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MOVING TO Front from June 14
This analysis, unfortunately, seems very compelling. Do not comment until you have read it in full. If the author is wrong, I'd be very interested to hear why.
(Thanks to Boris Dagaev for the pointer.)
This is a nerve-wracking assessment that I'm not qualified to significantly dispute. I would only mention that the most plausible reason for Putin to refrain from using even tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine is likely the significant strain this would put on Russia's relations with "allies" like China. The piece dismisses this concern very briskly and with a link to another article that doesn't particularly support that briskness: "Claims that Putin would be dissuaded from using nuclear weapons by important partners like China or India are belied by experience thus far in the war. Although Putin values the support of others, he has not shied from putting that support at risk to get what he wants." This is just not a very serious engagement with a weighty aspect of Putin's position. Notably, it's also a purely political and non-military aspect, which the author of the piece (a former brigadier general) plausibly is less qualified to assess than the military considerations that primarily occupy him.
Maybe General Ryan and I are watching different wars but Russia has not "exhausted their ability to effectively respond to a Ukrainian escalation". The Ukrainian counter-offensive he's referencing began in the month since this was published and the results are not even close to in line with this claim. They're taking meaningful losses for very small gains so far.
I'm quite surprised at how much credibility the General gives to Russian military (and specifically Putin's) rhetoric around nuclear weapon use. Russia's actual military approach for the past century+ is to throw its men into the meat grinder and wear you down through attrition. The war so far fits perfectly within that approach, and nuclear escalation is not part of that.
The factor that makes me think Putin isn't even close to using nukes though is his knowledge of how that would truly escalate the war to the west and unite them against him. Maybe I missed it but I did not see this point addressed at all in the article. The war so far has prompted significant increases in military spending by Europe, Finland to join NATO, and of course the US and others to heavily commit equipment to Ukraine. Escalating to the use of nuclear weapons would cause a response orders of magnitude greater than what's already been done and I think Putin knows that.
The piece is clearly right that the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons is proportional to the failure of Russia to stem the Ukrainian offensive. As others have ironically observed, a Ukrainian victory is the worst-case scenario, if nuclear war is to be avoided. But there are a lot of ‘if’s in the derivation to the conclusion the paper seeks to draw. For one thing, now the offensive has begun, the Russian army is performing very well, as acknowledged by every serious observer. This could change, but I suspect not (the Russian failure to respond to previous offensives had more to do with the lack of a proper defence organisation in the relevant areas than any intrinsic lack of quality in the forces or kit – the oft-made claim that Russia is a paper tiger is simply people getting high on their own supply or the indulgent absurdity that an army’s brutality is inversely proportional to their combat effectiveness). Moreover, the attrition of the Ukrainian forces is somewhat unclear (assuming that the Russian figures for enemy dead are on the generous side at about 7.5k). Material can be replaced, but not men. At any rate, it is certainly very high and unsustainable, if the Azov coast is the goal (the goal might be more modest – just to reclaim as much land as they can). So, all bets are off on the nuclear option until the offensive plays itself out, and it is genuinely uncertain at the moment how it will go. Two other little points. The author mentions the Russian deployment of old tanks, as if this indicates depleted resources. The old tanks are actually being used for dug-in fire and are highly effective as such. Lastly, Russia’s objectives in the whole campaign remain obscure, and so it is equally obscure what would count as ‘existential’, although a loss of Crimea would certainly count.
*** Sorry but I have to say this: This post reflects my opinion and not necessarily the views of the DoD or U.S. Government ***
A couple of points:
General Ryan's assessment, while very depressing, assumes that a nuclear strike order will be followed along Russia's nuclear chain of command. Yet the number of people involved from order to launch isn't trivial and this chain hasn't been tested in a real strike order scenario. In fact, this point can be generalized to any nuclear strike order by any state (except Truman against Japan of course).
It is important to distinguish the THREAT of using nuclear weapons from ACUTUALLY ORDERING their use. Threats are acts of deterrence, the efficacy of which depends upon determinants of credibility (e.g. legal frameworks, logistical feasibility, personnel in the right place, and so on). Putting these determinants of credibility in order may simply be acts of deterrence. But the thing about credible threats vs. actual use is that they look the same up until the order is given.
So really it's about that order. And this is where things get dicey for Putin.
Authoritarian regimes are always – always! – first and foremost concerned with INTERNAL threats to regime rule, rather than external (regardless of their rhetoric) ones. Threatening the use of nukes makes Putin seem strong internally. But actually ordering their use may (50/50) make him look weak, crazy, unreliable, desperate, selfish, etc., thereby inviting a coup.
For these reasons, I think one can accept Gen. Ryan's argument and still think the likelihood of Putin actually ordering nuclear strikes to be toward the lower end.
This is an illuminating and well-argued piece from a credible author. Regarding the following point, a niggle:
"For Putin…continuing to threaten a tactical nuclear attack in Ukraine without doing it carries perhaps as much risk as doing it. To remind the West of the destructive power of a nuclear weapon, Putin and his generals may decide it is necessary to explode such a weapon. This would…let Putin prove he is no bluffer."
