In his latest book, War, renowned Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward reveals that the world recently came closer to nuclear war than it has in sixty years. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the Russian army’s subsequent failure to accomplish any strategic goals in the face of unexpectedly stiff Ukrainian resistance, Russian president Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials and state-run media personalities began discussing the possibility of using nuclear weapons (or accusing Ukraine or the US of planning to use nuclear weapons against them). This was apparently not just saber-rattling, at least in the assessment of the Biden administration, as their analysis of the available intelligence indicated that the odds that Russia would use nuclear weapons were as high as 50%.