Is Vladimir Putin getting ready for a nuclear war?
When the Russian President announced he had authorised a military exercise involving the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia, he claimed there was ‘nothing unusual’ in such a planned training exercise. Is that really the case?
On May 6, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he had authorised a military exercise involving the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia. He claimed there was “nothing unusual” in such a planned training exercise.
But, to my knowledge, this is the first time such an announcement has been made since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
This exercise involved the transfer of some tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. This was also the first move of such warheads outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Moscow said it was deploying tactical nuclear weapons after what it said were military threats from France, Britain and the US.
The Pentagon has since said it has not seen any change to Russia’s alert status of its strategic nuclear forces – as distinct from tactical nuclear forces – despite what it has called “irresponsible rhetoric” from Moscow detailing plans for exercises involving the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons.
Moscow’s response is that France is threatening to deploy troops to Ukraine and Britain is encouraging Kyiv to use the longer-range capability of strike weapons into Russia it is now supplying to Ukraine. And Washington is providing more formidable Patriot air defence weapons to Ukraine, as well as strike weapons with longer range capable of striking further into Russia.
The frequent warnings of nuclear conflict by Putin and other senior officials in Moscow are prompting concern in Washington. It is, of course, worrying that Putin increasingly is stepping up his threats to use nuclear weapons. And he is doing so with increasing frequency.
In concentrating this tactical nuclear weapon exercise in the south of Russia, it is plainly directed at Ukraine. This is coinciding with the lack of military progress with this war, which is taking on the characteristics of a long-drawn-out slog. Earlier this week, Putin announced the sacking of his long-serving defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, replacing him with an equally long-serving economic bureaucrat who apparently will focus on integrating military manufacture on a 24/7 basis more into the economy.
So, power continues to be increasingly in Putin’s own hands as the longest serving head of Russia since Joseph Stalin.
On the eve of his recent presidential election, Putin said he would not hesitate to use nuclear missiles if there were threats to the existence of the Russian state or its sovereignty and independence.
“Weapons exist in order to use them,” he boasted, as he claimed that Russia’s nuclear triad of land, air and sea-based missiles was far more advanced than America’s – which is patently untrue.
When asked if a nuclear confrontation with the West over Ukraine was inevitable, he said he “had not yet seen the need to use nuclear weapons. I don’t think everything is rushing directly towards this but we are ready.” He stressed: “I have said many times that Ukraine is a matter of life and death for us.”
Russia’s current nuclear doctrine lists four scenarios under which nuclear weapons would be used: if Russia is attacked with nuclear missiles; if it believes nuclear missiles are being launched against it; if any attack is aimed at crippling its nuclear forces; or if the existence of the Russian state is threatened, including by the use of superior conventional weapons by NATO conventional forces.
So, let us look at the pros and cons of a decision by Putin to use tactical or indeed strategic nuclear weapons.
In theory, Russia may seek to use enough tactical nuclear weapons to inflict damage on the battlefield in Ukraine to prevent Russia’s own defeat. The calculation in Moscow here is that the US would be unwilling to cross the nuclear threshold in retaliation for the use of only tactical nuclear weapons, which are not a direct threat to the US itself. Washington may be willing in these circumstances to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to terminate the conflict early. Tactical nuclear missiles carry a much smaller nuclear warhead and have a shorter range than strategic nuclear missiles, which have an intercontinental range and warheads capable of devastating cities. Tactical nuclear weapons are designed essentially for battlefield use. Moscow has 1900 tactical nuclear missiles.
As may be expected, there are many different views on this vexed question in the West.
In many ways the most optimistic is Lawrence Freedman, Britain’s doyen of the history of military thinking. He says using tactical nuclear weapons is pointless from the Russian point of view because of their restricted military effect. But he acknowledges that the Russians have made “a number of stupid decisions and they can make more”. Freedman says Putin is well aware of what he would be unleashing if he moved to a nuclear war. However, he correctly notes that in the former Soviet Union the communist regime was a collective leadership with a strong general staff and “it was a pretty cautious leadership when it took military action”.
By comparison, today’s Russia, he says, is a personalised dictatorship where everything is under Putin’s control.
Freedman says we have no idea about the quality of information getting to Putin and whether anybody is challenging him or warning him about where these nuclear developments are going. When asked about the fact that Avril Haines, chief of US intelligence, is convinced Putin will use nuclear weapons if he feels threatened, “while you say this is unlikely”, Freedman responds that “it’s silly to say, under no circumstances will nuclear weapons be used” because he doesn’t know, and he doubts if Putin himself knows.
Freedman concludes, however, that if the Russian state were directly under threat – say, if Ukraine were really going to march on Moscow – “then you would say that’s a situation that would bring nuclear weapons in”.
Where I would disagree here with Freedman is his view that the defeat of Russia in Ukraine would not be a threat to the survival of the Russian state and the Russians “will just withdraw their troops” from Ukraine.
The further worry here is that some of Putin’s advisers are making some quite outrageous propositions for Russia to use nuclear weapons. One example with which I am familiar is Sergei Karaganov, a long-time adviser to the Kremlin and honorary chairman of the presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy.
In an article titled “No Choice Left: Russia Will Have to Launch a Nuclear Strike on Europe”, published in Moskovsky Komsomolets in October last year, Karaganov said: “Our American partners, who deliberately downplay the danger of nuclear war, should know that this (such a war) is possible.” He went on to argue that a large-scale thermonuclear war “is looming not only, and not even so much, because of the situation in Ukraine. There are much deeper reasons. Theoretically, we will have to threaten several European countries, not necessarily in eastern Europe, with nuclear strikes as a last resort.”