My layperson's understanding is that proving-one-is-not-a-bluffer and demonstrating-the-power-of-a-nuclear-weapon have both, as reasons, already been (historically, post-WWII) tested and rejected as reasons that–unsupplemented by other reasons–*necessitate* exploding a nuclear weapon. I might be wrong. But, at the very least, I provisionally take some issue with the term "necessary" here (and not for technical reasons having to do with philosophers' uses of the term "necessary.")
I'm not remotely expert in military affairs but I considered by happenstance the possibility that Putin would place Crimea under a nuclear shield so to say. However, in such a case, would he not announce as a most dire warning that Crimea, an "indivisible" part of Russia, was so armed?
In such a hypothetical would Ukraine be counseled by NATO to test Putin's redline by attacking Crimea all the same, even at the risk of the nuclear devastation of Kiev (perhaps with a few days warning?), just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in order to save American soldiers and abbreviate the war? One might argue the example and precedent, the only one, has been set by the US and no other.
How would NATO respond to such a hypothetical warning: by initiating an anticipatory nuclear attack, thereby all but guaranteeing the destruction at the very least of most of Europe along with at the Western most populous part of Russia?
My understanding is that the "special operation" has so far not significantly impacted the Russian economy, which is not even remotely on a war footing a la both Russia and the US during WWII. Assuming this supposition is true wouldn't it make sense for Russia to shift from a limited special operation to all out war? After all, the US was losing in Vietnam after commiting hundreds of thousands of troops and yet it never resorted to a repeat of the precedent it set by bombing Japan with nuclear weapons.
If Putin, as the General Ryan argues, were to use preemptively a tactical nuke against Ukraine I can only imagine that he would do it not to save face or even to save his regime, but rather because the Russian elite truly believes the risk to Russia is existential, which is a position they've held for decades now, and which perhaps the West would have been wise to need, considering that they would never have tolerated such an encroachment by Russia, for example, by allowing it to place nuclear weapons in present times in Cuba or Venezuela.
Yet NATO has done precisely that by surrounding Russia with innumerable missiles capable of being armed with nuclear warheads. So far the devastation Russia has subjected Ukraine to militarily is much more limited than what the US unleashed upon Iraq; this suggests there's much much more in terms of aerial devastation that Russia could perpetrate against Ukraine.
On the other hand, Ukraine has, according to the MSM, most likely effected the most spectacularly destructive single act of the war by allegedly destroying Nordstream. Nor do we yet know which party destroyed the Kakhova dam that feeds into Crimea. I would be very much interested in learning which belligerent potentially committed that second similarly spectacular attack.
If it turns out that Ukraine was also "potentially" responsible (let us assume according to Western "leaks") for the destruction of the dam, then I would actually be much more immediately concerned that the Zaporinhia nuclear power station might be next. Indeed or that some nuclear dirty bomb might suddenly go off somewhere in Ukraine or Russia, which might either serve as a nuclear casus belli for Russia itself (assuming it was a quite auto-injurious false flag), or another atrocity laid at the foot of Russia, with the intent of isolating it from China, the BRICS, and otherwise much of the Global South.
If I recall only the USA has demonstrated that it will use Nuclear weapons. For philosophers it is sad to see this fundamental fact register not at all – though outside certain minority circles in the USA, this is evident to anyone with the capacity to read history, or, indeed, to go look and talk to the victims. The real danger here is the USA. Most of the world knows this, so perhaps pay attention and listen sometime.
The general's conclusion is mitigated by one missing element in his analysis: the enemy gets a vote. A major aspect of Russian calculations will be the likely responses of the West to any such attack. I suggest that among these are likely to be:
1. An effective blockade of Russia. That is, the maximal disruption of all trade and financial transactions, and to a lesser extent the movement of peoples and communications – including the cyber variety.
2. A substantial increase in the quantity and quality of conventional weapons supplies to Ukraine.
3. An increased resolve on the part of the Ukrainians to resist Russian aggression and re-take all occupied territories.
4. Increased irregular, destabilising activities within Russia, by Ukrainians and dissident Russians, possibly assisted by Western special forces.
5. Covert actions by the West to remove Putin, for example, by substantial bribes and guarantees of immunity to his generals.
For these reasons, and there may well be others, I suspect that the probability of the use of tactical nuclear weapons is substantially lower than that implied in the article.
Joe Hatfield:
"General Ryan's assessment, while very depressing, assumes that a nuclear strike order will be followed along Russia's nuclear chain of command. Yet the number of people involved from order to launch isn't trivial and this chain hasn't been tested in a real strike order scenario."
The full chain of command – from a direct Presidential order on down – hasn't been tested, but whether a nuclear strike order will be followed has been tested, twice, with the results that we can see (i.e. we're here to talk about it). Googling "refused nuclear order" brought up the names of Stanislav Petrov and Vasily Arkhipov. I knew Petrov's story (although I'd forgotten his name), but Arkhipov's involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis was news to me – which in turn makes me wonder if there are still other stories, yet to surface, of nuclear launch orders being refused. (There certainly aren't any of nuclear launch orders being *accepted*.)
A very sobering and troubling analysis. Certainly made me less sceptical about such an outcome. I wonder of Ryan's view of the Ukrainian military is entirely accurate. This analysis seems to imply that Us Intelligence on these matters is highly flawed https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-leak-biopsy.
