Thursday
October 9, 2025

USA’s Nuclear Posturing on Russia

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By: Gayathri Pramod, Research Analyst, GSDN

USA & Russia’s flags: source Internet

Donald Trump’s return to the peak of American power has reshaped the very structure of international diplomacy, displacing the traditional foundations of strategic planning and alliance unity with a far more fragile basis: the appeasement of presidential vanity. What unfolded in Washington during those critical days amounted to the formalization of a troubling new model in transatlantic relations—one in which national security, alliance credibility, and the stability of the post–Cold War order is subordinated to the unpredictable impulses of a single individual. The scenes that played out in the halls of power were at once extraordinary and profoundly disquieting. At present, the United States Sanctions on Russia’s nuclear sector do not exist in a vacuum—they are part of a much broader strategy to constrain Moscow’s energy complex as a whole. At the heart of these sanctions lies the dual recognition that Russia’s civil nuclear industry is both a significant source of revenue for the Kremlin and a potent tool of geopolitical leverage. Through this analysis, I will unpack the geopolitical implications, taking into consideration India’s stance and last but not least the US hegemonic matrix.  

In 2025, Washington’s measures against Russia’s nuclear capabilities are not uniform; instead, they combine targeted sanctions, carefully crafted exemptions, and long-term strategies for supply chain resilience. The policy mix is designed to avoid collateral damage to allies’ energy needs while still limiting Russia’s strategic room to manoeuvre. The most prominent example of this balancing act came in June 2025, when the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued General License 115B. This license authorizes certain transactions involving Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom and its subsidiaries, but only under specific conditions. Namely, it applies to civil nuclear energy projects that were initiated or already under construction as of November 21, 2024. The scope of the license is global, which means it is not tied to a particular geographic region or political bloc. Its expiration date—December 19, 2025—ensures that this is a reprieve, allowing for a transitional period rather than a permanent sanction lift. The immediate practical effect was felt in Hungary, where the Paks II nuclear plant, a high-profile joint venture with Rosatom, had been hampered by earlier US sanctions. Budapest welcomed the exemption as a vindication of its long-standing argument that nuclear cooperation with Russia in the civil sphere should not be lumped in with military or dual-use restrictions. The decision by Washington also demonstrated the US’s commitment to its allies, showing that it is willing to apply flexibility when allied governments are heavily invested in long-term infrastructure projects that cannot easily be replaced or cancelled.

This calculated leniency, however, sits alongside an unmistakable tightening of Russia’s nuclear leadership and its broader strategic nuclear ecosystem. On January 10, 2025, the US imposed sanctions on Rosatom’s top executives, including its chief executive officer, along with affiliated companies directly implicated in the development and proliferation of Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities. These measures were motivated not only by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine but also by what Washington regards as reckless and destabilizing actions—chief among them, the Russian military’s continued occupation and operational control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been under Russian control since March 2022, and its status has become emblematic of the conflict’s risks to civilian nuclear safety. By targeting Rosatom officials and entities tied to the plant’s management and security, the US aimed to send a clear signal: involvement in military-linked nuclear activities, particularly those violating international safety norms and other protocols.

Parallel to these sanctions, the United States has taken a more systemic step by cutting off Russian access to one of its most important nuclear export markets: Enriched Uranium. In May 2024, President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which bans the importation of enriched uranium from Russia, historically a major supplier to US nuclear power plants. The ban, which came into effect roughly ninety days later, is not absolute; it contains waiver provisions allowing imports through 2028 in cases where the alternative would be the shutdown of reactors or severe disruptions to the US electricity grid. This reflects a complex reality: for all of Washington’s political will to isolate Russia, the US nuclear industry has been heavily dependent on Russian enrichment services, particularly for low-enriched uranium (LEU) used in civilian reactors. The role of the US nuclear industry in this context is crucial, as it not only reflects the economic implications of the US nuclear strategy but also the challenges the industry faces in transitioning away from Russian supplies. Recognizing this, Congress paired the ban with a $2.7 billion investment program to rebuild America’s domestic uranium enrichment capacity. The policy is thus as much about long-term industrial resilience as it is about immediate punishment. It represents an effort to close a vulnerability that Moscow has exploited for years, and to ensure that future US administrations are not forced to choose between energy stability and foreign policy resolve.

