Like most people at the start of the war, I thought that Russia would militarily crush Ukraine. Less excusably, I still thought Russia would continually advance, or at least hold on to its gains, in mid-March. So although I was correct in thinking the war would happen,
I have not seen anything written anywhere about *how* tactical nukes might be used practically. Granted, I don't really know anything about battlefield operations., so I may not even have the contextual knowledge needed to understand the explanation. But I'm curious to learn more about this. Is it generally agreed they would be highly effective?
Great analysis! I wonder about our own leaders in the West: they have seemed very cavalier about provoking Putin ever since we sponsored a color revolution in Ukraine under Obama -- how would we respond if Russia backed the overthrow of JustinTrudeau and then installed a pro-Russian government in Canada (followed by moves to bring Canada into BRICS)? The entire situation in Ukraine seems like it could have been avoided: Putin gave us some red lines, we crossed them, and then he invaded. Putin doesn't seem crazy, but our leaders (Brandon Administration and NATO) do. Either they are insanely overconfident or ... they are doing this with the intent of provoking a cataclysmic kinetic war between NATO and Russia. With all the WEF-inspired talk of "agenda 2030," it appears plausible that our leaders are approaching Ukraine as if an all-out war will help with their agenda. As Max Morton at Forward Observer put it, our elites appear to be willing to burn our society down because they'd rather rule over the ashes than have a free and functional society where they are not in charge.
I think you were under influence of Anatoly Karlin or similar types. Like all Russian chauvinists he was/is pro-war. Russian imperialist-chauvinist side is not well known or is underestimated in west, thats why all these thought that Russia would not attack, Putin would not do, it is just posturing.
But Russian imperialists-chauvinists have their own blindspots: they overestimated Russian strenghts and underestimated Ukraine.
Generally speaking, imperialistic-chauvinistic states have not been very good at stopping: we will take only this and not more. Usually and Russian history is clear proof, they are more like: we will take this land and this and that and....
Putin is certainly not Hitler, but if Putin succeeded in conquering Ukraine I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we did not assume he'd find other targets. Would Putin invade the Baltic states? No. Would Putin invade Moldova, Georgia and maybe Kazakhstan? Sure, why not? None of them have NATO protection and, in the case of Moldova & Georgia, are likely completely unable to defend themselves against attack. So I do not buy the argument that Putin was likely to invade NATO countries if he wasn't stopped in Ukraine, but I could see a successful Ukrainian invasion leading him to feel he has a free hand in reabsorbing former Russian imperial subjects outside of American security guarantees.
Your analysis is reasonable. One additional factor that you don’t mention is that, if the West backs down in the face of nuclear threats, it reduces the short-term risk of nuclear war but probably increases the long-term risk. It’s difficult to estimate and therefore properly balance these risks.
At the risk of making fool of myself, I am going to make the case that you should chill.
With current levels of Western aid, by far most likely scenario of Ukrainian victory involves change of leadership in Russia.
Russia now can technically mobilize far more resources than Ukraine. Disparity in resources between those countries is far smaller that people predicting easy Russian victory thought, but Ukraine is now largely mobilized, while Russia is not. And Western weaponry delivered to Ukraine so far is not sufficient to compensate for this Ukrainian disadvantage. Only question is whether Russian government politically survives the level of mobilization necessary to not loose the war. Such mobilization would involve considerable hardship for Russian people, and they might just rebel.
But, use of nuclear weapons would be even more politically hazardous for Russian leadership than full mobilization, so I do not expect them to do it. Unlike many other people, I think Putin is pretty smart and knows this.
Probability of nuclear escalation would increase if the West would dramatically ramp up its weapon deliveries to Ukraine, especially if it would send advanced weapon systems like high-end warplanes etc., but there is so far no sign that we are going to do that.
"The question for those who want to continue on the current path is how they imagine Ukraine winning without Putin using nuclear weapons."
I don't want to continue on the current path. But presumably the only real hope for a Ukrainian "win" (i.e., something better than the status quo antebellum) is an overthrow of Putin. Otherwise, it seems clear that Putin feels that he, politically, cannot abandon the war without any sort of concession from Ukraine and the West, and I wouldn't assign much weight to a miraculous change in his thinking. Even an official Western recognition of the annexation of the Crimea would be a starting point for negotiations.
You could also make the argument that Ukraine's "current path" is more rational and open to concessions than it seems, and Zelensky's language to the contrary is a negotiating ploy. Probably not, but maybe.
>I didn’t buy the idea that if Russia wins in Ukraine, a victory would whet its appetite and lead it to continue invading other countries.
I think the more compelling argument would be "If Russia wins even a partial victory in Ukraine, they'll come back in 8 years to take the rest." Which we've already seen precedent for - taking Crimea and part of Donbass was turned into a casus belli to "liberate" the rest of the Donbass 8 years later, which eventually turned into taking the whole country.
Sure, Russia invading *Poland* isn't on the table because NATO would slap that down, but the more general idea that if Russia wins in Ukraine, they'll move on to one of the other frozen conflicts in their neighborhood sounds plausible to me. Remember that map that Belarus leaked early on in the war, the one that showed plans for the invasion to go all the way to Transnistria?
Wherever the borders end up after the war, they need to be somewhere very, very undisputed, somewhere that can't easily generate a separatist movement full of little green men. And the best candidate for that, from the perspective of the Ukrainians, is the de jure borders of Ukraine.
(Also, remember that ultimately Ukraine decides when to stop fighting, not the US, and at this point Ukrainian forces are already inside the de jure borders of Donbass and Luhansk. Even if the US was somehow okay with nuclear blackmail, it would be basically impossible to convince the Ukrainians to accept "retreat from the land you just fought and died for, and let Putin draw a new border where he wants" as peace terms. It would be such blatant blackmail that they'd basically *have* to call his bluff.)
Russia is still very very far from nuclear option. To understand that you have to understand how deep is the possible degree of mobilization that they can achieve.
An industrialized country mobilized for war can maintain around 20% of its total labor force in the armed forces. Russia currently has 1.3% of its labor force in the armed forces, and they invaded Ukraine with a force of ca. 185k soldiers or 0.25% of its labor force, and is planning to draft 300,000 men, equivalent to 0.45% of its labor force. So, this partial mobilization amounts to about 2.5% of the mobilization that they could achieve in the case of serious mobilization for large scale conventional war.
The fact that Russia did not conquer Ukraine in February-March was because they assumed that it would be just an operation where they would occupy the country and fight some isolated insurgents. They did not expect that Ukraine would behave like a sovereign nation that defends its sovereignty by fighting (unlike territories such as Iraq or Afghanistan, which never were nation states). After perceiving that was the case they decided to shift their strategy to a strategy of occupation of only the territories with had a majority of Russian-speakers.
What they are perceiving with the recent counter-offensive is that Ukraine is determined to recover these territories, so they need to increase the mobilization levels and already need to integrate them into Russia, to keep them.
Accepting nuclear blackmail may mean the end of the human civilization. It is actually better to see Russian usage of nuclear weapons now, assuming it is severely punished by the West. But once you say: "if you have nukes you can do whatever you want" it means you completely destroyed the relative era of peace we have known since WW2.
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”
― Margaret Thatcher - Same goes for talking nukes and adding "eto ni bluff" . I hope.
Having been wrong on several accounts regarding this war, I can't help to continue. ;)
The threat is real and frightening. But "what to do", really ? 1. "Oh, Putin/Xi/Kim threaten nuke, so now we let them go and take Ukraine (this war is NOT about the Donbass!), the (much smaller) Baltics, Taiwan, South Korea." Nope.
2. Help our chosen friends to defend. Asking them to refrain from running over the borders of 2.22.22 - Selensky said several times he does not intend a military solution to the Crimean issue. - And keep our nukes ready to strike as soon as Putler starts to activate his first. The less Biden says about it before, the better.
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
Just a few years after "preventive war" was first advocated, it became an impossibility. By 1953, the Soviets had 300-400 warheads, meaning that any nuclear strike would be effectively retaliated. - end of quote
Perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but I’m hoping what happens as a result of geopolitical tensions is that nation state mafias all go bankrupt while their people mostly emerge unscathed.
Ukraine also remains very important with the world moral issue on respect for international borders. The more that the US & OECD are willing to support Ukraine against nuclear power Russia, the less likely Russia or China will violate borders in the future.
It was pretty clear to many that if Russia opened with a shock and awe campaign like Iraq, what would happen. Russia did not do this, instead they did an SMO with limited forces and limited objectives (until recently they hadn't even targeted electricity, there is internet, the trains have remained operative). It was also pretty clear that Russia has been seeking some diplomatic out.
The Western "plan" was not that Ukraine was going to defeat Russia (they lack sufficient combat power as US DoD has admitted publicly) but that the economic sanctions would destroy Russia, and put them on the ropes. That has backfired, and Europe will be entering a new era, as the German export model is dead, and the rationale for the EU no longer exists. The EU is freaking out about Italian elections, but they don't seem to get that they are presiding over an economic corpse, and that the Brothers of Italy will probably seem like moderates in the next 5-10 years as the economic and political shock waves spread to the masses.
If the "liberated"/"occupied" oblasts vote to join RF, and the Duma accepts them, which everyone presumes is an outcome, then Ukrainian activities will be an act of war on Russian territory, and Russia will be able to declare a full war, Shock and Awe, and nuclear strikes if necessary. They will be able to post conscripts in the new territories. They are mobilizing 300K of reserves. Russian forces should match or exceeded Ukrainian forces.
Putin's rope-a-dope may not make sense as far as a military strategy, but if you look at it from international politics, Russia has broad diplomatic support from the non-white world powers. It is hard to believe that this new move was not discussed at the SCO conference. The SMO may not have been smart military strategy. The repeated diplomatic overtures may have never been been expected to result in anything. But if they diplomatically provided a justification to allies and non-aligned powers for Russia to now take the gloves off, it gives the Russians international legitimacy (for non-white people) when it opens shock and awe. They don't care about NATO, they do care about China, India, OPEC, ASEAN, Africa, Central and South America. Brazil and Mexico appear to be on board. That would probably not be the case if they had opened like the US in Iraq.
Putin seems to like gradualism, as you can see over the gas issues with the EU, so it would be surprising if Russia opened a shock and awe campaign in the next 3 months, Putin likes to boil the frog slow enough that it doesn't jump out of the pot. What has been accomplished has been accomplished with a fraction of the RF Active Duty forces, with one hand tied behind their back operationally. What will come next is a comparable conventional force with the gloves off, over winter, with Ukraine on the brink of hyperinflation and NATO with insufficient artillery ammunition to keep Ukraine supplied. Russia has a number of options on the escalation ladder before they resort to nuclear bombs.
I have not seen anything written anywhere about *how* tactical nukes might be used practically. Granted, I don't really know anything about battlefield operations., so I may not even have the contextual knowledge needed to understand the explanation. But I'm curious to learn more about this. Is it generally agreed they would be highly effective?
Great analysis! I wonder about our own leaders in the West: they have seemed very cavalier about provoking Putin ever since we sponsored a color revolution in Ukraine under Obama -- how would we respond if Russia backed the overthrow of JustinTrudeau and then installed a pro-Russian government in Canada (followed by moves to bring Canada into BRICS)? The entire situation in Ukraine seems like it could have been avoided: Putin gave us some red lines, we crossed them, and then he invaded. Putin doesn't seem crazy, but our leaders (Brandon Administration and NATO) do. Either they are insanely overconfident or ... they are doing this with the intent of provoking a cataclysmic kinetic war between NATO and Russia. With all the WEF-inspired talk of "agenda 2030," it appears plausible that our leaders are approaching Ukraine as if an all-out war will help with their agenda. As Max Morton at Forward Observer put it, our elites appear to be willing to burn our society down because they'd rather rule over the ashes than have a free and functional society where they are not in charge.
Putin and his media are liars.
Zielinski and his media are liars.
Biden and his media are liars.
To extrapolate from any or all of these is a fools errand.
This is far far more frightening than climate change and yet people are much less worried by it.
I think you were under influence of Anatoly Karlin or similar types. Like all Russian chauvinists he was/is pro-war. Russian imperialist-chauvinist side is not well known or is underestimated in west, thats why all these thought that Russia would not attack, Putin would not do, it is just posturing.
But Russian imperialists-chauvinists have their own blindspots: they overestimated Russian strenghts and underestimated Ukraine.
Generally speaking, imperialistic-chauvinistic states have not been very good at stopping: we will take only this and not more. Usually and Russian history is clear proof, they are more like: we will take this land and this and that and....
Putin is certainly not Hitler, but if Putin succeeded in conquering Ukraine I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we did not assume he'd find other targets. Would Putin invade the Baltic states? No. Would Putin invade Moldova, Georgia and maybe Kazakhstan? Sure, why not? None of them have NATO protection and, in the case of Moldova & Georgia, are likely completely unable to defend themselves against attack. So I do not buy the argument that Putin was likely to invade NATO countries if he wasn't stopped in Ukraine, but I could see a successful Ukrainian invasion leading him to feel he has a free hand in reabsorbing former Russian imperial subjects outside of American security guarantees.
Your analysis is reasonable. One additional factor that you don’t mention is that, if the West backs down in the face of nuclear threats, it reduces the short-term risk of nuclear war but probably increases the long-term risk. It’s difficult to estimate and therefore properly balance these risks.
At the risk of making fool of myself, I am going to make the case that you should chill.
With current levels of Western aid, by far most likely scenario of Ukrainian victory involves change of leadership in Russia.
Russia now can technically mobilize far more resources than Ukraine. Disparity in resources between those countries is far smaller that people predicting easy Russian victory thought, but Ukraine is now largely mobilized, while Russia is not. And Western weaponry delivered to Ukraine so far is not sufficient to compensate for this Ukrainian disadvantage. Only question is whether Russian government politically survives the level of mobilization necessary to not loose the war. Such mobilization would involve considerable hardship for Russian people, and they might just rebel.
But, use of nuclear weapons would be even more politically hazardous for Russian leadership than full mobilization, so I do not expect them to do it. Unlike many other people, I think Putin is pretty smart and knows this.
Probability of nuclear escalation would increase if the West would dramatically ramp up its weapon deliveries to Ukraine, especially if it would send advanced weapon systems like high-end warplanes etc., but there is so far no sign that we are going to do that.
"The question for those who want to continue on the current path is how they imagine Ukraine winning without Putin using nuclear weapons."
I don't want to continue on the current path. But presumably the only real hope for a Ukrainian "win" (i.e., something better than the status quo antebellum) is an overthrow of Putin. Otherwise, it seems clear that Putin feels that he, politically, cannot abandon the war without any sort of concession from Ukraine and the West, and I wouldn't assign much weight to a miraculous change in his thinking. Even an official Western recognition of the annexation of the Crimea would be a starting point for negotiations.
You could also make the argument that Ukraine's "current path" is more rational and open to concessions than it seems, and Zelensky's language to the contrary is a negotiating ploy. Probably not, but maybe.
>I didn’t buy the idea that if Russia wins in Ukraine, a victory would whet its appetite and lead it to continue invading other countries.
I think the more compelling argument would be "If Russia wins even a partial victory in Ukraine, they'll come back in 8 years to take the rest." Which we've already seen precedent for - taking Crimea and part of Donbass was turned into a casus belli to "liberate" the rest of the Donbass 8 years later, which eventually turned into taking the whole country.
Sure, Russia invading *Poland* isn't on the table because NATO would slap that down, but the more general idea that if Russia wins in Ukraine, they'll move on to one of the other frozen conflicts in their neighborhood sounds plausible to me. Remember that map that Belarus leaked early on in the war, the one that showed plans for the invasion to go all the way to Transnistria?
Wherever the borders end up after the war, they need to be somewhere very, very undisputed, somewhere that can't easily generate a separatist movement full of little green men. And the best candidate for that, from the perspective of the Ukrainians, is the de jure borders of Ukraine.
(Also, remember that ultimately Ukraine decides when to stop fighting, not the US, and at this point Ukrainian forces are already inside the de jure borders of Donbass and Luhansk. Even if the US was somehow okay with nuclear blackmail, it would be basically impossible to convince the Ukrainians to accept "retreat from the land you just fought and died for, and let Putin draw a new border where he wants" as peace terms. It would be such blatant blackmail that they'd basically *have* to call his bluff.)
Russia is still very very far from nuclear option. To understand that you have to understand how deep is the possible degree of mobilization that they can achieve.
An industrialized country mobilized for war can maintain around 20% of its total labor force in the armed forces. Russia currently has 1.3% of its labor force in the armed forces, and they invaded Ukraine with a force of ca. 185k soldiers or 0.25% of its labor force, and is planning to draft 300,000 men, equivalent to 0.45% of its labor force. So, this partial mobilization amounts to about 2.5% of the mobilization that they could achieve in the case of serious mobilization for large scale conventional war.
The fact that Russia did not conquer Ukraine in February-March was because they assumed that it would be just an operation where they would occupy the country and fight some isolated insurgents. They did not expect that Ukraine would behave like a sovereign nation that defends its sovereignty by fighting (unlike territories such as Iraq or Afghanistan, which never were nation states). After perceiving that was the case they decided to shift their strategy to a strategy of occupation of only the territories with had a majority of Russian-speakers.
What they are perceiving with the recent counter-offensive is that Ukraine is determined to recover these territories, so they need to increase the mobilization levels and already need to integrate them into Russia, to keep them.
So, overall, nothing big is actually happening.
Accepting nuclear blackmail may mean the end of the human civilization. It is actually better to see Russian usage of nuclear weapons now, assuming it is severely punished by the West. But once you say: "if you have nukes you can do whatever you want" it means you completely destroyed the relative era of peace we have known since WW2.
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”
― Margaret Thatcher - Same goes for talking nukes and adding "eto ni bluff" . I hope.
Having been wrong on several accounts regarding this war, I can't help to continue. ;)
The threat is real and frightening. But "what to do", really ? 1. "Oh, Putin/Xi/Kim threaten nuke, so now we let them go and take Ukraine (this war is NOT about the Donbass!), the (much smaller) Baltics, Taiwan, South Korea." Nope.
2. Help our chosen friends to defend. Asking them to refrain from running over the borders of 2.22.22 - Selensky said several times he does not intend a military solution to the Crimean issue. - And keep our nukes ready to strike as soon as Putler starts to activate his first. The less Biden says about it before, the better.
Take arms against a sea of troubles.
John von Neumann was right in 1948:
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/neumann.html
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"
Just a few years after "preventive war" was first advocated, it became an impossibility. By 1953, the Soviets had 300-400 warheads, meaning that any nuclear strike would be effectively retaliated. - end of quote
Perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but I’m hoping what happens as a result of geopolitical tensions is that nation state mafias all go bankrupt while their people mostly emerge unscathed.
Ukraine also remains very important with the world moral issue on respect for international borders. The more that the US & OECD are willing to support Ukraine against nuclear power Russia, the less likely Russia or China will violate borders in the future.
We need more punishment for aggressors.
It was pretty clear to many that if Russia opened with a shock and awe campaign like Iraq, what would happen. Russia did not do this, instead they did an SMO with limited forces and limited objectives (until recently they hadn't even targeted electricity, there is internet, the trains have remained operative). It was also pretty clear that Russia has been seeking some diplomatic out.
The Western "plan" was not that Ukraine was going to defeat Russia (they lack sufficient combat power as US DoD has admitted publicly) but that the economic sanctions would destroy Russia, and put them on the ropes. That has backfired, and Europe will be entering a new era, as the German export model is dead, and the rationale for the EU no longer exists. The EU is freaking out about Italian elections, but they don't seem to get that they are presiding over an economic corpse, and that the Brothers of Italy will probably seem like moderates in the next 5-10 years as the economic and political shock waves spread to the masses.
If the "liberated"/"occupied" oblasts vote to join RF, and the Duma accepts them, which everyone presumes is an outcome, then Ukrainian activities will be an act of war on Russian territory, and Russia will be able to declare a full war, Shock and Awe, and nuclear strikes if necessary. They will be able to post conscripts in the new territories. They are mobilizing 300K of reserves. Russian forces should match or exceeded Ukrainian forces.
Putin's rope-a-dope may not make sense as far as a military strategy, but if you look at it from international politics, Russia has broad diplomatic support from the non-white world powers. It is hard to believe that this new move was not discussed at the SCO conference. The SMO may not have been smart military strategy. The repeated diplomatic overtures may have never been been expected to result in anything. But if they diplomatically provided a justification to allies and non-aligned powers for Russia to now take the gloves off, it gives the Russians international legitimacy (for non-white people) when it opens shock and awe. They don't care about NATO, they do care about China, India, OPEC, ASEAN, Africa, Central and South America. Brazil and Mexico appear to be on board. That would probably not be the case if they had opened like the US in Iraq.
Putin seems to like gradualism, as you can see over the gas issues with the EU, so it would be surprising if Russia opened a shock and awe campaign in the next 3 months, Putin likes to boil the frog slow enough that it doesn't jump out of the pot. What has been accomplished has been accomplished with a fraction of the RF Active Duty forces, with one hand tied behind their back operationally. What will come next is a comparable conventional force with the gloves off, over winter, with Ukraine on the brink of hyperinflation and NATO with insufficient artillery ammunition to keep Ukraine supplied. Russia has a number of options on the escalation ladder before they resort to nuclear bombs.