However, the comments here don't seem to do justice to the gravity of the situation. Let me explain:
1. India and China won't let Putin. While publicly India and China spout anti nuke rhetoric, it's unclear what their views are privately. Both have security concerns that could benefit from battlefield nukes becoming a reality. Just like early air bombings were seen as abhorrent at the beginning, while becoming commonplace as everyone started doing them.
2. No one will carry out the order. This seems unlikely. We are not talking about a massive ICBM launch dependent on one person. People used to carry out a tactical strike will be carefully selected beforehand.
3. EU/US will somehow magically do more to be rid of Putin. What exactly? Short of a full invasion which would probably result in even more nukes being launched I don't see how they could do more.
Also, the focus on Putin seems very unserious. He has stacked an entire bureaucracy with lackeys and stooges who will also lose their places if Putin goes. Certainly they won't give him up without some hefty concessions from the West
I don't know what your definition of 'nuclear launch orders' is but as witters has already pointed out, the US has demonstrated successful nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So by count that's two for two.
There's one thing I find puzzling about Ryan's scenario. If Putin is really ready to use nuclear weapons, why wouldn't he say so? Why stop at all the implied and veiled threats about asymmetric options? Why not issue an explicit ultimatum: Hey Ukraine: Either stop your counter-offensive by midnight June 16th, or face a nuclear weapon used at some place of my choosing. Wouldn't this be the logical escalation of the veiled threats he's used so far? Or has he stopped thinking of his nuclear capability as a diplomatic weapon (as well as a military one)?
Ryan claims Putin's decision to launch tactical nuclear weapons will be prompted by Russia's inability to "escalate" the war by conventional means, but he fails to show why Russia would even need to escalate the war at this point. In fact, any need Russia might have had to escalate the war has likely been dramatically reduced by its shift in posture from offensive to defensive. Back in February 2022, Russia was in an offensive posture because it was trying to capture Kiev. Obviously that effort failed. However, Barry Posen (security studies expert at MIT) wrote a very good article in Foreign Affairs explaining how, after the attempt to capture Kiev failed, Russia shifted focus and started building a fortified position in eastern Ukraine that–Posen argues–will be easy for Russia to defend. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-rebound-moscow-recovered-military-setbacks Indeed, there is reason to believe that Russia's new goal is not to keep Kiev out of NATO, which no longer seems possible, but rather to simply hold on to the territory Russia has captured in eastern Ukraine. A recent article in Harper's magazine provides significant evidence for the proposition that this may be Putin's new goal: in 2008, after the US announced its goal of pulling Ukraine into NATO, Putin told George W. Bush that "if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions." https://harpers.org/archive/2023/06/why-are-we-in-ukraine/ Thus, it appears that Russia is now the country trying to preserve the status quo (i.e., it is merely trying to keep what it has captured in Crimea and eastern Ukraine), and Ukraine is the one trying to change the status quo (i.e., it is trying to take back the territory Russia previously captured). So why, in this situation, would Russia need to escalate? Ryan speculates that Ukraine's new counteroffensive might be so powerful that it "threatens the loss of Crimea or the provinces that form the land bridge to it." However, as previous commenters have observed, and for the reasons Posen describes in his article, it is unlikely that Ukraine's counteroffensive will indeed pose such a threat.
What is much more likely is that the US, Ukraine, and Russia all know how the Ukraine conflict will ultimately be resolved: Russia is going to get some territory in eastern/southern Ukraine, including Crimea; and what is left of Ukraine will have a long-term military relationship with NATO, although this relationship will almost certainly fall far short of full NATO membership with an Article 5 commitment. The point of the counteroffensive is not that anybody thinks it is going to succeed. Rather, the point is that Zelensky needs to at least try to take back more territory before the resolution I outlined can be politically palatable in Ukraine and the West. The real risk of nuclear war is not that Putin will desperately resort to tactical nuclear weapons to prevent Ukraine from making gains that it is unlikely to make. Rather, the real risk of nuclear war is that–in the months, years, or perhaps even decades that pass before the parties are finally willing to agree to the solution that they already know they will likely ultimately reach–some unforeseen incident ends up spiraling out of control.
Putin's game plan is rhetorical yet realistic. Ukraine and NATO is more thought out and the two aspects are more lined up. We must take General Ryan's portrait seriously as an interpretation of the nuclear paradox. (Yes Putin, you can do it but at what cost?). It is important to note that every time NATO ups the weapons supply, both quantitatively and qualitatively, Russia moves around the failing generals and utters threats but that is all. Finally F-16s will be heading East which seemed a bridge too far 6 months ago. And now is happening., Russia has no response. They are depleted, internal opposition is not well known amongst the oligarchs et alia. Conscription weakness reminds me of Vietnam, no one wants to go especially in the wake of Chechnya and Afghanistan.
While again, I take Ryan's warning to heart I have two questions about it. Is it another militarily aggressive response and if so, what should be do about it in advance? Does he speak the dominant language of the US Defense Department? The other elephant in the room seems to be Crimea. I can see Russia 'losing the war' (meaning unable to win) and ceding the Dombas Region but not Crimea. If that is the case, Zelenskyy and NATO will have a big decision.
As a veteran of previous threads here on this topic, I was half wondering when it would come around again. Actually, I had concluded its moment had passed a while ago: so reading Ryan's piece just now, it seems a bit out of time (and of course he wrote a little before what we've now seen of the Ukrainian counter-offensive).
Why is Ryan wrong? As well as salient comments at #1, 2 & 3 above, we might note that since Jan we've seen:
(a) far more western arms being provided, including qualitatively different systems [tanks, Storm Shadow missiles];
(b) remote attacks of various sorts on the soil of Russia proper (maybe even in Moscow);
(c) deliberate and fairly violent cross-border provocations by "extreme Russian nationalists"
… all of which Putin has countenanced, with apparent equanimity. As well he might: they are no existential threat.
I suggest that Putin, with a lot more information available to him than he had 12 months ago and having now looked at the entire range of plausible scenarios squarely in the eye, has effectively taken the nukes off the table. They don't ever disappear; but he doesn't need them right now, and (vis-a-vis China's acute sensitivities in particular) they are more trouble than they are worth.
I'm still where I was back in January (https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2023/02/the-latest-escalation-of-the-war-in-ukraine.html#comments), namely that Crimea is for Putin the real red-line issue (and everybody knows it): and it doesn't look like an issue that'll arise in the near future.
I ran across this on RT News, which seems consistent with the point in the analysis that some are trying to justify the use of nuclear weapons:
General Ryan's article was published in May, while an article (perhaps the one mentioned in the RT link above, which I cannot access in my region) by a certain Sergey Karaganov, "Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy" in Russia, was published this month. The article was originally published in Russian but I was able to access it via Google translate (https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/tyazhkoe-no-neobhodimoe-reshenie/).
In any case, Prof. Karaganov offers a multipolar nationalist apologia of the invasion, with important strategic and telic qualifications (what is the Russian Federation's end goal, how will it be achieved?). Karaganov's conclusion seems to be that the use of strategic nuclear weapon(s) should be seriously considered by Russia, certainly in light of the precedent set by the US contra Japan, greatly accelerating the conclusion of WWII and leading to a multi-decadal interval of peace, albeit of a Cold War variety.
Karaganov believes that the EU is led by a "comprador" class utterly dependent and subservient to an itself decaying and decadent US hegemony. From which postulate Karaganov concludes that the strategic-cum-tactical use of nuclear weapon(s) by Russia will almost certainly alienate its principal ally China, likewise India, and in general the Global South, in the short term, but that Russia will be, as it were, forgiven by the aforesaid because (similarly to the case of the US's use of nuclear weapons to conclude WWII) of the great likelihood that Russia's hypothetical use of nukes, mutatis mutandis, likewise has the potential to reset global politics and peace dynamics for the better well into the future.
In other words, more than simply leading to the defeat of Ukraine militarily, the use of nukes by Russia would be exemplarily directed at Europe and the US: it would in effect shake these out of their decadent multi-decadal stupor and since Karaganov assumes the US isn't suicidal he believes the likelihood of nuclear escalation on the part of the US is low. When it comes to Karaganov's actual explanation of what Russia's potential use of nuclear weapon(s) would entail his analysis is exceedingly anticlimactic, as in, (based on my gloss) being so vague as to effectively be no analysis, explication, or elucidation at all, but either something like a cliffhanger or even textual lacuna or enigma. Karaganov makes no mention of General Ryan's article and I perceived no indication his own essay was a specific riposte or response to any specific previous recent article.
Nor do I have the slightest idea, to be sure, how sincere Prof Karaganov is in his promotion of the thesis that Russian strategic-cum-tactical use of nukes is (however lamentably) recommendable, because such a strategy would likely prove more than just survivable for the world and Russia, it actually has the inoculative potential to inaugurate a new era of multipolar peace.
Indeed, even if Karaganov is sincere in his advocacy of Russian use of nuke(s) against Ukraine, sincerity has many senses and meanings, including the utilitarian sincerity of postulating the unthinkable for whatever private or otherwise unvoiced reason: such that one might postulate that Karaganov "sincerely believes this, but he's an overall pessimist (though in this he's not explicit), in the sense that if asked outright whether there is high likelihood Putin will heed his advice, his inevitable response would be that Putin will not, because the opinion of and relationship with China is so important to him, that Putin would rather have tried and partially failed in the "special operation," if one assumes that Russia's novel special relationship and affinity with China is preserved. In other words, because, in any case, the Eurasian reorientation of Russia's is a Rubicon that Russia has already crossed and has no choice but to maintain if it stands any chance of continuing to exist, not only as a great power, but with the geographic integrity and dimensions it has inherited from its imperial past and which has come to define Russia as a civilization in itself; while Europe, on the other hand, presents the slow but seemingly inexorable falling away of civilization from itself, with emphasis on simulation vs reality as such.
My own geopolitical interpretation is that the world contains two or three great powers: obviously the US, China, and potentially Russia, but not the EU, which is a sort of subsidiary macro-conglomerate under the US's hegemonic license and aegis. If Russia remains a great power it is because it has the wealth and technological wherewithal, principally military, to preserve its independence and reorganize the future of Europe by acting in significant autonomous fashion and in contradistinction to the US. The latter being an ability that the EU has demonstrated no measurable capacity for since at least 2008, which is when it enters a period of endemic economic irreality sans enjoying the imperial monetary capacity for "reality creation" (to paraphrase Karl Rove) of the US military-economic hegemon, characterized by its "self-levitating" ability due to the uroboric reciprocal dynamic of the military-economic dyad itself.
