Putin, NATO, and the Mearsheimer Problem [PART II — THE SCENARIO THAT STRATEGISTS NEVER NAME]

A silhouette of World War III — not prediction, but possibility

Imagine a single misread signal. A NATO exercise mistaken for mobilization. A Russian missile test framed as a prelude. A cyberattack blamed on the wrong actor.

Suddenly, the old 20th-century assumption — that nuclear weapons guarantee peace — begins to tremble. (Photo: Минобороны России Facebook) 

Not a deliberate strike — just a spark falling where the world forgot to wet the grass.

This is the “unintended escalation spiral” that defense scholars fear: a war nobody wanted, triggered by protocols everyone trusted. In this scenario, the frontlines are not trenches but screens.

Satellites blink out. Power grids flicker. Disinformation blooms faster than diplomacy. And suddenly, the old 20th-century assumption — that nuclear weapons guarantee peace — begins to tremble.

Here lies the core of Mearsheimer’s critique: when a rising threat meets an expanding alliance, the fuse is not lit by malice but by structural forces. No villains. No heroes. Only geography, power, and fear.

But the most chilling question is the one no general answers:

If the first move is a mistake, can the second move still be rational?

And in the smoke of ambiguity, the world realizes something darker: that modern conflict may begin long before anyone calls it war.

In Part III, we ask the hardest question — what stops the spiral when all sides believe they cannot back down?

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