West ‘blind to nuclear threat posed by Putin’

Western nations have seriously under­estimated the threat posed by an increasingly aggressive Russia.

Western nations, including Australia, have seriously under­estimated the threat posed by an increasingly aggressive Russia that may extend to Vladimir Putin’s using tactical nuclear weapons if he is seriously challenged by NATO, one of Australia’s top strategic analysts has warned.

Paul Dibb, emeritus professor at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the ­Pacific, says there is growing anx­iety in the Baltic countries and Scandinavia about Mr Putin’s “provocations” and boasts about his nuclear capabilities. “There is a growing realisation that Moscow’s new military strategy relies on the early recourse to tactical nuclear weapons in the event that it has to defend what it defines as its sovereign territory against a ­superior conventional military force,” Professor Dibb says, in a speech he will deliver in Canberra today.

A tactical nuclear weapon is a smaller version of the city-­destroying atomic bomb and is ­designed to be used on a land battlefield or at sea to destroy enemy military concentrations.

“In recent months, Moscow has boasted about Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities and has mounted provocative military incursions into NATO airspace,” Professor Dibb says.

“Russia now poses a serious threat to the existing European ­security order, which Moscow no longer recognises.”

Conflict between Russia and Ukraine had shattered the comfortable belief that the use of force among leading European powers had been banished.

“There is a serious question over whether any NATO country, including Germany, would have the fortitude to defy Russia milit­arily,” Professor Dibb says. “Although Russia’s military forces are still not comparable with those of the former Soviet Union, there is little doubt that Moscow can now use decisive military force in what it terms ‘the near abroad’.

“Little of this seems to be understood in Canberra, where we have seriously run down our Russian analytical capabilities.

“That is a seriously mistaken view, in my opinion. There are significant Australian strategic interests at risk here.”

When Mr Putin sent a flotilla of Russian naval vessels to inter­national waters northeast of Australia ahead of last year’s G20 summit in Brisbane, Tony Abbott linked the ships’ arrival to a ­“regrettable” surge in Russian military assertiveness. Professor Dibb has served as deputy secretary in the Defence Department and director of what was the Joint Intelligence Organisation, or military intelligence. He was deputy director of JIO at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1978.

Professor Dibb says that since Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine last year, Mr Putin had continued to be belligerent and threatening.

Although the West has imposed punishing economic sanctions on Russia, Mr Putin shows no sign of removing his military presence from the Donbas region of Ukraine.

Instead, he has maintained a decidedly provocative stance ­towards the West.