Handling a nuclear-armed Russia is like playing a game of chess. It is rarely void of faultless moves: each player carries the consequences of difficult decisions. It is emphatically a game of risk, but what it takes to win is unclear in this case.
While the fall of the Berlin Wall saw politicians shelving nuclear weapons, viewing them today as a Cold War relic could not be more dangerous, especially when evaluating Russia’s nuclear advances.
Russia’s defence doctrine has long been predicated on the existence of enemies, which often include America and its NATO allies. This continuing Cold War setup is the rationale behind Moscow’s military enhancements over the last few decades, including new exotic nuclear weapons that are nothing short of technological miracles. These are serving to satisfy strategic deterrence, which rests on paranoia over America issuing a first-strike against Russia (what officials call a “fanciful” situation unlikely to occur) and fears of regime change. These advances further feed ideological ambitions by projecting Russia as a great power and enabling hegemonic claims by blending nuclear warfare with conventional warfare targeted at areas like Ukraine and states in the Balkans. Putin’s new militaristic pursuits are heightening the stakes of nuclear war to levels not seen since the zenith of the Cold War.
As recent as 2018, Putin delivered a State of the Nation address announcing five new nuclear-capable weapons systems, all of which comprise the “triad” of land, air, and oceanic-based nuclear release technology. This variety provides an increased guarantee that some of Russia’s arsenal would survive a nuclear attack by the West, enabling the Kremlin to issue the coveted second strike.
Many Washington officials were initially perplexed by this announcement, but it did little to change America’s perceived level of threat posed by the Kremlin. After all, the US and NATO were already in a vulnerable state compared to Moscow. Putin has managed to curtail arms control regulations by constructing new weapons whose capabilities are not accounted for in important treaties like New START. Even if they were, Russia has violated many nuclear treaties, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty). At the same time, America has been weak in addressing Russia’s aggressive behavior in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere. At the moment, America’s arsenal is looking smaller and their posture against Russia, meeker.
Against this backdrop, American and NATO officials are questioning why Putin would be mobilizing immense resources to enhance his country’s arsenal, given America and NATO are visibly inferior to Russia’s nuclear capabilities.
The answer to this is, unfortunately, ambiguous. Though, it is one that should instill a deep and hurried desire for answers. Experts recently sought to explain this shift at a roundtable conversation hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Out of the key conclusions produced, most could fit within two categories: military strategy (to which I will be adding a psychological framework) and geopolitical concerns.
Military strategy
What makes military strategy vis-à-vis Russia exceptionally worrying is that the Russian government is devoid of checks and balances, which gives important sway to the personality of the man who leads it, President Putin.
Putin’s quiet, though seizing nature─a result of running one of the world’s most terrifying police forces─has instilled a “trust no one, rely on no one” mentality. His mischievous demeanor seems to say “you will never know what I am thinking.” As in all geopolitical strategies, this is the puzzle faced by top officials.
Similar to the lifeline of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear arsenal, fear and paranoia over regime collapse and disempowerment plays a prominent role in Putin’s militaristic modernization campaigns, nuclear expansion, and the blending of conventional and nuclear warfare. It is the very possession of nuclear weapons that provides Putin the pen to demarcate “off limits” zones of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the potential to act on hegemonic behavior without Western retaliation (as was the case in Ukraine and Syria), and to maintain─and build on─its status as a great power.
When determining when and why Putin would detonate the bomb, we must evaluate whether or not he would feel as though he could control a situation in which nuclear warfare may ensue. Opposite North Korea, whose weak military and economy, compounded by an encirclement of more enemies than friends, leaves little choice but to use nuclear weapons in a dire military escalation, Putin and his constituents have long believed that they can control escalation through nuclear power. “Limited nuclear war” is Russia’s guide towards, for instance, seizing one or more of the Baltic states and controlling the subsequent breakout of warfare by detonating a scant first-strike. The question remains of whether or not Russia would be ready to engage in such risky behavior.
In 2000, Senior Russian military officers sold this “de-escalation” strategy that advanced precise, super-low-yield nuclear weapons that would inflict limited collateral damage as the initial blow. This would be followed by a threat of massive show of nuclear force to deter American and NATO nuclear retaliation. Somehow, NATO is expected to reply to this with negotiations that would allow Russia to retain at least some of their gains.
