Restoring Fear of the Atom, or why Russia should nuke Lvov and not Warsaw

'Better an end with horror than a horror without end' - Ferdinand von Schill

An innocent proposal

Back in June, right when the fabled and ultimately unsuccessful Ukrainian counter offensive was starting, an essay by esteemed political scientist and academician Sergey Karaganov saw the light of day, on which the author argued for the use of nuclear weapons by Russia against select European NATO member states as a means by which to quickly end the Russo-Ukraine war. This is supposedly to be achieved via the restoration, with an arguably very dramatic display, and one fraught with glaring risks of escalation - of the lost to the current generation of western politicians and publics - fear of the atom(ic bomb). Karaganov is anything but a random academician, as a brief look at his life and career readily reveals, with his views often reflecting parts of the Russian foreign policy establishment, himself being considered the patriarch of the Russian school of realism, and thus his arguments and proposals ought to be taken very seriously.

The article in question, titled “A Difficult but Necessary Decision” provoked a number of interesting responses by both his fellow countrymen and western colleagues, ranging from tacit acceptance, to outright rejection of his main thesis, a rejection often voiced quite emphatically by other Russian analysts. Karaganov responded to his critics by doubling down on his argument on a subsequent article, interestingly published not in some obscure academic journal that only specialists read, but on the state owned ria.ru news website.

Now, I would like to make clear beforehand that I consider most plausible the scenario by which Karaganov is floating this idea as part of the coercive diplomacy practiced by both sides via opinion pieces and targeted leaks, in an effort to affect the perceptions, will, and ultimately actions of the adversary. That is, I would not consider his argument disingenuous, but the fact that it appeared at the time that it did and triggered the discussion that it did, is likely indicative of the Russian leadership’s desire to pass certain messages both domestically and internationally, opening the Overton window a bit more and allowing such hitherto “heretic” ideas as nuclear war, to freely float on the public space, boosted as they are by the undeniable authority of their broacher.

Karaganov’s original piece espouses some other ideas of merit that can be treated quite separately from his main suggestion of a nuclear strike, such as the need for Russia to reorient to the East and within itself, shedding away its Western-oriented barren and futile fallacies (Karaganov suggests a new Siberian capital city for example), but my focus here will be on his main idea, the prospect of a pre-emptive nuclear strike aiming to end the war.

In this article I make the case that a more suitable target, one that poses much less risk of turning the ongoing conflict to World War III, while actually restoring stability and updating the relevance of nuclear deterrence in the forming contours of a nascent multipolar world, is Ukraine, one that Karaganov is quick to dismiss, clinging as he does to the prevalent amongst Russian elites, self-defeating dogma that treats Kiev and Ukrainians as some sort of victim of nefarious westerners, instead of willing and prime participants in the almost decade long massacre of Donbass civilians.

“We are not Gazprom, but we can also bring warmth to NATO homes.”

The Rockets are Always Ready

The Damocles’ sword of nuclear escalation has been hanging over the stage of the unfolding drama of the Ukraine war since its very beginning, owing as much to the mere fact that Russia is a nuclear superpower fighting an existential battle, as to the rhetoric occasionally emanating from Moscow’s official and semiofficial channels of communication with the western adversary and global audience.

Nuclear deterrence rose in status for Russia's defense planning exponentially after the end of the Cold War left Moscow’s conventional forces significantly weakened, and decades of NATO expansion saw its former satellites changing camp, adding to the aggregate force of Washington’s army. This was in effect a reversal of the situation during the Cold War, when the NATO block feared that the Soviet numerical superiority would force it to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack aimed at taking over Europe, launched by Moscow, leading to the flexible response doctrine.

It is no coincidence - but retrospectively it might well be deemed a significant mistake of misallocation of resources - that of Putin’s wunderwaffen of the March 2018 “you will listen to us now” speech (spoiler: nobody did listen), all are of a strategic nature and most are directly meant to enhance Russia's nuclear war-fighting capabilities and expand its retaliatory portfolio. From the new conventional Sarmat ICBM, to the worthy of a Bond villain tsunami-triggering and carrier-task-force-destroying Poseidon underwater drone, and from the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle to the (not yet operational) Burevestnik nuclear powered and nuclear armed cruise missile, Russia can easily boast the best and funkiest nuclear arsenal on the globe, one from which no enemy can realistically hope to survive.

