而，周二华盛顿对此举的反应充其量只是打个呵欠而已，这很说明问题。官员们将这一说法斥为核威胁中的空话。整个华盛顿都在热议和猜测的是：谁将成为财政部长，或者被性和毒品指控包围但从未遭到起诉的前国会议员马特·盖茨能否通过确认程序成为司法部长。

The Ukraine war has changed many things: It has ended hundreds of thousands of lives and shattered millions, it has shaken Europe, and it has deepened the enmity between Russia and the United States. But it has also inured Washington and the world to the renewed use of nuclear weapons as the ultimate bargaining chip. The idea that one of the nine countries now in possession of nuclear weapons — with Iran on the threshold of becoming the tenth — might press the button is more likely to evoke shrugs than a convening of the United Nations Security Council.

乌克兰战争改变了很多东西：它夺走了数十万人的生命，粉碎了数百万人的生活，震撼了欧洲，加深了俄罗斯和美国之间的敌意。但它也让华盛顿和世界习惯了重新使用核武器作为最终的谈判筹码。现在，九个拥核国家中的一个（伊朗即将成为第十个）可能会按下按钮，比起召集联合国安理会，这种想法更有可能让人只是耸耸肩而已。

“This is a signaling exercise, trying to scare audiences in Europe — and to a lesser extent, the United States — into falling off support for Ukraine,” said Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor who has tracked nuclear risks for decades. “The actual short-term probability of Russian nuclear use hasn’t increased. The long-term probability of nuclear war has probably increased slightly — because U.S. willingness to support strikes deep into Russia is reinforcing Putin’s hatred and fear of the West, and will likely provoke Russian responses that will increase Western fear and hatred of Russia.”

“这是一个信号演习，试图吓唬欧洲的听众——在一定程度上也包括美国——让他们放弃对乌克兰的支持，”哈佛大学教授马修·邦恩说，几十年来他一直在追踪核风险。“俄罗斯使用核武器的实际短期可能性并没有增加。核战争的长期可能性可能略有增加，因为美国支持打击深入俄罗斯的意愿正在加强普京对西方的仇恨和恐惧，并可能激起俄罗斯的反应，从而增加西方对俄罗斯的恐惧和仇恨。”

Mr. Biden’s decision to allow the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, was a major change in U.S. policy.

拜登决定允许乌克兰使用被称为“陆军战术导弹系统”(ATACMS)的远程导弹，这是美国政策的重大变化。

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who will be inaugurated in about nine weeks, has promised to limit U.S. support for Ukraine while boasting during the campaign that he will end the war “in 24 hours.” For Mr. Putin, the new nuclear doctrine is the latest of several attempts to turn the world’s largest nuclear arsenal into something the world might actually fear again, giving him the global influence that his gas-and-war-economy so far cannot.

候任总统特朗普将在大约九周后宣誓就职，他承诺限制美国对乌克兰的支持，同时在竞选期间吹嘘，他将在“24小时内”结束战争。对普京来说，新的核原则是几次尝试中的最新一次，目的是把世界上最大的核武库变成这个世界可能再次真正惧怕的东西，让他获得其天然气和战争经济迄今无法获得的全球影响力。

In a statement from the National Security Council, the Biden administration condemned the new doctrine but showed no sense of alarm. There was no change in Russia’s nuclear posture, the statement noted, and thus no need for a change in the United States’ alert levels. The underlying sense was that it was all words, that Mr. Putin was trying to create for himself new justifications to threaten nuclear use. And none of the restraints on him had changed.

在国家安全委员会的一份声明中，拜登政府谴责了这一新原则，但没有表现出任何恐慌。声明指出，俄罗斯的核态势没有改变，因此没有必要改变美国的警戒级别。潜在的含义是，这一切都是空话，普京试图为自己创造一些威胁使用核武器的新理由。而对他的限制没有任何改变。

“Regardless of the threshold he may try to set, Putin’s decision to employ a nonstrategic nuclear weapon any place, at any time, on any scale would still be met with severe consequences, as President Biden has repeatedly noted,” said Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. professor and nuclear expert who recently returned from a two-year assignment at the Pentagon. There he worked on the new, largely classified “nuclear employment guidance” for the United States — one that focuses more on China’s growing arsenal, and its partnership with Russia.

