Author: Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University

The war in Ukraine has just edged up another notch. It has not been going well for Ukraine in recent months, and this week Joe Biden’s administration made the decision to allow Ukraine to fire US-supplied army tactical missile systems (Atacms) long-range missiles deep into Russia for the first time. The US policy reversal also put Ukrainian weapons supplied by the UK and France into play. The UK and France had previously indicated they would allow this, once the US had. This prompted an immediate threat from Vladimir Putin, who signed a decree lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike…