“Nuclear Escalation Is a Two-Sided Game. It Is Not Being Played with Russia”

Last week, Vladimir Putin once again threatened the West. He said that if NATO allowed Ukraine to fire long-range missiles at Russian territory, it would mean the alliance’s direct participation in the war, and therefore: “Bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make corresponding decisions based on the threats that will be posed to us.” Putin did not specify what those decisions might be, but everyone understands that the issue is primarily about nuclear weapons.

Does the West consider the threat of a nuclear strike real?

At the end of 2022, the US administration seriously feared that Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine and were preparing retaliatory measures. According to CNN’s source in Joe Biden’s administration, the Americans were not proceeding from “hypothetical” considerations, but from the information received, including from intelligence. Recently, CIA Director William Burns confirmed: in the fall of 2022 there was a real risk of Russia using tactical nuclear weapons. U.S. President Biden said at the time that the world had not been this close to Armageddon since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

In the fall of 2022, Russia first lost significant territories in Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblasts before retreating from Kherson and the right bank of the Dnieper River, the AFU blew up the Crimean Bridge. Fears that Putin would decide to launch a nuclear strike because of military defeats seemed logical. However, the Russian military managed to stabilize the situation on the front. In 2023, the Russians first stopped the counteroffensive of the AFU, and in the fall they seized the initiative and began to advance in several directions.

Since then, the West has been supplying Ukraine with increasingly powerful weapons for two years: the AFU has received tanks, Patriot air defense systems, long-range Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles, and F-16 aircraft. The Ukrainians are successfully using both Western and their own weapons. They have destroyed about a third of the Black Sea Fleet’s ships and regularly strike airfields, warehouses, oil depots and cities both in the occupied territories and in Russia. Finally, in August, the AFU invaded the Kursk Oblast, capturing about a hundred settlements, including the district center of Sudzha.

There has been no nuclear response from Russia so far, although Putin says regularly and on various occasions that Russia will use it if necessary.

Theoretically, this makes it possible to think that this will continue to be the case. For example, NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană said in March that the alliance did not see an “imminent threat” of nuclear weapons use and called Putin’s statements psychological pressure. At the time, the U.S. also saw no evidence of Russian preparations for a nuclear strike. Now NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says bluntly: “Putin has stated many times before about red lines, but he has not escalated.”

On the other hand, none of the significant decisions on assistance to Ukraine is without words about possible escalation on the part of Russia. First of all, it is, of course, about the use of nuclear weapons. The latest such case is the issue of lifting all restrictions on the use of Western weapons by the AFU for strikes on internationally recognized Russian territory. Russian and Western media have already drawn many maps (for example, here and here) showing which cities and military facilities can be reached by missiles, but there is still no authorization from the allies.

The allies’ long hesitation is probably an indication of their fear that every decision they make is another step on the “nuclear escalation ladder.” And which one might provoke a Russian nuclear strike, no one knows.

What is the “nuclear escalation ladder” and will it help stop a nuclear war

“Nuclear escalation ladder” is a chain of events describing the possible collapse of the global security system. Most often they talk about the ladder of the American researcher Herman Kahn, who in 1965 created a ladder of 44 steps divided into seven “units.” There are other theories — of 7 steps, 17 steps, even Kahn himself had another ladder of 16 steps.

All these theories are designed to simulate the course of a conflict, but no one uses them in real life — they are just theoretical steps that could lead from crisis to global nuclear war, explains Maxim Starchak, an expert on Russian nuclear policy and a research fellow at the Center for International and Defense Policy at Queen’s University (Canada). There may be optional steps in such concepts, such as a demonstration use of nuclear weapons in a desolate area.

“In theories of nuclear deterrence, there are notions that escalation is well controlled at low levels. At high levels, when there is direct hostilities between nuclear powers, participants act more emotionally and irrationally. Russia and the West remain at a low level where steps are known, declared in advance, and a possible response is probed. In order to talk about a possible nuclear conflict, theoretical concepts tentatively expect a direct military clash between the nuclear powers. So far, both Russia and the United States are avoiding this with all their efforts,” Starchak says.