Of course the persistent problem of Russia's is that if it is still a great power it is one dogged by the defining and delimiting problem that has dogged all individual European great powers since the beginning of the twentieth century: significant and increasing infra-populational disadvantages compared to the US, not to mention China, India, or even Brazil.
If there is any validity to the aforesaid assessment, then obviously Russia is the last remaining independent European great power, in the 19th through early 20th century mold, and as such serves or would pretend to serve as model for a future multipolar galaxy of such de novo powers, principally represented in ovo by the BRICS.
Phil:
I agree. By "this chain hasn't been tested" I meant the current existing chain of command of today. The success of a launch order of such consequence, I contend, falls more on the "agency" side of the structure vs. agency dichotomy.
Sadly, it remains as difficult as ever to get much plausibly accurate reporting of events from the ongoing military operations in Ukraine. That said, the analysis does seem to be predicated on both unrealistic expectations from the Ukrainian counteroffensive and an unrealistic interpretation of the Russian war posture.
Putin gave a very interesting press conference to a collection of Russian war correspondents on Tuesday that's worth a read. The official translation is here (http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/71391), but many snippets have been circulating around. The counteroffensive has, from what I've seen, been pretty catastrophic for the Ukranians. By one analysis, a single 2-hour battle resulted in the loss of about half of their Leopards and 15% of their Bradleys. (https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-nato-planned-trained?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2&fbclid=IwAR1t2LdNe4sZtRP678p55yK8M4qXfmcSsZkpsAtmQv8OIp4F6SZURa7QWVQ) Unlike Russia, Ukraine has no production capability. And the attacks on the Russian side of the border have been pretty paltry affairs.
The other half is more difficult to assess, since it involves intentions and possibly inapt comparisons, but Russia has not really shifted to a war-time economy; in the face of international sanctions they've managed to improve their GDP; and they've never attempted anything like a U.S.-style "Shock and Awe" campaign. This might after all be because they lacked the capacity–that's certainly the NATO-preferred narrative. But I suspect that bonds of history and proximity play at least as great a role, western caricatures of Putin notwithstanding.
A recent essay by Sergei A. Karaganov is worth a read, and makes a more compelling case for Russian nuclear escalation. Accessible here:
https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/why-putin-will-use-nuclear-weapons-ukraine
Seymour Hersh describes Karaganov as:
"[A]n academic in Moscow who is chairman of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. Karaganov is known to be close to Putin; he is taken seriously by some journalists in the West, most notably by Serge Schmemann, a longtime Moscow correspondent for the New York Times and now a member of the Times editorial board. Like me, he spent his early years as a journalist for the Associated Press."
Hersh covers the essay along with other recent developments at his Substack, which is a great resource. The most domestically concerning development is the rumored impending replacement of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman by Victoria Nuland, well-known Russia Hawk and a key player in the U.S.-backed 2014 Ukrainian coup.
One very important difference between Ryan’s argument and the argument put forward by Karaganov in that RT article: Ryan is arguing that Russia will use a “tactical” nuclear weapon “in Ukraine,” whereas Karaganov is advocating for “nuclear strikes in countries directly supporting the Kiev regime.” Karaganov then makes clear that he is talking about a nuclear strike not on the US but on its European allies: “Only if there is a madman in the White House who also hates his own country will the US decide to strike in ‘defense’ of the Europeans and invite retaliation by sacrificing a hypothetical Boston for a notional Poznan.“ Karaganov believes a nuclear strike against European backers of Zelenskyy will bring about “a catharsis, leading to the abandonment of much ambition.” In other words, such a strike will, in Karaganov’s view, bring about a moment of truth for US elites wherein they realize that they are unwilling to risk their own skins to maintain global hegemony. The publication of Karaganov’s article lends support to an argument I made on an earlier thread in this blog: although I am skeptical Russia will use nuclear weapons in this war, if it does, the attack will likely be more ambitious than merely launching a tactical nuclear weapon inside Ukraine; the Russians will decide that a more ambitious strike is necessary to accomplish the real goal of such a strike, which would be to break the will of the US. https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/10/sleepwalking-into-armageddon-part-2.html
Having reread Karaganov's article I cannot see the logical coherence of his argument in favor of a preemptive nuclear attack against city/ies in Western Europe (he gives, I do not know how aleatorily, the example of Poznan, in Poland, as a target). And such is pretty much the recommendation in toto: launch nukes against a Poznan (perhaps give the inhabitants warning beforehand) and when the dust settles, China, India, and Global South in general will be unhappy for a time, but evidently neither NATO nor individual nuclear states within it, such as France, UK, or, most importantly, US, will not respond in kind (even though I would assume NATO membership would require it).
He makes no mention of use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine itself. Furthermore, and to reiterate, my understanding is that an attack on one NATO state is an attack on all; to announce a preemptive nuclear attack against a city within a NATO state might it not cause NATO itself to seek to preempt the preemption in like nuclear fashion?
Moreover, how is it conceivable that a nuclear France or United Kingdom if attacked with nukes by Russia will not do what, certainly in the case of France, they've always warned they'd do in such an event, namely respond in kind or with an even fiercer level of nuclear retaliation?