The reemerging Cold War approach towards military expansion grounded in animosity towards Washington has, to borrow from Stephan J. Blank, held America “hostage” through intimidation via nuclear force. In many ways, Russia has viewed nuclear weapons as no different than the average conventional weapon. As recent as 2011, General Nikolai Makarov, former Chief of the General Staff, stated: minor border conflicts could “grow into a large-scale war, possibly with nuclear weapons.” And in 2015, President Putin, who developed Russia’s nuclear doctrine when serving as National Security Council Secretary in 2000, asserted:
We are actively strengthening our strategic nuclear forces and Aerospace Defence units [missile and aircraft defence], and we have had a significant increase in the combat potential of nearly all types and kinds of troops.
This was part of a series of oblique demonstrations of Russia’s evolving nuclear doctrine that, for the first time, significantly lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, which in most cases is, of course, high. Putin blends conventional warfare with nuclear warfare, blueprinting the two into what is called an “escalate to de-escalate” strategy.
Russia appears to be genuinely fearful over the vulnerability of their nuclear deterrent capabilities and the threats posed to the longevity of the Kremlin. Indeed, the 2014 Ukraine crisis saw Putin directing massive nuclear exercises involving launches of ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and the launch of five types of nuclear-capable theater missiles and rockets, among many other displays of nuclear prowess. And today, Putin is continuing to push for enhancements of his exotic missiles, one being Burevestnik (“Storm Bird”) which uses a small nuclear reactor to heat the surrounding air as a working fluid, providing a seemingly boundless source of energy. Whether or not these new weapons pose an actual threat or are merely Russia “bending metal,” as critics have declared, remains uncertain. But what is true is that these advances provide an important level of comfort for Russia, as their nuclear arsenal is an immense source of empowerment signifying their status as a great power.
Putin’s past of running the KGB, coupled with Russia’s devastating military blows throughout the 20th century, has injected a deep level of distrust and suspicion into Russia’s military doctrines. To signal its status as a great power to the international community through technological flex and imperialistic behavior, all while “putting in place” a nation long held to be the world’s superpower, which is now coming to terms not with a bipolar world, but a multipolar world, energizes Moscow’s seemingly unthinkable or irrational pursuits.
While the post-Cold War era has seen a shift in the perceptions of nuclear weapons, that being the decreasing urgency to address and dismantle nuclear forces across the world, Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in 2011, 2015, and in other instances should be a sobering wakeup call that nuclear use is expanding in ways not yet seen in defensive measures. Indeed, many Washington officials claim that the threat of nuclear war, posed both by Russia and other nuclear powers including North Korea and Pakistan, is higher today than at the height of the Cold War.
Geopolitical concerns
In the previous section, Russian concerns over US and NATO military expansion comprised a meaningful part of Russia’s military pursuits. This section will dive deeper and evaluate the revitalization of the Cold War geopolitical setup.
While President Trump provided a sort of Presidential “thaw” between himself and Putin, relations more generally between Washington and Moscow have worsened into what some are calling a “new Cold War.” President-elect Biden will likely affirm Russia as a threat along with Beijing, given that he had once, during the campaign trail, accused Trump of being “soft on Russia.”
The Kremlin is paranoid about the advances made in American-NATO missile defence systems, resting on misunderstandings of American foreign policy that, in reality, is more occupied with devising strategies to carefully handle North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats and addressing a rising nuclear China rather than embarking on an impossible journey to denuclearize Moscow. To be clear, America does not have a fortified policy goal geared around regime change in Russia, a long-time rationale for stretching Russia’s nuclear flexibilities. But the blame is not to be solely placed on Putin’s shoulders; since the Cold War, America has maintained an ambiguous description of their nuclear posture. Some US officials have called this a failure, explaining that lacking a clear and coherent definition as to when, why, and how America would detonate the bomb fuels distrust and has caused other countries, namely Russia but notably China as well, to maintain opacity with their nuclear capabilities.