Whether it would have been wiser to invest these resources to say a few hundred SU-35s airplanes, a few thousand T-90M tanks and some tens of thousands of professional troops that would have actually captured the Banderite den of Kiev in a couple of weeks, is another matter, better left for historians to argue over. What can be said with certainty though is that these novel strategic weapons alone (along of course with the entirety of Russia's “conventional” nuclear arsenal that can reduce North America and Europe to cinders) were not enough by themselves to prevent the West from providing extensive capabilities to Kiev, in fact donating to Ukrainians the equivalent of a medium/large-size by global standards army, on top of Ukraine’s already numerous NATO-trained forces.

In any case, this focus on nuclear weapons reveals a clear strategic prerogative of the Russian state, with an effort spanning decades to retain and enrich its nuclear arsenal being a testament to the prominence as a deterrent that Moscow attributes to it. Thus, there should be little doubt that the Russian nuclear forces are both at the top of their game (perhaps in contrast to other branches of Russia’s forces) and in a state of high readiness to respond to strategic threats.

But whilst in technical-material terms the Russian state allocated significant resources to its nuclear war-fighting projects and continues to do so, the same Russian state’s strategic doctrine and a large part of Moscow’s rhetoric regarding its usage, is ambivalent, or sometimes outright self-defeating, in effect drastically constraining Russia's options and inviting increased belligerence from the enemy.

Doctrinal Inconsistencies

The current published, and publicly available, Russian doctrine on deterrence policy and nuclear weapons, outlines scenarios under which Russia could resort to their use. Excluding the obvious case, where nuclear strikes are conducted against Russia by an adversary, other contingencies are outlined, including a conventional attack against elements of Russia's strategic forces and an attack that threatens the Russian state itself. Specifically, it states that Russia reserves the right to respond during an “attack by (an) adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions” and “aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy”.

While the second part about an existential threat against the Russian state is purposefully ambiguous, it must be immediately noted that attacks against Russian strategic forces (carriers of nuclear weapons) have already taken place, and more than once during the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet there was no usage of nuclear weapons by Moscow as a response, nor an elevated alert state of the strategic forces was apparently ordered. As for an attack against the state itself, the drones landing on the Kremlin rooftop can conceivably be treated as such, since after all it is the place of residence of the supreme commander of the Russian forces-Putin. Yet in this case as well, which despite its very lackluster results (the rooftop just needed a paint job) was even symbolically an attempt at a decapitation strike of the head of state, no nuclear response materialized.

So, are we to assume that qualitative and/or quantitative factors come into play when Russian leadership evaluates attacks against its strategic forces and against itself when weighing the prospects of a nuclear retaliatory strike? Say, if instead of a single Tu-95 or Tu-22, there were a dozen hit, or perhaps a modern and more capable Tu-160 was hit, or even an SSBN (submarine carrying nuclear ballistic missiles, considered the most robust second strike weapon) was somehow destroyed by drones or sabotage, would that classify as a good enough reason to send nukes flying Ukraine’s way? Or, say, if instead of a few scorch marks on the Kremlin rooftop, a more successful Ukrainian drone strike or assassination by other means, took out a key figure of the Russian government, one that is an indispensable part of the strategic decision-making process? Would that warrant a nuclear strike against the perpetrator and/or its enablers-Ukraine and NATO states?

While it is safe to assume that such a qualitative and quantitative threat assessment and evaluation is both prudent and applicable, it nevertheless is true that the more such strikes Moscow tolerates, the more it invites by its relentless enemies in Kiev and beyond. On their part, they seem to have adopted the strategy of the “boiling frog”, starting with relatively innocuous Javelins, proceeding to far more lethal HIMARS, and escalating with long range capabilities such as fighter jets, cruise missiles such as SCALP-EG, Storm Shadow, tactical missiles like ATACMS, and drones striking deep into Russian territory. In short, Moscow’s crippling hesitancy to respond when real or imaginary “red lines” are crossed, and its unwillingness to put its money (state resources) where its mouth is - after all is Russia fighting an existential war or not? - begets increased risk-taking on the part of the enemy. This could be seen as a continuation of the political decisions taken since 2014 and the Maidan coup, allowing the situation to fester to a point where either action must be taken, or strategic defeat was almost imminent. Moscow risks the same on the military level with its over-cautious stance.

Now, it is true that over the years bold statements of an almost theatrical quality have been made by Russian officials about the readiness to use the ultimate weapon, perhaps the most famous and quoted one being by Putin himself who back in October 2018 declared that in the event of nuclear war “As martyrs, we will go to heaven… and they will just croak because they won’t even have time to repent.” Of course, these were happier times, a war where hundreds of thousands have been killed and wounded was not raging, and even such dramatic words carried less weight.