Karaganov doesn't address any of these, to my mind, elementary questions, though he does insist on the importance of creating a third capital in Siberia, perhaps because after some important city within a NATO state is destroyed (after immediate prior warning of such an attack by Russia) Russia's second capital might be little more than a smoking pile of radioactive ruins.
Karaganov: "Only if there is a madman in the White House who also hates his own country will the US decide to strike in ‘defense’ of the Europeans and invite retaliation by sacrificing a hypothetical Boston for a notional Poznan."
Fortunately, every single leader of a nation armed with nuclear weapons, including Stalin, Mao, and two Kims, has (if they ever even pondered such a strategy or its analogues for their own specific circumstances) rejected this line of sophomoric 'geo-political reasoning'. Is Putin really the maddest / most desperate of them all? In the real world, nukes do not get thrown around on a speculative-aggressive whim.
"whatabout USA-Japan 1945" isn't really a counter to this. (If anyone wishes to consider a US precedent, Vietnam 1968-9 is the obvious candidate and it tells against worrying about Mr K's proposal.)
"K is taken seriously by some journalists in the West" [Hersh] isn't much of an endorsement, either.
While the Simplicius piece is fairly persuasive seeming to a relatively unknowledgeable reader like myself, there was a line near the end which was a cause for doubt: namely that there is much more freedom of speech in Russia than in the U.S. Now, as limited as freedom of expression might be in the West, especially in the mainstream media, the comparison is a joke. So, I googled Simplicius the Thinker, and it didn't take me very long perusing his Twitter feed to see that he's deeply pro-Russian, to the point of being a propogandist at times, and a conspiracy theorist to boot. Even in the face of videos showing Russians dying in close combat in a trench fight, he calls it a fake, saying the bullets are "airsoft" bullets. So, the substack argument you linked to might be right, and even if it's not, the counteroffensive might be doomed to fail. But I'd be hesitant trusting someone as obviously biased as Simplicius. While there is no such thing as complete objectivity, it surely come in degrees at least, and he's not got a lot of it.
On the news this morning it says that Wagner has taken Rostov on Don.
Do colleagues think this is a serious development?
And do colleagues think this is a good or a bad thing?
Suggest reading this (clearly written before today!) which is greatly superior to much else that has appeared over the months.
Erudite, nuanced, balanced, non-hysterical, reflective of genuine multi-dimensional uncertainty and its consequences, with a fine analysis of US / NATO policy & practice thus far. Even, dare I say, philosophical.
The present strange events in Russia bring to mind the Algerian War, during which France always maintained the upper hand and which it considered fundamental to its great power standing in the world and which it indeed won militarily, but at the cost of intolerable political and indeed military stresses to the Métropole (including the stresses related to France's nuclear arsenal in Algeria).
Evidently the US (CIA et al) was not on the side of French imperialism and was happy to see and perhaps contribute to the demise of any desire and indeed capacity for large scale militaristic French imperialism thenceforth. Obviously this problematic, pertaining to postwar European imperial autonomy, was preceded by the Suez Crisis of 1956, but France persisted, unlike UK, with an overt imperial policy (perhaps not unlike Russia vis a vis Ukraine) that was viewed as being grossly immoral not only by the world at large but by significant sectors of its own population (Sartre, of course, being one of the most famous philosophical opposers of said war).
The result is that after surrendering Algeria to the autochthonous revolutionary forces (and the USSR and perhaps the CIA) France effectively ceases to be a Western imperial power in the 19th to early 20th mold (ditto for Spain after "needlessly" surrendering its Sahara possessions, almost a third of the size of Spain itself). The present (death) floundering of Russian military great power politics in something resembling its own "Algeria" in the historical and concurrent sense (vis a vis Crimea), is probably as politically unsustainable as the original example proved to be for France herself.
The Wagner coup attempt is a serious and dangerous development. Russian leaders may very well consider the overthrow of the Russian government to be the kind of threat that puts the existence of the Russian state at risk and thus warrants the use of nuclear weapons. How could an an internal coup prompt Russia to launch nuclear weapons against external actors? Four possibilities: (1) Putin may believe any coup attempt is supported by the CIA (not crazy to think this after Biden explicitly called for Putin to be removed from power, and the Ukrainians actually launched a drone attack on the Kremlin in an apparent attempt to assassinate him); (2) Russian internal instability could inspire the Ukrainians to launch even more aggressive attacks within Russia’s borders than they already have thus far; (3) Putin may believe that prolonged war in Ukraine is the ultimate reason why his domestic political power is slipping away, and thus that a nuclear strike that quickly ends the conflict could be the surest way of retaining power; and (4) the erosion of central authority over Russia’s military could lead to a situation where there are multiple armed factions competing with each other for power in Russia, which would make the military situation in Russia/Ukraine very complex, and it is a bedrock assumption of IR threory that more complexity means more opportunity for miscalculation and inadvertent escalation.