While America enjoys what John Mearsheimer calls the “stopping power of water,” Russia is vulnerable to land attack that has historically inflicted tremendous damage from powerful neighbors. Keeping periphery countries under careful watch is of high importance to the Kremlin and comprises a meaningful part in their militaristic doctrines. Over the past two decades, Russia has been increasingly aggressive towards newly formed European states, with the expansion of NATO agitating Moscow by seizing what they believed to be a neutral zone among Eastern European nations. Making matters worse is the revitalization of “limited nuclear war” into Russia’s strategic lexicon. This compounded by increased tensions between Russia and its surrounding neighbors aligns perfectly within the lineage of nuclear detonation in regional escalations.
Successfully using a low-yield nuclear weapon in matters of local and regional warfare may inspire a hegemonic China to consider similar militaristic tactics. Whether or not that would be to Russia’s detriment is yet to be known. But at the current moment, there is an advanced degree of partnership between Russia and China, which rests on compatible interests of managing the growing asymmetries in power. This started in 2006 when North Korea tested nuclear weapons, which sparked an alliance between Japan and America to build missile defence systems in Asia. These new tactical weapons being placed in Beijing’s and Moscow’s backyard, of course, was not to be met with pacifism.
Russia’s pivot towards China is not a standalone. Indeed, Russia is also cozying up to India, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, and ASEAN, leading to what Putin hopes to be a new global order. Not least considerable is Russia’s leadership in the Eurasian Economic Union and selling it as the counterpart to the European Union. And rather than joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Kremlin has proposed harmonizing it with the EEU. The United States is responding with a familiar policy of containment, pressuring countries to choose between the US-NATO alliance and the Russia-China partnership.
While America’s Cold War posture was ambiguous and relied too heavily on merely having nuclear weapons, Russia too is placing considerable weight on the size and diversity of their arsenal. It serves as a strategic leverage to forge new alliances and offer new modes of discourse surrounding mutually-beneficial pursuits, especially when delineated in an East versus West setup.
The growing relationship between Beijing and Moscow is not without their contentions; while the US is pressuring Russia to in turn pressure China to sign onto the New START treaty, Moscow knows that ambition is a dead cause. This means that Russia would indeed have to live with a rising nuclear China whose robust economy that nurtures a growing military is enough to pose a more than significant threat, should relationships go south. But as in all great power politics, allies are the oxygen that keeps a country alive, and they tend to favor short-term goals over long-term consequences.
While post-Cold War strategic discourse is contemplating limited nuclear warfare, America needs to hard-press its officials to recommit to nuclear arms control agreements to prevent such a thought from materializing. Colonel Joseph D. Becker of the United States Army argues that the key to deterring tactical nuclear weapons is not in “winning an arms race,” but rather reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in great power politics. The most important of this policy is the strategy of “non-use” which Russia, along with many others including North Korea, Pakistan, and more recently China, has abandoned or, in China’s case, is edging away from.
There is no clear answer as to if, when, why, and how Russia would detonate a nuclear weapon. But the fact of the matter is that nuclear warfare is becoming increasingly similar to conventional warfare, at least in theory, but also emerging as a practice. The state of nuclear politics is grim: various countries are pulling out of arms control treaties that have, in no small part, prevented another nuclear bomb from detonating since 1945; meanwhile, Russia is enhancing its nuclear arsenal, and the United States is failing to present a clear outline regarding the targets of America’s nuclear weapons, which does not include Russia. This would help in the pursuit of rebuilding trust between Washington and Moscow and may facilitate greater efforts to maintain, and build on, arms control regulations. While there is no single solution that can effectively address a here-to-stay nuclear Russia, heavy engagement and cooperation on arms related matters can be a clear and effective way for America to decrease suspicion over regime-change, maintain a strong no-use posture, and prevent Russia from feeling the need to engage with China and other Asian countries in a Cold War-type fashion. Whether or not this will work will be of foremost priority regarding the US-NATO agenda. But the most important fact remains: the international community needs to exchange the perception of nuclear weapons as a Cold War relic and view them for their current use as another component of modern military strategy.
As Johannes Zukertort puts it: “Chess is the struggle against the error.” Addressing a nuclear-armed Russia is much the same, though the players must contemplate what it will cost to win.
Taylor Fairless is a senior studying History and Global Studies at UCLA. She is an intern at the United States Department of Defence and is pursuing a career in international security and arms control.