“正如拜登总统一再指出的那样，不管普京试图设置什么样的门槛，只要他决定在任何地点、任何时间、以任何规模使用非战略核武器，仍将面临严重后果，”麻省理工学院教授、核专家维平·纳朗说，他最近刚刚结束了在五角大楼为期两年的任务。在五角大楼，他为美国制定了新的、基本上属于机密的“核指南”，这份指南更多关注中国日益增长的核武库，以及中俄伙伴关系。

“Putin would still have to account for U.S. and global responses and escalation management,” Mr. Narang noted. “Even with these revisions to Russian doctrine, I’m still very confident that U.S. and NATO conventional and nuclear posture are capable of deterring Russian nuclear employment, and restoring deterrence should Putin miscalculate.”

“普京仍然需要考虑美国和全球的反应，以及对局势升级的管理，”纳朗指出。“即使俄罗斯的核原则做了这些修改，我仍然非常有信心，美国和北约的常规态势及核态势有能力阻止俄罗斯的核使用，并在普京误判的情况下恢复威慑。”

The chance of that miscalculation seems low: Mr. Putin has been cautious throughout the war about launching any overt attack on NATO nations, which he wants to keep out of the war. And the United States has been fearful at times that he might actually detonate a nuclear weapon — notably in October 2022, when American intelligence officials picked up conversations among Russian generals that prompted fears that Mr. Putin would use a battlefield nuclear weapon against a Ukrainian military base or other target.

出现这种误判的可能性似乎很低：在整个战争期间，对于向北约国家发动任何公开攻击，普京一直持谨慎态度，他希望北约国家置身于战争之外。美国有时也担心他可能真的引爆核武器——尤其是在2022年10月，当时美国情报官员窃听了俄罗斯将领之间的谈话，这让美国担心普京会对乌克兰军事基地或其他目标使用战场核武器。

Mr. Biden told attendees at a New York fund-raiser at that time that the United States was closer to a nuclear exchange than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis, terrifying some in the room. But in the end, it did not materialize. And as Mr. Narang notes, “a nuclear threshold is not determined by words, but by the deterrence balance and stakes, and changes to declaratory doctrine do not at all change the deterrence balance between the U.S., NATO and Russia.”

当时，拜登在纽约的一个筹款活动上对与会者说，自古巴导弹危机以来，美国比以往任何时候都更接近于进行核打击，这让在场的一些人感到害怕。但最终，它并没有成真。正如纳朗所指出的那样，“核门槛不是由语言决定的，而是由威慑平衡和利害关系决定的，宣示性原则的改变根本无法动摇美国、北约和俄罗斯之间的威慑平衡。”

Nonetheless, this was not the world that Western leaders envisioned for the mid-2020s. The post-Cold War era began with the dismantling of Russian and American weapons at a fierce pace. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine turned over thousands of atomic weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and other countries. Many Ukrainians regret that to this day. Warheads were blended down into fuel for nuclear power, shipped to the United States, and for years lit and heated houses across the United States.

尽管如此，这并不是西方领导人对于这个世界在2020年代中期的设想。后冷战时代始于俄罗斯和美国以迅猛的速度拆除武器。苏联解体时，乌克兰交出了数以千计的核武器，以换取俄罗斯、美国和其他国家的安全保证。许多乌克兰人至今仍对此感到遗憾。这些弹头被混合制成核电燃料，运往美国，多年来一直为美国各地的房屋照明和供暖。

Only 15 years ago, President Barack Obama envisioned a world without nuclear weapons, even if that moment did not come in his lifetime. And he downgraded their importance in American strategy.

就在15年前，奥巴马总统设想了一个没有核武器的世界，尽管这一时刻不会在他有生之年实现。他还降低了核武器在美国战略中的重要性。

Those days are over. Mr. Putin, to show he has new reach, has placed nuclear weapons in Belarus. Soon he will face no limits on his most powerful nuclear weapons, the intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United States: In 15 months the last treaty that limits the number of such strategic weapons Washington and Moscow can deploy — called “New Start” — expires, and there is little chance that it will be replaced.

那样的日子一去不复返了。普京为了显示自己拥有新的影响力，在白俄罗斯部署了核武器。很快，他最强大的核武器——可以打到美国的洲际弹道导弹——将不再受到任何限制：15个月后，限制华盛顿和莫斯科可部署这类战略武器数量的最后一项条约——《新削减战略武器条约》将到期，而且几乎不可能有新的条约来替代。

Already there is talk, among Democrats and Republicans, of the need to expand America’s arsenal to account for the new Russia-China partnership, and the possibility they could use their weapons in concert.

民主党和共和党之间已经在讨论扩大美国武器库的必要性，以适应中俄新的伙伴关系，以及两国协同使用武器的可能性。

The real message of Mr. Putin’s revised strategy is not that nuclear weapons are back, but that they never went away.

普京修改战略的真正含义不是核武器卷土重来，而是核武器从未离开过。