Much more recently, and of greater significance given the relatively detailed and explicit definition of the circumstances where Russia would resort to the nuclear option, was a statement by Dmitri Medvedev a few months ago, that “We'd have to use a nuclear weapon if (the) Ukrainian offensive was a success.” The (so far) less-than-stellar performance of the Ukrainian armed forces during their over-hyped counter-offensive means that these words have not been put to the test, though that might still be subject to change.

Concomitantly to these dramatic statements though, Russia consistently affirms the joint position of all major nuclear powers that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. So we are left in a situation where some-admittedly on the low threshold-conditions for resorting to the use of nuclear weapons according to the official Russian doctrine are satisfied, and in parallel, but not directly related to it, prospective battlefield changes might put to the test the argument, made both by Russian and Western analysts, that should Russia suffer a catastrophic collapse of its war effort in Ukraine, it will “go nuclear” in order to salvage it.

Nuke Lvov not Warsaw

Having briefly presented both the status of the Russian nuclear forces, hopefully highlighting their prime importance to Russia’s deterrence doctrine, and Moscow’s declared willingness to use them, albeit it with many caveats and inconsistencies, it’s time to return to the basic premise of Karaganov’s article, that a preemptive strike against a NATO state would break the strategic impasse vs the West - an impasse that even a clear victory by conventional means that entailed subjugation of Kiev to Russia would not end - being the optimal choice for Moscow.

Karaganov’s proposal is not fully detailed and leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but in essence he suggests that Russia should conduct a nuclear strike with an “escalate to deescalate” purpose, with the more probable candidates being Poland and the limitrophe states of the Baltics. Karaganov assumes - otherwise he would be suggesting triggering a global thermonuclear war - that there will be no western symmetric response. In other words, if Russia nukes, say Poland, then the United States will not respond with a nuclear strike.

While the United States is not treaty bound, nor does its nuclear usage doctrine commits it to a nuclear response when a NATO ally is struck by nuclear weapons, the plausibility of the United States accepting such an outcome without responding with a massive kinetic strike, even at the very least of a purely conventional nature, is highly doubtful. Even if the United States does not respond symmetrically on a nuclear strike conducted by Russia against a non-nuclear armed NATO state, there is a high probability that the conventional retaliatory strike by the United States that would follow, would be devastating enough against Russian targets that we would enter a nuclear escalation spiral regardless.

Of course, Karaganov is well aware of these contingencies even though neither he nor us and likely neither the powers that be, whether in Moscow or Washington, have a full grasp of the probabilities that would be attributed to each such scenario. What can be said with certainty though, even in such a risk laden and intrinsically chaotic to predict environment, is that the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine will carry significantly less risk for a symmetric nuclear strike against Russia than one against a NATO member state. In short, while a nuclear strike against Ukraine is certainly not a low-risk scenario as far as Western retaliatory action is considered, it still must be viewed as a relatively safe option compared to what Karaganov suggests.

But now let's turn to the potential benefits awaiting Russia should it choose the path of nuclear escalation against the Ukraine, which in in my view are numerous, and at the stage that the war is, perhaps do constitute the optimal scenario, or rather the only contingency and option by which Russia can still achieve a total victory against its enemies.

The only real Wunderwaffen

For all the talk of superweapons, prevalent amongst the western supporters of Ukraine in the form of HIMARS, Leopards, F-16s and what have you not - and the similar, but admittedly much more subdued talk on the Russian side of Armatas, Su-57s, guided FABs and the like - there are no conventional superweapons around. But when the forces unleashed by splitting the atom, or more aptly by fusing the atomic nuclei, are unleashed, the discussion changes drastically and any wargaming done by generals, goes through the window, rendered obsolete. There is only one superweapon - the nuclear bomb in all its variants.

Today, Russia finds itself at a tactical and strategic impasse in Ukraine. Moscow’s initial goal of a swift victory and repeat of the Crimea scenario on a grander scale was over before it even began, while the assumed “Plan B” to gain control of a large part of the territories under Kiev’s control-at least the Donbass-and render the rest a failed state, totally dependent on outside help and formally non-aligned with the West, seems equally elusive. To put it bluntly, and without excluding the scenario of a sudden collapse of the enemy, the calculus of the conflict doesn’t allow Moscow to hope that such an outcome is likely in the short to mid-term, with the tactical picture remaining largely unchanged. Similarly, on the strategic level, the West has formed into a solid block in opposition to Russia, NATO has been reinvigorated, the intricate and cultivated over decades ties with Europe, so precious to the Kremlin and the Russian elites, are being cut one-by-one with very few, if any, remaining, and the vilification of everything Russian, in the form of rampant, dehumanizing Russophobia, now is the norm in public discourse in the US and Europe.

