Putin has several times recently made nuclear threats, including his recent public instructions to his defense chief to put his nuclear forces on “high alert”. How seriously should we take these threats?
First of all, the claim that Russia has the “largest nuclear arsenal”, while true (barely), is essentially meaningless. Both the US and Russia have more than enough nuclear weapons to wipe each other, and almost everyone else, off the map. How many they could successfully deliver to their targets is unclear, but certainly enough in a full-out exchange.
All through the cold war the MAD (mutual assured destruction) principle kept both sides from taking things too far, though we apparently came close to disaster in the Cuban missile crisis. But in fact, both sides were risk-averse (much more so on the Soviet side than we knew at the time), and so were careful to never escalate too far.
But two things have changed. (1) Putin, at least lately, seems to gotten more reckless. Indeed, there are serious questions about his mental state, based on some of the uncharacteristic moody and rambling speeches he has given lately. And (2) published Russian military papers in recent years have discussed using low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons to “escalate to de-escalate”. As near as I can make out, this means setting off a low-yield weapon or two in the battlefield to frighten the enemy into backing down – a sort of nuclear blackmail.
We need to think about our response to this, because if things go badly enough for him in this Ukrainian invasion he may try this. Clearly we can’t let this tactic work, or we will be helpless against any thug willing to use it. Paying off blackmailers never works; it just encourages them to do more. But if it is used, how should we respond?
The defense department has done the right thing in remodeling some of our nuclear weapons so that they can be “dialed-down” to low yields. That at least preserves the option to respond in more nuanced ways than just an all-out exchange. One tactic would be to match him one-for-one if he tries this – he sets off a low-yield weapon so we set one off, meaning we don’t escalate, but we don’t back down either.
I’m sure there are other, and perhaps better responses. We ought to be thinking about them. Tolstoy said “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”. We may not be interested in using nuclear weapons, but Putin’s nuclear weapons may eventually be interested in us, so we had better think this through now.
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