Rising international tensions and the risks of sliding towards a nuclear conflict in the face of the erosion of the arms control system between Russia and the West is becoming an essential subject of modern political discourse. In particular, the author investigates the psychological aspects of deterrence, the dichotomy of its functions of preventing and conducting nuclear war, the concepts of first and retaliatory strike, the dialectics of defense and offence, and plans for limited nuclear war, the effect of the entanglement of nuclear and conventional weapons.