Geopolitical Distortion & Spill Over

The geopolitical reverberations of this strategy extend far beyond the bilateral US–Russia relationship. India illustrates the complexity of third-party dynamics. Moscow has long been a key partner in India’s civil nuclear expansion, supplying reactors and fuel under pre-war agreements. While current US sanctions stop short of directly targeting India-Russia nuclear cooperation, the debate in Congress over measures such as the proposed Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 threatens to complicate matters. That proposal, which would impose a punitive 500% tariff on countries importing Russian oil, gas, or uranium, could force India into a difficult choice: absorb the costs of maintaining strategic and energy ties with Moscow, or scale back under US pressure. The potential consequences of India’s response, whether it chooses to absorb the costs or scale back, could significantly impact the geopolitical landscape. From Washington’s perspective, the effectiveness of sanctions depends on preventing third parties from filling the gaps left by Western disengagement. However, from New Delhi’s perspective, such extraterritorial measures threaten its sovereignty and energy security, raising the risk of friction with the United States. Military signalling complements this economic pressure, demonstrating that US resolve extends beyond sanctions. When former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested earlier in the year that direct conflict with the US was possible, President Trump ordered two US nuclear-powered submarines to patrol closer to Russian waters. While the Kremlin dismissed the manoeuvre publicly, its cautionary remarks about nuclear rhetoric revealed the underlying sensitivity. This interplay of rhetoric and force movements highlights how economic measures, arms control positioning, and military signalling are now tightly woven together into a single fabric of deterrence policy.

Taken together, the US approach to Russia’s nuclear sector in 2025 is best understood as a multi-layered strategy. It begins with targeted sanctions against individuals and entities directly linked to unsafe or military nuclear activities, such as Rosatom’s leadership and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. It also allows for selective exemptions to prevent unnecessary ruptures with allies while simultaneously pushing for long-term supply chain diversification through the uranium import ban and domestic enrichment investments. These specific measures are reinforced by the broader sanctions environment constraining Russia’s energy complex, which indirectly limits its nuclear sector as well. Finally, Washington is willing to project military power to underscore the credibility of its economic and diplomatic measures. Together, these layers constitute a posture that accepts greater strategic tension in the present in order to preserve long-term leverage, constrain Russia’s options, and ensure that any eventual negotiations take place on terms favourable to the United States and its allies.

Way Ahead in the US-Russia Nuclear Standoff

Looking ahead, three scenarios frame the trajectory of the US-Russia nuclear rivalry. In the managed competition scenario, New START is either extended or replaced with a limited arms control framework that stabilises deployed warhead levels while allowing both sides to modernise their arsenals. Economic sanctions remain in place but are selectively eased for civil nuclear cooperation under tight verification, preserving a thin layer of cooperation amid rivalry. This would require both Moscow and Washington to compartmentalize the Ukraine conflict and return to pragmatic engagement—a possibility but not the most likely path. In the unbounded arms race scenario, New START expires with no replacement, and both sides embark on parallel force expansions. The US accelerates warhead production and diversifies deployment platforms, while Russia deploys new strategic systems and expands its tactical nuclear arsenal. Economic sanctions remain maximalist, driving Russia into deeper alignment with China and further militarising its nuclear export policy. This path risks destabilizing crisis dynamics, especially if paired with heightened conventional confrontation in Eastern Europe. The fragmented deterrence scenario envisions a breakdown in centralized arms control, but without a full-scale numerical race. Instead, nuclear rivalry plays out through regional deployments, missile defence competition, and selective nuclear sharing arrangements. The US strengthens nuclear cooperation with NATO and possibly Indo-Pacific allies, while Russia seeks to expand nuclear partnerships in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. This scenario would normalize a world of multiple, semi-detached nuclear blocs—unstable, but less apocalyptic than a direct bilateral arms race.

For now, the United States appears to be steering between managed competition and fragmented deterrence, keeping its options open while leveraging its technological and alliance advantages. The enduring challenge will be maintaining a credible deterrent that reassures allies, constrains adversaries, and avoids the kind of uncontrolled spiral that history warns can emerge when arms control regimes collapse entirely. Washington’s nuclear posturing toward Russia is thus less about preparing for war than about shaping a strategic environment in which the risk of war remains contained—but where the balance of leverage tilts toward American and allied interests. The United States’ nuclear posture toward Russia in 2025 sits at the intersection of Deterrence Theory, sanctions-driven statecraft, alliance management, and the slow unspooling of a decades-old arms control order. Unlike the post–Cold War interlude, when strategic forces were largely backgrounded behind cooperative frameworks and confidence-building measures, nuclear signalling is again a visible instrument of policy. It does not operate in isolation. It is braided together with the Ukraine war’s unsettled endgame, a transatlantic debate over deployments and risk, a global reshaping of nuclear fuel markets, and the emergence of dual-use technologies that compress warning and decision timelines. What makes this era distinct is not merely the volume of nuclear rhetoric but the way nuclear tools are combined with economic levers, information campaigns, conventional posture moves, and industrial policies aimed at reducing long-term dependency on Russian capabilities.

Univocally, the current US strategic setting is defined by three converging trends. First, the legacy arms control scaffolding has thinned to its load-bearing beams. Verification habits atrophied through the 2010s and early 2020s; inspections and data exchanges that once anchored confidence now sputter at best. Second, the European theatre has re-entered an era of forward deployments, rotational presence, and rapid reinforcement plans that make the nuclear dimension more salient even when moves are conventionally configured. Third, the Economics of nuclear power—fuel cycles, enrichment capacity, and reactor service contracts—have become instruments of geopolitical competition. The United States’ posture is shaped by all three. It tries to set a floor under escalation while ensuring that Moscow cannot wield civil-nuclear interdependencies as leverage over allies. At the core of the posture is an old idea expressed with modern instruments: Credible, Flexible, and Survivable Deterrence that is highly legible to allies and intentionally ambiguous to adversaries about precise thresholds.

 The credibility piece is carried by investments in the triad’s recapitalisation and by deliberately publicised touches of visibility—strategic bombers conducting predictable yet high-profile missions, submarine patrol narratives that are vague but reassuring, and command-and-control exercises that signal continuity of government and continuity of operations under stress. Flexibility now means more than just a range of yields or platforms. It includes the ability to rapidly reconfigure conventional forces around nuclear-relevant signalling, to surge ISR and missile defence assets for crisis windows, and to integrate cyber and space effects in ways that can either dampen or amplify escalatory perceptions. Survivability is still the foundation. Hardening, dispersion, stealth, and redundant communications are the quiet bedrock beneath the day-to-day messaging. Together, they aim to produce an adversary calculus in which nuclear first use or coercive brinkmanship would not change battlefield realities in ways that justify the risks.

The declaratory aspect of US posturing is intentionally restrained. It avoids novel doctrines that might blur thresholds while leaving room to respond to a spectrum of Russian behaviours, from overt nuclear sabre-rattling to subtler forms of nuclear adjacency like exercises near sensitive borders or the messaging use of dual-capable systems. The operational aspect is more dynamic. It accepts the reality of a messy information environment and leverages selective transparency. Announcing specific deployments after the fact, showcasing allied participation in strategic exercises, and emphasising readiness without dramatisation are all designed to reassure publics and parliaments across the alliance while sending Moscow the familiar message that the United States does not require a crisis to be ready for one.

Arms control is not abandoned in this posture, but it is reframed. Instead of a single comprehensive treaty doing all the work, Washington increasingly treats arms control as a spectrum of stabilizers that can be applied piecemeal when politics allow and removed when they do not. This includes informal guardrails around exercises, reciprocal notifications that do not require intrusive inspections, and time-bounded understandings to avoid close-approach incidents or misread tests. The strategic bet is that such thin guardrails are preferable to total opacity, even if they fall short of the verification-rich regimes of the past. The United States also keeps an open door for a more durable framework if there is a credible partner on the other side. However, it accepts that any future agreement will have to address categories of capability that older treaties left untouched, from hypersonic and exotic delivery systems to theatre-range systems that matter just as much as intercontinental ones.

Economic statecraft forms the second pillar. By restricting Russian enriched uranium’s access to the US market and pressing allied utilities to diversify fuel contracts, Washington is executing a medium-term decoupling strategy that reaches into a sector once treated as politically inert. In the near term, narrow exemptions and waivers minimize collateral damage to allied energy security. Over the longer run, investment in domestic enrichment and alternative suppliers is intended to harden the transatlantic grid against market manipulation or policy blackmail. The aim is not simply to punish, but to alter the structural conditions that once let Rosatom bind countries into decades-long dependencies. This economic track sits alongside targeted sanctions on individuals and entities tied to unsafe practices, militarisation of civilian sites, or proliferation-adjacent activities. The more the civil-nuclear sphere is used as a tool of coercion or occupation, the more it becomes a legitimate ground for sanctions escalation.

