Vladimir Strangelove Putin

The Russian despot flirts with the nuclear option

Russia’s nuclear-capable Iskander tactical ballistic missile system

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A point that I didn’t address in Wednesday’s article, “Tannenberg Revisited,” has caused anxiety in the West ever since it became clear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was going badly wrong: the possibility that V. Putin might try to bail himself out of his difficulties by going nuclear. Over the past few months, the Russian despot has brandished the Bomb several times and this week he did so again—in the starkest terms yet. But such threats, though they ought not to be taken lightly, should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. For upon examination, the nuclear option isn’t much of an option at all.

Putin’s nuclear options—there are several—lack the essential characteristic of an effective strategy, which is flexibility. The employment of nuclear weapons is governed by a principle of polarity: The only possible outcomes are complete success or total failure. The Cold War’s notorious “balance of terror” was predicated on this principle of polarity and the uncertainties associated with it, which did more to keep the peace than all the diplomatic chit-chat that took place between 1945 and 1991.

Putin’s most recent nuclear threat echoes the current official Russian position on the use of nuclear weapons, as stated in 2014:

The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, and also in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation involving the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is under threat.

The Russian despot thus justifies his threat to go nuclear on the specious grounds that US/NATO support of Ukraine is a menace to the security and perhaps even to “the very existence” of Russia.

Let’s examine one of Putin’s Strangelovian options: the use of one to three “nonstrategic” nuclear weapons. According to Russian military doctrine, nonstrategic nuclear weapons are those classified in Western parlance as theater nuclear weapons (range up to 5,000 kilometers) and battlefield tactical nuclear weapons (range up to 500 kilometers). For the option under discussion, tactical nuclear weapons would likely be employed. Russia is believed to possess some 2,000 weapons of this type, which can be delivered by missiles and rockets, aircraft, or tube artillery. Their explosive yields range from 1 kiloton or less for artillery-delivered warheads to 100 kilotons or more for missile- and aircraft-delivered warheads. Yields in the 5- to 20-kiloton range are typical. (The atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had an explosive yield of approximately 15 kilotons.)

Target selection would be governed by the need to minimize civilian casualties and damage to non-military infrastructure. Probably, therefore, the strike would employ low-yield warheads and be directed against Ukrainian military forces in the field. But though it would cause considerable damage and inflict significant casualties, such a strike would be less devastating than generally assumed. Troops in the field, well dug in or properly dispersed, are far less vulnerable to tactical nuclear weapons than unprotected civilians in villages and towns. Such a limited strike could not, therefore, be counted upon to produce a general collapse of Ukrainian military resistance. Nor would this be expected. Rather, the objective would be (1) to terrorize the Ukrainian people and (2) to so intimidate the US and NATO that they pressure the Ukrainian government into accepting peace terms favorable to Russia.

The question is whether these objectives could be met, and that seems doubtful. If the Ukrainian people are enraged rather than terrorized, and if the US and NATO are not intimidated but driven to double down on their support for the Ukrainian government, the strike will have failed. Putin would then be left with a choice between nuclear escalation and acceptance of defeat. In short, to embrace this option would not be a calculated risk but an all-or-nothing gamble.

If the option sketched above seems dubious, all the others are worse. There can be no doubt that large-scale employment of tactical nuclear weapons in pursuit of a clear-cut military victory would bring NATO into direct conflict with Russia. The alliance could never allow Putin to get away with a devastating nuclear strike certain to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, most of them civilians. And a direct nuclear attack on NATO countries would be suicidal for Russia.

Our thinking about the unthinkable should, therefore, focus on the option I described in detail: the employment of tactical nuclear weapons in small numbers as an intimidation tactic. It seems to me unlikely that Putin would risk this, but the possibility that he might take the plunge cannot be waved away. How to deter him from doing so?

As usual, the temptation to treat the virus of aggression with diplomatic therapeutics is strong. There are many people who think that Putin should be provided with an “off ramp”—in plain language a face-saving compromise at the expense of Ukraine; in plainer language still a reward for his bloody act of aggression; in Winston Churchill’s trenchant metaphor, feeding the crocodile in hopes that the crocodile will eat you last. But a deal like that—rewarding bad behavior—would be more likely to embolden Putin than to chasten him. Besides, for the United States to negotiate away Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence would be a pusillanimous act unworthy of a country that saved the world from earlier tyrants and despots.

Putin being a believer in hard power, the correct policy is to remind him of hard power’s realities. Let the despot be told in stark, unmistakable terms that the use of nuclear weapons, even on a small scale, would spell the end for him and his regime. It’s just that simple. And yes, I know, simple does not necessarily mean easy or convenient. Doing the right and necessary thing is often hard, not least because it requires people and nations to stop deluding themselves and face reality.