The threat of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine “cannot be taken lightly,” but so far the CIA hasn’t seen “a lot of practical evidence reinforcing that concern,” CIA Director William Burns said Thursday, April 14, 2022 (read Reuters story here).
Burns specifically related his concern that Putin might resort to tactical nukes to Russia’s setbacks and heavy losses in Ukraine.
Biden’s CIA chief, who has personally interacted with Putin in the past, calls the ex-KGB agent an “apostle of payback.” It’s not comforting to see that mindset in a frustrated dictator who’s fighting a losing war and sitting on a pile of nuclear weapons.
Russian mouthpieces have suggested Moscow might resort to nukes if Russia itself was at risk. On paper, that’s not essentially different from America’s nuclear posture. We probably would use ours to save our country from extinction or losing a major war.
The Reuters article doesn’t offer any details of Burns’ thinking about the likelihood of the Ukraine conflict going nuclear (only Russia would use nukes, as Ukraine doesn’t have any), or against what kinds of targets, but Al Jazeera notes (here) that tac-nukes were designed “to be used against troop concentrations, ships, marshalling yards, airfields, etc.,” and both sides deployed them during the Cold War.
Nukes of any kind are what military planners call area-type weapons, similar to carpet-bombing, but on a larger scale. The most likely targets would be fixed installations like supply depots and railyards — or cities, if Putin decided to terrorize Ukraine’s civilian population (beyond what he already is).
As for what might trigger their use, Al Jazeera posits that, “If Putin cannot come out of this war with something that looks like victory or there is an occasion where Russian soldiers are being seen to be generally routed, the chances of nuclear use by Russia to shore up its status as a world power start to grow.”
Al Jazeera also notes that the one time the U.S. and Russia faced off across the nuclear chessboard, in 1962, all the detailed planning for nuclear conflict was tossed aside and the two countries settled their differences through negotiation, because the consequences of nuclear war were too severe. Since then, both countries have shrunk their nuclear weapons stockpiles, and relegated those weapons to a deterrent role. But, the Al Jazeera article continues,
“But in 2022, two very different individuals are in charge, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The questions are simple: Would Putin break the nuclear taboo by using these weapons in anger for the first time in 77 years? And, if so, how would President Biden respond? So, if Russia detonated just one nuclear weapon, say over a military target [in Ukraine], would the United States risk climbing the escalatory ladder by retaliating in kind, with global destruction waiting on the top rung?
“President Biden recently signed a memorandum allowing the US nuclear weapons use in retaliation for a chemical or nuclear attack. Ukraine is not a NATO member though, so would Biden retaliate in kind to protect Ukraine, while running the extreme risk of destroying a country already ravaged by war. One of the ironies of nuclear weapons, not lost on the Ukrainian people, is that not only did they not deter Russia from invading Ukraine, but the potential use of nuclear weapons has in fact deterred NATO from coming to Ukraine’s aid.”
That, undoubtedly, is what Putin intended with his nuclear saber-rattling on the eve of invading Ukraine. And it has worked. NATO won’t intervene to save Ukraine, or even impose a no-fly zone, and Biden has been stingy with supplying Ukraine with weaponry. He wouldn’t agree to send fighters from Poland to Ukraine, because he doesn’t want to provoke Russia. Biden has specifically referred to “World War 3” as his reason.
And it might be a perfectly accurate calculation on his part, the point being that Putin has nuclear weapons, has hinted at using them, and the West doesn’t know what might trigger him to use them. So far he hasn’t, which suggests the U.S. can continue to supply Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine’s army, and they can keep using them to blow up Russian tanks and conscripts to their hearts’ content. Putin doesn’t put much value on the lives of Russian boys anyway.
In late March, MSN reported (here) that “Sarah Bidgood, director of the Eurasia program at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, said it was hard to estimate the level of risk that Russia would use a tactical nuke in Ukraine, but that it was clear Russia relied on its nuclear weapons, including tactical weapons, to give it flexibility in managing the risk of escalation.”
That, she says, means “Russia could introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict when it felt it had run out of conventional options and was facing an existential threat,” but adds, “It’s hard to say, because we don’t have a good sense for what all of Putin’s red lines are here, or what he regards as an existential threat.” (At this point, we must ask, existential threat to what? Russia’s physical survival, or Putin’s political survival? I would lean more to the latter.)
The MSN article goes on to describe changes in Russian nuclear doctrine after the Soviet Union broke up, and Russia’s army was “in tatters,” that put more emphasize on battlefield (as opposed to strategic) nuclear tactics, noting that Russia then built up its stockpile of tactical nukes. (Russia now has 1,500 of them, while the U.S, has 100 deployed in NATO Europe and another 130 in storage at home.)
Other analysts have said that “if a country can achieve its objectives without nuclear weapons, it will,” but “the weakness of Russia’s conventional [forces] might explain [their increased] reliance on nuclear threats,” MSN says. Western observers have watched as Russia carried out military exercises that simulated use of tactical nukes against NATO members, and Russia has been upgrading its nuclear delivery systems, including development of hypersonic warheads, which are difficult to defend against with anti-missile systems.
Adam Mount, director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, thinks “public anxiety over the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine has far outstripped the actual risk, so far at least,” while acknowledging that the “risk increases as Putin becomes more desperate, but the fact remains that nuclear use would not help him win the war or cause Washington to abandon Kyiv.”
What would the U.S., or NATO, do if Putin did use one or more nukes in Ukraine? I think it would depend on the number, and the targets. Multiple nuclear strikes against cities would provoke a stronger psychological reaction, and probably a more robust policy response, than a single explosion over a purely military target. But MSN notes that in 2017 a U.S. Air Force general disputed that “tactical nuclear weapons were really anything different than a strategic nuclear weapon,” and said the U.S. would “respond strategically, not tactically, because they have now crossed a line.”
But he was speaking of use against the U.S., and would we escalate to strategic exchange if the target was not Washington D.C. but Kyiv? I think not. We’re not going to trade American cities and lives for Ukrainian cities.
When I try to imagine how Biden would respond to a Russian tactical nuclear attack in Ukraine, taking into account his cautious personality, I think he’d then become more willing to give Ukraine more of what Zelensky has been asking for, to help Ukraine win the war, but the U.S. and NATO still wouldn’t directly intervene. But what if Russia nuked, say, a supply base in Poland, possibly killing some Americans in the process? At that point, you’ve got NATO being attacked, and I think that brings us into the war. And things could rapidly escalate from there, and maybe spin out of control.
And if it does bring us into the war, what “war” are we talking about? Does allied Europe, i.e. NATO, just push Russian forces out of Ukraine and restore Ukraine’s borders, or push on into Russia and fight to defeat that nation on its own soil as we did with Germany and Japan in World War 2? I don’t think you can do that without triggering a strategic nuclear exchange.
The next world war, if there is one, will be fundamentally different from the last one. And if there’s one after that, it — as Einstein suggested — probably will be fought with sticks and stones. At least, I’m sure that’s on the minds of American and NATO political leaders and military planners.
For a while, it was tempting to think that nuclear weapons would prevent the world ever seeing another Hitler. But now, it looks more like they will keep us from doing anything about the next Hitler, if there ever is one. Putin is giving us a glimpse of what that future might look like.
