The anxiety definitely has a basis: we live in a world where individual humans control powerful nuclear weapons that can be delivered, without real possibility of interception, and with minimal warning, right over every major city. The only real safeguard we have are the chain of human soldiers between the leader, the launch order, and the launch. There are like 10 brains in the world that can order a launch, and best case 10 brains to launch. So the world's nuclear safety is in 110 brains, best case, 10 brains, worst case.
Brains, meanwhile, are highly plastic. Emotion, impulse, greed, fear - these are universal human drives. Now attach them to ever growing control over resources, power, to see your will be done, to cheat and get away with it, but only if you keep escalating... How could this possibly end with Putin backing down?
My belief: Putin will order a launch. This will result in either nuclear war, if his proxies are loyal to him, or his immediate loss of power, if his proxies are not.
The odds of ordering nuclear Armageddon are quite different from ordering a limited nuclear strike to show them you mean business and to deter further intervention. The Russians might opt to nuke a carrier. Or a small city. Putin is explicitly holding the world hostage at nuclear knife-point, and you let him take your wallet, let him slice off a finger (Crimea). Now, the nuclear thug shoots you in the arm and nukes a town. What do you do? Do you allow them to mutilate you because if you don't you'll be in a struggle where you could both easily die? Or do you choose to resist, and risk death, because they are going to take more and more of you anyway?
As long as the nuclear bully refrains from this behavior, it's all good. Once he starts it though, we're in a new era of nuclear risk. I hope that all of our governments have explicit, mechanical contingencies in place to react to a limited nuclear strike, and that immediate escalation is NOT standard operating procedure. But what is the proportional response for the US if Russia nukes a small city in Western Ukraine? I have no idea. This is all really very terrible and we'll be lucky to get out of it without at least one town glowing in the dark.
Brains, meanwhile, are highly plastic. Emotion, impulse, greed, fear - these are universal human drives. Now attach them to ever growing control over resources, power, to see your will be done, to cheat and get away with it, but only if you keep escalating... How could this possibly end with Putin backing down?
My belief: Putin will order a launch. This will result in either nuclear war, if his proxies are loyal to him, or his immediate loss of power, if his proxies are not.