Alliance management is the third pillar, and it may be the most intricate. Within NATO, the United States must harmonize deterrence moves acceptable to front-line allies with the risk tolerances of more distant capitals. Each publicised bomber rotation, each missile defence test, and each policy paper on nuclear sharing has a different impact in Warsaw, Berlin, Rome, and Oslo. The posture aims to knit these differences into a coherent narrative: NATO’s nuclear deterrent remains credible, the United States’ extended deterrence commitments are unambiguous, and the pathways to crisis stability are preserved. In practice, this means more frequent allied consultations, greater transparency with parliaments on the logic of deployments and exercises, and a careful division of labour between nuclear and conventional moves so as not to heighten salience needlessly. Beyond Europe, the posture intersects with Indo-Pacific priorities. Washington cannot afford a nuclear messaging campaign in Europe that suggests vulnerability in Asia, so it synchronizes signals with allies like Japan and Australia while keeping India at the table even when secondary sanctions debates complicate cooperation.

Russia’s counter-posture exploits ambiguity as a tool. Its doctrine and rhetoric flirt with lowered thresholds and dual-use opacity in order to keep NATO planners guessing and allied publics anxious. Periodic references to nuclear options, high-visibility movements of dual-capable systems, and exercises designed to blur conventional-nuclear boundaries are optimized for political effect. At the same time, Russia tends to calibrate its actions to avoid tripping unmistakable red lines. It seeks to capture the value of nuclear coercion without paying the operational costs of actual nuclear use, which would be catastrophic diplomatically and militarily. This is where the US posture tries to box Moscow in: by combining steady readiness with crisis-time restraint and explicit alliance signalling, it attempts to deny Russia the psychological dividends of nuclear theatrics. Technology trends complicate the dance. Hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, long-range precision conventional strike, more survivable and mobile command posts, and proliferated space architectures collectively compress warning time and challenge traditional notions of “strategic stability.” The United States is leaning into resilience rather than matching every capability like-for-like. Hardened, redundant C3I, disaggregated sensors, and rapid reconstitution capacity are all meant to lengthen decision time rather than shorten it. In a crisis, the posture prefers to widen the aperture for diplomacy by making first-strike payoffs less plausible and by keeping leadership confident that retaliatory options are intact. This logic also animates missile defence investments.

Considering the current scenario, Crisis management remains the most fragile element to tackle. With formal inspections and trusted data exchanges attenuated, the opportunity for misinterpretation grows. Exercises can look like mobilization, ISR surges can look like pre-strike preparation, and conventional raids can look dual-capable. The United States’ answer is to over-invest in communication channels that can work under stress, to socialise patterns of behaviour that are recognisable as “deterrence choreography” rather than prelude, and to embed de-escalation options in operational plans. The art is to avoid performative maximalism that would box leaders into single-step ladders. In Washington’s ideal world, crises contain multiple off-ramps at every rung. The civil-nuclear market piece is often overlooked in public debate, but matters greatly over the medium term. Reactor technology choices lock states into vendor ecosystems for decades, shaping everything from spare parts to safety culture to diplomatic habits. The United States’ push to expand fuel fabrication options, to promote next-generation reactors with safer operating profiles, and to support allied regulatory capacity is not just an industrial policy. It is a geopolitical play that reduces Russia’s leverage over client states and makes sanctions more durable by shrinking the circle of actors with high sunk costs in Rosatom’s ecosystem. The more suppliers there are for enriched uranium, fuel assemblies, and maintenance, the less power Moscow has to threaten outages or price shocks. Over time, this should make allied political coalitions more cohesive in moments of coercion.

All of this feeds into scenario planning. One plausible trajectory is managed rivalry with thin guardrails. In that world, the United States and Russia avoid a breakout race, hover near current deployed levels due to budgetary and operational constraints, and resurrect a handful of reciprocal notifications or exercise guardrails whenever a crisis bites. The signalling is loud but bounded, and civil-nuclear decoupling continues on a measured but persistent path. Stability is probabilistic rather than guaranteed, and shocks can still pierce the membrane, but the default returns after a crisis recedes. A second trajectory is competitive expansion under opacity. Here, arms control lapses entirely, and both sides invest in upload capacity, theatre-range deployments, and ambiguous dual-use capabilities around Europe. In that world, alliance politics become rougher, deterrence crises more frequent, and decision time shorter. A third, less likely trajectory is transactional détente tied to concrete developments around Ukraine and accompanied by narrow, verifiable limits on categories that both sides find risky, perhaps non-strategic systems near NATO’s borders or specific exotic delivery systems. That path requires domestic political narratives that can sell limited compromises as strategic wins and a willingness to re-learn verification disciplines.

The Indo-Pacific and the Global South are not passive backdrops in any of these scenarios. India’s balancing act—deep legacy ties to Russian reactors and fuel on one side, growing strategic convergence with the United States on the other—will shape how aggressively Washington enforces secondary restrictions in civil-nuclear commerce. The more alternatives the United States and partners can credibly offer India and other swing states, the easier it becomes to hold the line on sanctions without losing broader strategic cooperation. Similarly, Russia will keep courting Africa and the Middle East with attractive financing and build-operate-transfer models. The United States’ posture, therefore, includes development finance and export credit tools that can make non-Russian options viable, especially for countries that see nuclear energy as essential to base load decarbonization. Domestic politics inside the United States will colour the posture’s tone but not its basic silhouette. Across administrations, the triad’s recapitalisation enjoys bipartisan support because the cost of letting it slip is judged higher than the cost of modernisation. The debate plays out at the margins—how much public signalling is optimal, how far to go on missile defence, how tight to make sanctions, how generous to be with allied carve-outs—but the core logic of credible deterrence, resilient C3I, and economic decoupling from coercive dependencies is set. This continuity is itself a signal to Moscow that time will not necessarily soften Washington’s position.

The risk ledger is not blank and deserves sober accounting. Accidental escalation in a verification-light environment remains the top concern, particularly with dual-capable systems that are indistinguishable in flight and ISR patterns that can be read as pre-emption. Alliance divergence is the second risk, as uneven threat perceptions inside NATO can be exploited by a Russia skilled at wedge politics. A third risk lies in technological surprise, not in the Hollywood sense of a silver bullet, but through incremental combinations that reduce leaders’ confidence in their understanding of the battle space. The US posture mitigates these by privileging resilience over brittle offence, by investing in allied consultation and shared intelligence pictures, and by rehearsing crisis communication under degraded conditions.

Conclusion

The practical implications for the next several years are straightforward, even if the world they inhabit is not. Expect the United States to keep signalling readiness through visible but reversible actions, to invest heavily in the plumbing of deterrence—the communications links, hardened nodes, and redundant sensors that do not make headlines—and to press forward with a civil-nuclear realignment that gradually drains Moscow’s leverage without imposing sudden shocks on allies. Expect persistent outreach for minimal stabilizers when opportunities arise and prompt tightening of sanctions where nuclear adjacency is abused. Expect, too, a steady cadence of alliance reassurance that keeps publics on board and adversaries uncertain about the payoff of nuclear coercion.

If the rivalry tilts toward managed competition, the payoff is a strategic environment in which crises can be ridden out without catastrophic miscalculation, sanctions can do their work without splintering coalitions, and modernization can proceed without igniting spirals of fear. If it tilts toward competitive expansion under opacity, the posture will harden. Upload options will be exercised, theatre deployments will accelerate, and nuclear salience will rise in public discourse with all the psychological and political costs that entail. A transactional détente is not impossible. It would require verifiable steps that reduce the risk of a sudden breakout and a political moment in which both sides can sell restraint as strength. The posture is designed to be ready for any of these paths, to keep American and allied interests protected while preserving the option space that deterrence seeks to defend in the first place.

In the end, nuclear posturing is not about theatrics; it is about time: buying time for diplomacy to work when it can, for sanctions to reshape incentives, for industrial policy to rebuild resilience, and for alliances to absorb shocks without fraying. The United States’ current approach recognises that there is no return to a neatly compartmentalised nuclear relationship with Russia. The centre of gravity has shifted to a world of mixed instruments and layered signals. In that world, the measure of success is not eliminating risk—an impossible task—but keeping it bounded, legible, and manageable enough that choices made in a hurry do not define the era, but rather an era marked by Ego over Geopolitics.

About the Author

Gayathri Pramod, a research scholar, works on the genealogy of governance over life and death in times of war, with a particular focus on the West Asian front. Her research interests centre on the thematic study of war crimes and other geopolitical flashpoints.

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Brandon Tremblay
Brandon Tremblay
1 month ago

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Brandy Farrell
Brandy Farrell
1 month ago

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