Experts in the News | Miller Center

Russia's nuclear threats: What you need to know

Sechser says Putin may not have thought it all through. "Russia has now played most of its escalatory cards, and doesn't have many tools left for resolving this crisis in its favor. The nuclear alert seems like more an act of frustration than a calculated tactical move," he said in an email. "If the nuclear alert was intended to coerce the United States and Europe into tempering economic sanctions or abandoning Ukraine, it failed. If anything, it has served to further inflame world opinion against Russia," Sechser added.

Todd Sechser

How Worried Should We Be about Russia Using Nuclear Weapons?

UVA’s vice president of global affairs, Stephen Mull, has served in a broad range of U.S. national security positions, most recently as acting under secretary for political affairs at the U.S. Department of State. From 2012 to 2015, he was the U.S. ambassador to Poland. From 2003 to 2006, he was the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania. To Mull, Putin’s declaration on nuclear capability is not a justified response to any military threat. He suspects Putin’s motivation is tied to an attempt to derail the gathering momentum in the world to isolate and penalize Russia, create division among Ukraine’s international supporters and significantly heighten a sense of threat among Russians domestically.

Stephen D. Mull

How Worried Should We Be about Russia Using Nuclear Weapons?

Co-author of the book “Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy,” Todd Sechser is the Pamela Feinour Edmonds and Franklin S. Edmonds Jr. Discovery Professor of Politics and Public Policy and a senior fellow at the Miller Center. “The nuclear alert is an extraordinary escalation. But it suggests that Putin is running out of coercive options,” he said. “Russia has been turning up the pressure on Ukraine for years, and now it has launched a full-scale invasion.”

Todd Sechser

State of the Union: Can Biden meet the moment?

“The circumstances of the moment give him a bully pulpit, and this doesn’t happen all that often,” says Russell Riley, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “If you’re looking for pivot moments in a presidency that’s had its share of difficulties, this creates the predicate for that kind of historic moment.”

Russell Riley

Will the State of the Union be Biden’s ‘Ich bin ein Ukrainian’?

“That's a tricky line to walk for the president, because I'm not sure that the average American, presuming the average American even listens to this or watches it, but let's say the informed American who is going to pay attention to this — how much does that person care about Ukraine?" Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, said.

Barbara Perry

How Ketanji Brown Jackson found a path between confrontation and compromise

Fellow Harvard Law Review editor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, also now a professor at the University of Virginia law school, said Jackson’s election to an editing post was proof that she “had a brilliant legal mind, but she is also someone who is humble and easy to work with.”

Kimberly J. Robinson