Alexei Arbatov, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agrees that it will be difficult to control escalation at high levels. He believes that after the first nuclear strike there will be not “a measured climb up the ‘escalation ladder’” but “a breakdown into the abyss of spontaneous exchange of nuclear strikes,” which will destroy the world in a few days. In Kahn’s theory, the first nuclear strike occurs at step 21, after which 23 more escalation steps are listed.

“Kahn’s ladder” was created a long time ago, when the ideas of what is possible and what is not were very different from today, says Pavel Podvig, head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces project. That is why some of the steps described by the researcher now look very strange.

In general, the difficulty with any concept is that, not counting the US strikes on Japan in 1945, mankind has no experience of using nuclear weapons for military purposes. “If some escalation starts, no one knows how events might unfold, whether it will stop or not. There is a general perception that if one side uses nuclear weapons, there should be a response roughly similar in scale, it should demonstrate a willingness to escalate further. It is believed that at some point one side must realize that at the next stage of the exchange of larger-scale strikes it will be in a losing position, and then everything will stop. But again, the mechanism of this stop is completely unclear at the moment,” Podvig explains.

Is there really a nuclear escalation

Russia keeps proposing to make nuclear weapons part of the conflict in Ukraine, but so far it has not succeeded, says Maxim Starchak: “Increasing the readiness of deterrence forces before the invasion, exercises of nuclear forces, increased rhetoric, withdrawal from arms control agreements, deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus. But nothing was said in response; US representatives said they saw no increase in Russia’s nuclear activity, which meant that US nuclear forces had nothing to respond to. Conflict escalation is always a two-sided game. If you are not being played with, you cannot escalate.”

Another way to make the West believe that nuclear weapons can be used would be to change Russia’s nuclear doctrine. There are now four conditions for the use of nuclear weapons in the doctrine:

• receipt of information about the launch of ballistic nuclear missiles on the territory of Russia or its allies;
• use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction on the territory of Russia or its allies;
• “impact” on critical state or military facilities, the disabling of which would disrupt the response of nuclear forces;
• aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when its existence is jeopardized.

In favor of the war, the doctrine’s main critic is Z-politologist Sergei Karaganov. He believes that the doctrine does not fulfill the function of deterrence, and Western leaders are confident that Russia will not use nuclear weapons under almost any circumstances. “If the drone flies at the Kremlin again, why not launch a conventional missile strike on the Reichstag first? Let it burn,” he says. Next, according to Karaganov’s plan, non-nuclear strikes on facilities in NATO countries helping Ukraine should follow, and if the West responds, it could even come to a group nuclear strike on facilities in Europe. The idea is that if the West knows that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons, there will be no nuclear war.

Karaganov has twice publicly argued with Putin about the use of nuclear weapons — last year and this year. In particular, he spoke of the need to change the nuclear doctrine. In June, Putin said that “we are thinking” about such changes, and on September 1, the Foreign Ministry reported that the work was “at an advanced stage.”

It is logical to expect the updated doctrine to expand the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons, says Maxim Starchak of Queen’s University. “On the one hand, it will certainly have an impact on the West, on the other hand — there is nowhere to put pressure anymore. Everything the West could give Ukraine, it gives. Nothing will change from the fact that Russia will lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. The doctrine, for example, could prevent the participation of Western troops. But this is more political games than a possible reality. It is no longer possible to roll back and remove Western military assistance. Stating in the doctrine that the transfer of Western weapons means Western participation in the war will not change anything, since this has been in the background for a long time. That means that a change in the nuclear doctrine will simply go in the sand,” the expert believes. According to him, if Russia had changed the doctrine a year ago or even earlier, it would have been a more “bright” step.

In general, all doctrines were created to confront the main adversary, in the case of the USSR and Russia it is the United States. “That is, if during the war with Ukraine in Russia an airfield where strategic bombers are based was hit or the radar of a missile warning system was struck, it does not mean that the condition for the use of nuclear weapons has appeared. A radar strike does not blind you from seeing the beginning of a ballistic nuclear missile attack. A hit on an airfield does not reduce your retaliatory nuclear strike potential. These are single strikes that can easily be leveled by scattering planes to a few other bases and repairing damaged military facilities. US analysts, on the other hand, fear that such Ukrainian strikes will prompt the Russian Federation to use nuclear weapons. So far, nothing has said that this approach can be applied,” Starchak said.

The risk of a Russian nuclear strike should be assessed separately for two cases — a strike against a NATO country and a strike against Ukraine, says Pavel Podvig. In the first case, the classic deterrence mechanism works: there is a danger of a response and further escalation. “In Moscow, as well as in the West, they realize that it will most likely not be possible to control this process, so they refrain from moving in this direction,” the expert says.

In the case of a nuclear strike on Ukraine, a different mechanism is at work. There are no military tasks that could be solved with tactical nuclear weapons. It is possible, for example, to destroy an airbase with one tactical nuclear strike instead of several strikes with conventional weapons, but this will not change the situation on the front radically.

“The only point of using nuclear weapons may be to, as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shock the enemy, force him to surrender and end his resistance. That is, to strategically change the course of the conflict. But there is another problem here: to have a significant impact on the enemy, tens and hundreds of thousands of people would have to be killed. The threshold for making such a decision is very high, and even bloodthirsty people may not be able to do it,” says Pavel Podvig. But even such a blow does not guarantee that the enemy will surrender. For example, in 1945, strikes on Japan were an important but not decisive factor in its surrender.

Another deterrent may be the possible reaction of the allies. Podvig is confident that the countries supporting Russia will have a strictly negative reaction. Indeed, China has repeatedly warned Russia against using nuclear weapons. The last time it did so was in early September, after news emerged about upcoming changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

So, Russia decides to launch a nuclear strike — is nuclear war then inevitable?

There is, of course, no precise answer to this question. However, there is some evidence that the United States is considering a massive conventional strike as a possible response to a Russian nuclear attack by third countries.

CIA Director William Burns recounted that in November 2022, when the U.S. seriously feared a Russian tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine, Joe Biden instructed him to deliver a “direct warning” to Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. In it, the Americans made it “very clear” what consequences a nuclear strike would lead to. According to the New York Times, the Biden administration at the time believed that the allied response should be powerful but non-nuclear. In particular, they were talking about conventional weapons strikes against Russian units that carried out a nuclear strike.

The U.S. is confident in the effectiveness of its conventional weapons. For example, two years ago, former CIA Director David Petraeus said that NATO was capable of destroying all Russian military forces on the territory of Ukraine and all its ships in the Black Sea.

The U.S. tried to model a response to Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapons even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Thus, in 2016, Avril Haynes, deputy national security adviser in Barack Obama’s administration, organized a staff exercise. According to the scenario, Russia attacked one of the Baltic states, NATO effectively repelled the aggression, and Russia responded with a low-yield nuclear strike against alliance forces. The generals involved in the exercise said a retaliatory nuclear strike was necessary and proposed a list of targets. However, Colin Kahl, an adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden, noted that the situation gives the U.S. and its allies a chance to unite the entire world against Russia, to achieve its isolation and weakening. In addition, according to Kahl, a retaliatory nuclear strike would normalize the use of nuclear weapons. In the end, the exercise participants decided to pursue conventional warfare with greater intensity, and NATO was winning.

A month later, the staff exercise with the same inputs was repeated, but with a more representative composition. When Kahl again laid out his position, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter sharply opposed it. He said that if the U.S. did not retaliate with a nuclear strike, it would be a disaster for NATO and would undermine U.S. credibility around the world. In selecting a target for a retaliatory nuclear strike, the exercise participants rejected Kaliningrad for fear of a retaliatory strike on U.S. territory and the territory of the Baltic state, as it could lead to a large number of civilian casualties. Belarus, which was not involved in the hypothetical war, was chosen as the target. This was the end of the exercise, as the participants were unable to simulate Russia’s next move.

“If there is a serious provocation on Russia’s side, a more advantageous position for the West would be not to respond with its own nuclear strike, but to mobilize everyone it can against the threat of using nuclear weapons. This factor should not be underestimated,” says Pavel Podvig.

“On the one hand, in any concept, the use of nuclear weapons entails a retaliatory nuclear strike. In theory this is true, but it also means the beginning of a global nuclear war. Are decision makers prepared to bomb the planet with nuclear weapons without trying to sort out and understand what happened? Quite likely not, given how cautiously the nuclear-weapon states are acting against each other. And not only the US and Russia/USSR, but also India and Pakistan, which have had experience of armed confrontation but have not used nuclear weapons,” says Maxim Starchak.