Even after that last Despite weeks of nuclear threats, few believe Mr. Putin will one day wake up and decide to drop megaton warheads on Washington or European capitals in retaliation for aiding Ukraine. What Western allies see as more likely is that Russia will use so-called tactical nuclear weapons. The weapon has low destructive power and is designed to attack short-range targets and destroy military units on the battlefield.
The strategic idea behind these weapons is that they are more “usable” in war because they cause far less damage than hydrogen bombs that destroy cities. The United States estimates that Russia has a stockpile of up to 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads, some small enough to fit into artillery shells.
But the detonation of any tactical nuclear weapon would be an unprecedented test of the doctrine of deterrence, the theory that has underpinned U.S. military policy for the past 70 years. The idea provides for deterring an adversary from carrying out a nuclear attack against the United States or any of the more than 30 allies covered by the treaty. This is because doing so risks an overwhelming counterattack.
According to the theory, having nuclear weapons is not about winning a nuclear war. The goal is to prevent that. It depends on a carefully calibrated balance of terror between nuclear-armed states.
Source: Federation of American Scientists
The numbers and dates are based on estimates of the number of warheads for military use and may not indicate when the nation’s first nuclear test took place.
If Mr. Putin What would happen if we dropped a nuclear weapon on Ukraine, a non-nuclear state not covered by anyone’s nuclear umbrella? If deterrence fails, how can we reduce the risk of a single attack escalating into a global catastrophe?
An answer may be found in the fall of 2022, when concerns about Russian nuclear use in Ukraine are at their most pronounced. A surprise counterattack by the Ukrainian military regained territory northeast of Kharkov from Russian forces. Ukrainian forces are attempting to break through Russian defense lines in southern Kherson, possibly triggering a second Russian withdrawal and potentially signaling a broader military collapse is imminent.
U.S. intelligence says that if Ukrainian warplanes had managed to penetrate Russian defenses and advance into occupied Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, it would come down to a coin toss whether Russia would launch a tactical nuke. I estimated that. Government officials said they needed weapons to stop them.
The Russian government has used implicit and explicit nuclear threats throughout the war to scare off Western intervention. But around this time, a series of terrible events occurred.
On October 23, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made a series of phone calls to the defense secretaries of four NATO member countries, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, stating that Ukrainian fighter jets had been bombed with dirty bombs (conventional explosives). ) said Russia had signs that it could detonate. On their own territory to assemble Moscow – with radioactive materials.
Around that time, U.S. intelligence also intercepted conversations between Russian military leaders about using tactical nuclear weapons, according to current and former Biden administration officials. General Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke by phone with their Russian counterparts three times in four days during this tense period.
Believing that Russia was building a groundless pretext for its own nuclear attack, the Biden administration sought to de-escalate the situation and bring Russia out of this situation by engaging allies, adversaries, and others in between. A multilateral effort was quickly launched by countries in the region. For nearly a week, Biden’s aides have been at the White House all night coordinating high-level talks and planning for the worst-case scenario, a small nuclear explosion with a yield of a few kilotons or less inside Ukrainian territory.
Many in the administration believed that the Kremlin’s dirty bomb program posed the greatest risk of nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. State Department officials traveled to Poland to ensure medical supplies and radiological equipment were transported across the border. The Department of Energy sent equipment to collect potential debris so that American scientists could later analyze the weapon’s design features and the origin of the nuclear material. U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees nuclear operations, commissioned a team of experts (ironically named the Writers’ Club, because the findings were written up daily for Pentagon leadership) to assess the risks and determine what the situation might be. The order was directed to determine whether this would trigger Russia’s nuclear program.
Warnings about the potential for chilling economic, diplomatic and military consequences were conveyed privately to Moscow, but administration officials also sounded the alarm publicly.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, October 2022
The administration’s diplomatic push also included efforts by leaders of several countries, including China, India and Turkey, to explain to Mr. Putin’s government the potential costs of pursuing a nuclear attack. In November of that year, William J. Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, met with his Russian counterpart in Turkey and delivered a similar warning. On November 16, the G20 issued the following joint statement:
If the Russian leader was indeed close to the brink, he retreated.