I don’t think the Karaganov article is quite as delusional as Ludovic Marsillach and Nick Drew do. As I understand it, Karaganov’s article sheds light on a fundamental issue that Ryan overlooks: what kind of nuclear strike would the Russians consider to be best suited for achieving the political objective that Russia would be pursuing by means of nuclear weapons? Ryan is right about the political objective that Russia would be pursuing: send “a wakeup call for those in the West who were still not listening,” to remind them that Russia is a nuclear-armed power whose interests must be respected. But Ryan does not explain why the use of tactical nuclear weapons within Ukraine would be sufficient to achieve that objective. Karaganov’s article sheds light on the kind of nuclear strike that would, in the Russians’ view, have a chance of achieving that objective. Here is my interpretation of his rationale for launching a nuclear strike on Poland: (1) the US’s position as global hegemon (or aspiring global hegemon) relies heavily on its commitment to protect its NATO allies from external military threats; (2) this commitment presumably requires the US to respond to any Russian nuclear strike on Poland with a devastating military strike on Russia, which in turn would likely provoke a Russian retaliation on the US itself; but (3) when they are actually put to the test, US elites may be unwilling to risk their own lives and their own cities for Poland; and, finally, (4) the US’s failure to respond to a nuclear strike on Poland with a devastating military strike on Russia would call into question the US’s role as global hegemon. This is what Karaganov means when he says the attack on Poland would bring about “ a catharsis, leading to the abandonment of much ambition.” My argument is that Karaganov’s objective—causing a “catharsis”—is pretty much the same as the one Ryan identifies: sending the West a “wakeup call.” But Karaganov gives a more realistic picture than Ryan does of the kind of nuclear strike that the Russians would consider to be best designed for bringing about this catharsis/wakeup call.
Are we to infer from "I don't think the Karaganov article is quite as delusional …" plus the "interpretation of [Putin's] rationale" that follows, that Peaceful IR Realist actually thinks it's quite plausible? if so, has PIRR read Janice Stein's essay (the link at #26 above)?
In her genuinely scholarly analysis she details the following:
"in a major turn that reversed longstanding American strategic policy, U.S. officials signaled informally [to Russia] that, should Russia use a tactical nuclear weapon, the administration has no plans to retaliate with a nuclear weapon. The U.S. response would be conventional, with grave consequences for Russia, to “signal immediate de-escalation,” and would then be followed by international condemnation. The widespread signaling that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon would be met with a severe conventional response was part of a U.S. strategy of escalation management designed to stop an escalatory spiral. It was partly informed by the expectation that countries like India and China would join in vigorous international condemnation of Russia. Moscow would then be isolated. This shift in strategy to a conventional response is a significant policy innovation. The combination of clarification, reassurance, and deterrence seems to have managed escalation, at least for the moment."
(albeit it seems possible that "use a tactical nuke" in Stein's account was thought of as being against Ukraine rather than Poland. That said, nothing in the NATO Charter commits the US to mounting like-for-like retaliation – it's not an Old Testament doctrine.)
The demonstrable (if unexpected) current deficiencies of Russia's conventional forces, both in equipment and leadership, are such that we may be sure Russia would anticipate serious material damage from a "severe conventional response". (Nukes aren't remotely the only means of wreaking kinetic havoc, to say nothing of other possibilities.) And yet such a US response would (by design) surely not seem escalatory, disproportionate or in any way irresponsible to any international audience of strategically-minded observers. In other words, in my view the US has judged that international audience correctly.
(By the way, if the real concern in all these threads is "nukes aren't being taken seriously enough" Stein's essay really should put minds at rest on that score.)
This all having been signaled to Russia, and doubtless communicated to China, why then would Russia have sufficient certainty that the US would in practice, be paralysed with worry about hazarding Boston to the point of failure to react at all? Seems to me Biden has done well to lay this credibly to rest. All that's needed for this deterrent stance to be effective enough to give Putin pause is two levels of plausibility: (a) plausibility of the inherent judgement concerning international opinion, and (b) plausibility of the correctness of that judgement being believed in Washington. (Does Putin really know for sure what Xi has told Biden?)
Of course, it is always possible to fall back on "Putin et al are completely deranged, we can't conduct rational analysis at all". Well, where's the evidence of that? (though I'd certainly grant you their complete incompetence). Again, I suggest a more thorough reading of Stein: she explores the deranged opponent issue as well.
My view is that the likelihood of success of Karaganov's strategy is so low that it would be crazy to try it except under extremely desperate circumstances, and even then it would still be crazy. But people do crazy things when they are desperate, and it is certainly "plausible" that this strategy could succeed.
One of Stein's themes is that leaders often "do not know their preferences and only discover them when they take action." Regardless of what any policy paper or public official says, I am extremely skeptical of anyone who tells me they know what the "preferences" of US leaders would be if Russia launched a nuclear missile at Poland. If the US wanted to maintain its position as world leader, its response would have to be proportional to what Russia did, and I am skeptical that the US could find a truly proportional response (whether nuclear or conventional) that didn't risk provoking a Russian retaliatory attack on the US. Thus, a truly proportional response (whether nuclear or conventional) would necessarily risk instigating Armageddon. Accordingly, I basically see the situation as a game of Russian roulette: Russia's nuclear strike on Poland is tantamount to pointing the gun at its own head and pulling the trigger; then the gun is passed to the US; to show that it has the guts required to be world policeman, the US would have to hit Russia hard enough that its response could also be interpreted as pointing the gun at its own head and pulling the trigger. At this point, to put the argument in Stein's terms, US leaders will look into their hearts and "discover" whether their true "preference" is to risk Armageddon or give up the crown. Karaganov is betting that, if Russia launched a nuclear missile at Poland, and Poland urged the US to strike back with a proportional response, US leaders would "discover" that their true "preference" was to stand back from the ledge. No one can say whether Karaganov is right or wrong about that.