Karaganov said some American experts claimed there allegedly would be a non-nuclear attack “on the Russian Armed Forces, on our territory”. When asked if Russia did use nuclear weapons in response, what would be its military gain, he said he did not know exactly but thought “NATO will fall apart, and they will run, all run every which way”. He boasted that a theoretical option existed whereby a retaliatory Russian strike “will target hundreds of American military bases overseas”.
It is important to understand here that I am not arguing Karaganov is necessarily an influential adviser to Putin these days. In my experience of him, he is – to say the least – rather boastful. Nevertheless, it is a considerable worry that these sorts of outrageous nuclear threats frequently are being traded in Moscow.
Turning now to strategic experts in the US, Graham Allison, the distinguished professor of government at Harvard University, has noted that Russia remains as much a superpower as the Evil Empire ever was and it has a nuclear arsenal “that can literally erase the United States from the map”. However, he goes on to quote Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser, as saying in response to Putin’s threats of nuclear weapons use “we have communicated directly, privately and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met by catastrophic consequences for Russia”.
Allison says while the US essentially has been phasing out tactical nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War, Russia’s defence plans have made them a major pillar. He observes that after seven decades without any use of nuclear weapons in war, “a nuclear taboo” has led many to conclude that nuclear weapons are no longer usable weapons of war. But he says both the US and Russia “continue to rely on the threat to use nuclear weapons to defend themselves”.
Allison goes on to make an important admission: “It is hard to deny an uncomfortable similarity between Putin’s threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons against any overwhelming conventional attack on Russia’s newly annexed territory with America’s threat in the Cold War to retaliate with nuclear weapons to a Russian conventional attack on the territory of US NATO allies.” He rather lamely concludes that Putin’s latest move has taken us into a much more dangerous world and the Biden administration “is right to take his threats seriously”.
Walter Russell Mead, a distinguished writer for The Wall Street Journal, observes that Putin has declared the conflict in Ukraine is a war for the survival of Russia, and this does raise the spectre of a nuclear strike. He says the Biden administration “must see the world through Mr Putin’s eyes. Only then can officials know how seriously to take the nuclear sabre-rattling and develop an appropriate response.”
Mead clearly has read a lot of Putin speeches and quotes them at length. For example, he cites Putin’s deranged view that “the West is not a coalition of equals; it represents a domination of the evil Anglo-Saxons over the Europeans and Japan”. Mead says making threats about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine advances both Putin’s goals in Ukraine and his larger campaign against the American-led order.
Mead says making threats about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine could force Washington to dial back military support for Ukraine. The threat or use of nuclear weapons could split Europe between “peace at any price” governments and governments of countries geographically closer to Russia whose determination to resist nuclear blackmail will only grow. Yielding to Russian blackmail over Ukraine would be a massive blow to American credibility and power overseas. Yet deterring a Russian attack involves the risk of a deepening American engagement “in an escalating war”. Mead concludes that the threat Putin poses to vital US interests “must not be underestimated, and the threat that he will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine is real”.
The final American expert I want to quote is Richard Betts, who is professor of war and peace studies at Columbia University and whose 1982 book Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning I used extensively when I was director of what is now Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation.
Recently, Betts stated that planning for the potential that Russia would use nuclear weapons was imperative and “the danger would be greatest if the war were to turn decisively in Ukraine’s favour”. He says that is the only situation in which the Russians’ incentive “to take that awesome risk would be plausible” and is an attempt to prevent defeat by shocking Ukraine and its NATO supporters into standing down. He illustrates his argument by asserting the Russians may do this “by setting off one or a few tactical nuclear weapons” against Ukrainian forces “or by triggering a symbolic explosion over an empty area”.
Betts says the US could opt to rhetorically decry any nuclear detonation but do nothing militarily; or it could unleash nuclear weapons of its own; or it could refrain from a nuclear counterattack but enter the war directly with large-scale precise conventional airstrikes and the mobilisation of ground forces.
He concludes, however, “all these alternatives are bad because no low-risk options exist for coping with the end of the nuclear taboo”.
Betts states “a conventional war response is the least bad of the three because it avoids the higher risks of either weaker or the stronger options”. He finishes with some sombre thoughts about levels of escalation when nuclear weapons are being used. He questions whether a Russian nuclear attack would trigger NATO’s shift from merely supplying Ukraine to engaging directly in combat itself.
He says a Russian rationale for tactical nuclear weapons use would be as much to frighten NATO away from crossing that line as to coerce Ukraine into surrender. Under these circumstances, if a few Russian nuclear weapons do not provoke the US into direct combat, Moscow “will have a green light to use even more such weapons and crush Ukraine quickly”.
I would add here that since Betts wrote those words, Putin has made it clear that Ukraine being reabsorbed into Russia is not his only priority. Reasonably reliable opinion polls show more than 60 per cent of Russians are of the view that this is now an existential war for the survival of the Russian state, its culture and values.
Betts makes two crucial conclusions: first, that a nuclear war could easily strike Americans as an experiment they do not want to run; second, with tactical nuclear shots, Russia would be at an advantage because it possesses many more tactical nuclear weapons than the US. This asymmetry would require US policymakers “to resort sooner to so-called strategic forces (ICBMs or bombers) to keep the upper hand”.
He concludes that the non-nuclear, conventional option “is hardly attractive because a direct war between the major powers at any level risks escalation to mass destruction”.
So, what does this pessimistic outlook imply for Australia? We are not a nuclear weapons power and we are not a party principal to military events that arise in Europe. However, the use of nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945 would have global implications, including for Australia. We do have (limited) access to US nuclear doctrine and we must encourage our US ally to make it absolutely clear to Putin that there is no such war-fighting option available to him as a “limited nuclear war”.
In other words, Putin needs to understand that even tactical nuclear weapon use by him may risk total war and the end of Russia as a functioning state.
Paul Dibb is emeritus professor in strategic studies at the Australian National University.
