When great power nuclear dynamics are at play, a social media platform with a strict character limit may not be the best place to do your nuclear signaling. Yet on Friday afternoon, that is precisely what President Joe Biden did when he let loose an incredibly irresponsible tweet.

We
are in the midst of a dangerous moment. Vladimir Putin has launched an
unjustifiable hot war in Ukraine for reasons that are not entirely clear to
anybody but the devil on his shoulder. The long peace in Europe is dead, stabbed
in the heart while Putin looked it in the eye. The task now is to ensure that
what replaces it is not a prolonged period of dangerous instability or, worse,
a long, wider war characterized by unthinkable violence.

Enter
President Biden with a tweet we can only hope will not be written about in the history
books. “I want to be clear,” he wrote. “We will defend every inch of NATO
territory with the full might of a united and galvanized NATO.” So far, so
good. Russia should have little doubt about American resolve to uphold its
treaty commitments in Europe and to use all of the tools available to do so.

Unfortunately,
the president then served up that doubt on a platter. “A direct confrontation
between NATO and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to
prevent.” Will President Biden be willing to go to NATO Europe’s defense if he
believes doing so would entail the outbreak of World War III, probably codeword
for general nuclear war? Maybe. But the president has now given Putin ample
reason to conclude that maybe not.

“We
will defend every inch of NATO, and that will mean World War III, which we must
avoid” — this is not the effective deterrent signaling the president thinks it
is.

What’s
more, it is not at all clear that Putin shares that same concern about World
War III. Chinese leader Xi Jinping almost certainly doesn’t — Beijing believes
geographically bounded conventional wars will be fought, as authoritative
military documents put it, “under conditions of nuclear deterrence.” That
imbalance in perceived consequences between President Biden and his potential
adversaries gives those adversaries a leg up in the event of a conflict. They
have plenty of room to escalate, whereas the American president’s approach to
nuclear weapons seems to be something akin to “go big or go home” (at least as
far as can be discerned on Twitter). The likes of Putin and Xi — both risk takers,
and both apparently believers in a weakness inherent in supposed American
decadence — may not see Biden’s threat of a third world war as particularly
credible.

Ambiguity
has an important role to play in nuclear deterrence. President Biden should not
spell out exactly what he will and will not do in response to various potential
hostile actions. There is value in keeping the enemy guessing, as uncertainty
can have a deterrent value all its own. But rather than adopt measured
ambiguity, the president undermined the very deterrent threat he sought to
issue.

One hopes President Biden has not edged us closer to the very eventuality he aimed to forestall. On the other hand, a world war that has its origins in a tweet-inspired failure of nuclear deterrence would be remarkably appropriate for the current age.

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