For a victory in the battlefield to come by conventional means, one that would break the stalemate, we can safely say that a very large price in terms of material and men would have to be paid by Russia. Since no mass mobilization of either men or industry is apparent, and neither a complete abandonment of Kiev by its western patrons is realistically to be expected-even if bad orange man returns to the White House-there seems to be no clear path to a decisive Russian victory. Neither for a Ukrainian one of course, but that is another issue. If the Kremlin’s cunning (and all-too-obvious) plan is to keep the conflict at its current tempo, opting for the opponent to exhaust itself, it is certain that tens of thousands more of Russia’s best will perish, and a significant part of the country’s resources will be expended in the war effort. Moreover, the risk of an unwitting escalation with NATO will persist for years to come, while other factors related to the global geopolitical environment, hitherto unknown, can come into play and undermine Russia’s war effort.

Enter the nuclear option. Nuclear weapons come in many varieties, but what is a distinctive factor is the ability to adjust their yield, thus their catastrophic power, resulting in two broad categories-strategic and tactical. That is, there is a distinction between a multi-megaton weapon that can level a large metropolis, thus being of a strategic quality, and one with a few kilotons yield that can, say, destroy a strategic bridge or an accumulation of forces of the adversary, one classified as a tactical one. This offers a significant-and in the case of an opponent with no ability to respond, unparalleled-flexibility of options.

For example, the main battlefield change brought by Ukraine’s ill-fated counteroffensive is the creation of a small pocket south of Orekhov in Zaporozhe region. Regaining that small salient that can prove to be troublesome in the future, would entail for Russian forces to fight their way through dense minefields and systems of trenches at a very costly series of engagements. Instead, if tactical nuclear weapons are employed against the accumulated Ukrainian forces in the salient and their staging and support areas, what will take weeks or months of bloody battles can be over in a few hours. Similarly, destroying the lynchpins of Ukrainian defenses in the Donbass region, like the Avdeevka stronghold or the fortifications west of Bakhmut, can be achieved with minimum losses, allowing a rapid tactical advance, and simultaneously dramatically change the overall strategic situation, forcing Kiev to negotiate.

The immediate ramifications of a strategic strike targeting a major Ukrainian city, say like Lvov, for instance as a response to a successful strike against a Russian nuclear power plant, are all too apparent and horrific, but who can argue that they are more horrific, albeit it on a larger scale, compared to what Ukrainian nationalists did to Donbass civilians for more than eight years? Punitive targeting of civilians is a game that can be played by two after all. And for those hypocritical or naïve souls, all too willing to cry in horror about collective punishment, the razing of cities is the norm in history, from Carthage 146 BC to Mosul 2016, and from Baghdad 1258 to Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945. The main adversary of Russia, the United States, has no qualms on inflicting mass, collective punishment on the civilian population of its adversaries today, the prime examples being the destruction of Iraq and the botched (at a terrible price) attempt to destroy Syria.

This brings to light a major imbalance, an asymmetry that haunts international stability since the beginning of the Cold War but made much more prominent after it ended. While one side, the collective West, is willing to use all available means to achieve victory, and will settle with nothing less than global hegemony, fueled by a zealot-like ideologized fervor and unfaltering self-righteousness, the other, Russia, along with the global South and China, are consistently opting for the diplomatic path, a form of “gentlemen’s agreements”, working on the creation of a multipolar global system with no clear ideological identity. As for nuclear weapons, it is only the United States that did not hesitate to employ them. Russia might have built and retained the largest arsenal, but ad nauseam repeats how terrible and “inconceivable” their use is, perhaps an echo of the trauma of the mass casualties of World War II, along with the sentimentalist and empirically unfounded assumption that a nuclear war cannot be won.

It might well be argued that Russia and China act from a position of relative weakness. But the reasons for Russia’s and China’s self-restrain to the point of strategic paralysis, are irrelevant. What matters is that the current system of international relations amongst major powers is inherently unstable, and rapidly drifting towards a global conflict, because one side is willing to go all-in and act with impunity, while the other is hesitant, mired in self-doubt and fears of escalation. Expecting that for whatever reason the US and their European vassals are about to willingly abandon their imperialist project absent a major shock is the apogee of strategic blindness and wishful thinking. The main benefit of a nuclear strike by Russia against Ukraine, or potentially as Karaganov suggests against a NATO member state, will be to introduce exactly such a shock to the system, restoring it by showing to Washington and Brussels what the real stakes are, and finally demonstrating that for Moscow, the war in Ukraine truly is an existential struggle.