What Nick Drew, quoting Stein, says makes a lot of sense on the whole. I've not read Stein's essay, however it seems that even there there is something like the sort of ambiguity one encounter's in Karaganov's essay. Namely when the latter speaks of nuclear weapons being used against a Polish city, but not apparently Ukraine, I don't think it's ever clear whether he has in mind tactical vs conventional nuclear weapons.
Use of nuclear weapons against a city within a NATO state strikes me as significantly different than use of tactical nukes against a congregated offensive army in Ukraine or a fleet of NATO carriers in the Mediterranean or Atlantic.
In short, it simply doesn't seem conceivable to me that France would not retaliate with its own arsenal of nuclear weapons if either Bordeaux, or Marseilles, or Toulouse was destroyed by even just one solitary "tactical" Russian nuke. Moreover, if Russia were to announce the threat beforehand (perhaps with a week's anticipation), as Karaganov suggests, what is NATO, let alone France, to do, just sit on its hands and say: You barbarians, if you dare do this the world will hate you for centuries to come, and we may or may not respond in kind?
According to my gloss of the French Wikipedia article on the subject of la force de dissuasion nucléaire française , it appears that if France were given a deadline for the destruction of one of its major population centers by Russia (with which it would almost certainly not comply lest it appear supine before Russia, and with the memory of its defeat by Germany still fresh), France in order to dissuade from this announced attack might well resort to the use of non nuclear weapons of great devastation against a Russian state asset or area of comparable significance to the French interest threatened. If Russia were not dissuaded following the execution of such a significant French conventional dissuasive military response and proceeded, following the end of its deadline, to destroy with any sort of nuclear weapon the urban center it had forewarned it would attack, it seems in such a case that France would offer a nuclear response of some kind, i.e. resort to the arsenals of its nuclear force de frappe per se.
I sincerely doubt Putin is actually worried about NATO invading Russia. Unless we have built up a massive and completely secret missile defense system capable of shooting down all of Russia's strategic ICBMs and HGVs (with lasers or rail-guns rather than what current declassified systems like AEGIS) or have the capacity to wipe them all out before they can launch (including subs, which would require us tracking them and having sub-killers in range at all times), there is basically no chance we would risk it. Both scenarios seem pretty unlikely.
Assuming MAD is still in effect, the only thing Putin could really be worried about is the U.S. trying to impose regime change from within via a CIA-backed coup. In this regard, ordering a nuclear strike on a NATO country or Ukraine would be the worst thing he could do. There's a very good chance that would cause him to be removed in a coup even without CIA interference. (I've already argued on separate threads that they would probably use nerve agents rather than nukes, but I won't rehash that point here.)
If nukes were to come into play at all, the more likely scenario is that a small yield Russian suitcase nuke goes "missing" and ends up going off in Manhattan or the center of some other major American city via ISIS patsies. A general (someone opposed to Putin) is arrested and swiftly executed for selling it to terrorists. Deep condolences are issued, but the FSB became overwhelmed and couldn't catch the traitor in time, etc. Maybe warning is even given to the U.S. ahead of time to maintain plausible deniability. This would send the message that an unstable Russia means nukes in the hands of terrorists, and few things cause as much instability as coups. But even this would be a gamble.
At any rate, the Ukrainian offensive is getting stymied by all accounts so it seems unlikely that such drastic measures will be necessary. The Ukrainians are mostly (non-mechanized) infantry. They tore apart Russia's (unprepared and disorganized) mechanized invasion force with Javelins, stingers, and drones. They're now in the unenviable position of charging entrenched positions covered by artillery, similar to WWI. Unless we give them air superiority, which we probably won't, they're going to end up having to sacrifice waves and waves of troops to recapture land. If it comes down to a war of attrition, Ukraine will run out of troops before Russia.
Mearsheimer has a new essay out. Worth a close read. https://open.substack.com/pub/mearsheimer/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=6ah4v
I think Mearsheimer makes a lot of sense and strikes me as more intellectually honest or at least less doctrinaire than most Anglophone MSM writers that have and continue to address the subject. Implicit in his latest Substack essay, it seems to me, is the notion that the West should have indeed sought the assimilation/digestion of Russia, but on much more equitable terms than seemingly American elites were willing to seriously consider, as the latter could not see the real politick logic in not treating a defeated Russia and its elites as vassals or compradors to be controlled as opposed to authentic partners in an enterprise that took as a given Russian security concerns centered on the latter's imperatives or sine qua nons.
Namely, a definitive Western respect for its territorial integrity, considering, from the perspective of Russia, the immense human and material sacrifices Russia endured during its world transformative battle against the Nazi war machine. Russia, evidently, will attempt as much as possible to avoid direct conflict with the US, while, on the other hand, chiseling away at whatever intermediary or instrumentalized lesser states the West and NATO put in its way until such threats are finally exhausted or nuclear war becomes inevitable.
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