Inadvertent escalation risks between NATO and Russia
Photo by Vladimir Blinov/Adobe Stock
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the risk of deliberate escalation between NATO and Russia has grown substantially, with Moscow increasingly relying on explicit and implicit nuclear threats. Less understood, however, is the risk of inadvertent escalation: situations in which a state's conventional military actions unintentionally convince a nuclear-armed adversary that its assured second strike, regime survival, or the survival of its society is under existential threat.
This risk is intensifying as NATO and Russia both develop dual-capable missiles, long-range precision-strike systems, integrated air and missile defences, and doctrines that rely on rapidly disabling an adversary's command, control and sensing networks. Uncertainty about the durability of the U.S. commitment to European security, combined with accelerating European rearmament and investment in deep precision strike, is reshaping the underlying logic of deterrence and further complicating both sides' ability to assess intentions during a crisis.
Commissioned by the Defence Nuclear Organisation (DNO) within the UK Ministry of Defence, this study is the first report in a wider project examining inadvertent escalation risks between NATO and Russia. The research team conducted a literature review of inadvertent escalation and entanglement scholarship, alongside case-study analysis of key European subregions: the North Atlantic and High North, the Baltics and Kaliningrad, and the Black Sea. This analysis was supplemented by semi-structured interviews with current and former military and civilian officials from NATO member states, who helped validate findings drawn from the open-source research. The study also drew on comparative insights from other nuclear rivalries, including the Cold War U.S.–Soviet confrontation and contemporary dynamics between the U.S. and China, on the Korean Peninsula, and between India and Pakistan.
The report identifies four principal pathways through which conventional military action could inadvertently trigger nuclear escalation:
These risks are amplified by the proliferation of dual-capable missiles, aircraft and submarines that make it difficult to distinguish conventional from nuclear intent, as well as by both sides' reliance on high-speed, first-mover operational concepts. Kaliningrad and the Kola Peninsula emerge as particularly acute flashpoints, given the co-location of Russian nuclear infrastructure with conventional military assets that NATO would struggle to avoid engaging in a conflict. Critically, the report finds that these risks are likely to be entropic: they accumulate and compound unpredictably the longer a conventional conflict continues, meaning that the risks present in the opening hours of a crisis look very different from those after days or weeks of sustained fighting.
The report calls for greater awareness among planners and decision makers of the potential blind spots embedded in conventional campaigns. This includes integrating escalation-sensitivity analysis into campaign design, command exercises and force posture planning, and exercising caution around actions that could appear as direct threats to regime survival, such as strikes on command and control nodes. The report also recommends maintaining military-to-military communication channels, crisis hotlines and confidence-building mechanisms even during periods of political confrontation, supported by parallel diplomatic efforts to reaffirm mutual understanding of thresholds and red lines. Finally, given the dynamic nature of escalation risk, the report calls for continuous monitoring of how force modernisation, emerging technologies and increasing automation are reshaping decision-making timelines and the potential for miscalculation.
A forthcoming second report will build on these findings through scenario-based wargaming to develop more detailed policy recommendations.