Restoring fear to the atom, fear to the prospect of a global thermonuclear war-a fear that western elites have hubristically allowed to subside from political discourse, perhaps yet another manifestation of their desire to shape the world according to their ideologically pure echo-chambers where denying reality and facts is equal to nullifying their effects-can usher in the era of multipolarity and restore global stability, one disrupted by the West’s crusader-like efforts to preserve and expand its hegemony.

Well, even if it does not, if a nuclear strike by Russia against Ukraine or NATO (or by China against a US carrier battle group near the Taiwan strait, a scenario not far into the future) does trigger World War III, don’t despair dear reader, the chances of it wiping out humanity are actually much exaggerated, and it will likely end long before we reach Hermann Kahn’s insensate war state. In any case, stocking up on iodine pills, gasoline, and guns, and getting ready to LARP as Fallout characters is always a prudent advice.

Может, бахнем? Will there be a bang?

“It’s not enough to carry a big stick, you must be ready to use it.”

There is a well-known foreign policy aphorism by Theodore Roosvelt: "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far". Well, carrying a big stick sometimes is not enough - you’ll have to be willing to use it, and convince the adversary of your readiness to do so. Russia wields the largest and, in many aspects, most modern nuclear arsenal, but so far has done a poor job on convincing its opponents of its willingness to use it. Could that change?

At the end of the day, in Russia the decision process boils down to a single person, Putin. Does he have the will to implement a nuclear strike against Ukraine - either of the preemptive kind or as a response in the case where Ukraine does achieve a successful strategic hit on a Russian target or launches a victorious counteroffensive? Past behavior is a good predictor of future one, and the record for Putin is rather mixed. While since his famous 2007 Munich speech, he does seem to have all the right instincts about Russia’s foreign policy (except perhaps his naïve and atavistic belief that Russia is and must remain culturally an integral part of Europe), he concurrently demonstrates a risk-averse hesitation and overcautiousness that allow Russia’s enemies to consistently gain the initiative.

In Georgia 2008, in Ukraine 2014, and to a lesser extent in Syria 2015, Putin has displayed an uncanny ability to snatch Pyrrhic victories from the jaws of complete victory. At the same time though, he defied all analysts’ expectations, both domestic and Western, by launching the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, which was, albeit eight years late, a correct - but also a very high risk-decision. Simultaneously, it is under Putin that vast amounts of rubles have been spent on modernizing and enhancing Russia’s nuclear arsenal, and as mentioned, he has made dramatic statements regarding his readiness to use it from time to time.

Pressing the red button and unleashing Armageddon might well be Putin’s ultimate play. Even if he doesn’t, the winds of change seem to be blowing in Russia, for the public and the elites as well, and a new generation of leaders - at least those that will not suffer some unfortunate airplane accident - is being forged by the ongoing war, leaders not ideologically tied to the dream of a western oriented Russia, and ones less willing to play in the global arena in line with self-restraining gentlemen’s rules like the current Kremlin inhabitant.

References

⦁ https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/a-difficult-but-necessary-decision/

⦁ https://ria.ru/20230625/yao-1880235742.html

⦁ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_response

⦁ https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18906/heres-the-six-super-weapons-putin-unveiled-during-fiery-address

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⦁ https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R45861.pdf

⦁ http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/ru/IluTKhAiabLzOBjIfBSvu4q3bcl7AXd7.pdf

⦁ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-medvedev-wed-have-use-nuclear-weapon-if-ukrainian-offensive-was-success-2023-07-30/

⦁ https://thehill.com/policy/international/3716583-russia-says-nuclear-war-must-never-be-fought-despite-fiery-rhetoric/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/01/03/p5-statement-on-preventing-nuclear-war-and-avoiding-arms-races/#:~:text=We%20affirm%20that%20a%20nuclear,deter%20aggression%2C%20and%20prevent%20war.

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⦁ https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IndirectDeaths

⦁ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-59600475

⦁ https://dione.lib.unipi.gr/xmlui/bitstream/handle/unipi/13545/Andris_17002.pdf.pdf?sequence=1⦁ &⦁ isAllowed=y

⦁ https://www.routledge.com/On-Escalation-Metaphors-and-Scenarios/Kahn/p/book/9781412811620

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