Russia started seeking a bigger role in the XXI-th century world order soon after Vladimir Putin came to power. His 2007 Munchen speech surprised many Western leaders of the time as Putin openly stated that Russia embarked on “strategic restraining of the West.” Since then Russian foreign policy quite successfully traded fear with the surrounding CIS countries and the West.
This fear trade backed up by successful military operations in Georgia and Syria that helped Putin elevate his international clout, eventually leading to his December 2021 ultimatum to the West. Had he offered more acceptable conditions it is quite possible that the West could have traded with him again. Yet, at that time Russian demands exceeded the level of acceptance. Not only they aimed at destroying the principles of European international security, threatening the state of the sovereignty of some states, but they also seriously challenged the authority of the USA as a superpower. Therefore, the West did not see any opportunity for a trade-off.
Putin escalated his negotiation with the war with Ukraine, or what he thought would be a quick and successful military operation, as he had in Georgia in 2008, hoping to continue his fair of fear trade. Yet, the failure of a quick and glorious triumph of the Russian military foreign policy started a long and tenuous war depleting Russian economic and human resources, which exposed the inability of the Russian army to present a serious threat to a modern and motivated professional army trained and equipped by Nato standards.
Raising stakes is the only policy Putin knows. This approach to negotiations is very natural for a person who interacted with criminals as a liaison for the St.Petersburg Governor in the 1990s. The only ace Putin has now is a nuclear strike.
On one hand Dmitry Medvedev, a Russian ex-President who failed to oppose Putin in his quest for ultimate power has been talking about a nuclear possibility since the beginning of the war. His notorious tweets were often backed up by the Russian national propaganda shows, where the so-called “experts” threatened to destroy in “nuclear fire” London, Paris, and Warsaw. Still, the audience was ordinary Russians, and people abroad who would fail for these propagandist threats.
Now we see another discourse. In May 2023 several respected and serious Russian experts, not populists, published articles and spoke publicly on the possibilities of a nuclear strike. This support for the idea coincided with the decision to station nuclear missiles in Belarus, a clear violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Lukashenko saying that he would have a “sovereign right” to use the nuclear weapons in case of war. So, the audience has changed. Putin clearly shows his last nuclear ace to the West, primarily targeting Washington, of course.
Not only the audience, but the message has also changed. Sergei Karaganov, president emeritus of Russia’s Foreign and Defense Policy Council said “The fear of a nuclear escalation must be restored, otherwise humanity is doomed.” He elaborated that Russia should try to use a manageable nuclear escalation to achieve a strategic goal of nuclear de-escalation. Sounds a little illogical, but goes very well within the logic of exporting manageable chaos to achieve foreign policy victories. The logic was propagated by Alexander Dugin. The logic that helped Putin start the war.
Sergei Karganov was one of the architects of the “fear trade” foreign policy approach working for Putin, just like Dugin. And when he said in his article that employing a nuclear in the war with Ukraine was “a hard but necessary decision”, you want to consider this. We know how isolated Putin is from reality. We know that he does not receive objective information, thinking that Russia wins. We also know that he reads some of the Russian national media (or at least its digests). And this is a message for him as well. If he sees Russia losing, would an opinion of one of his think-tank guruы stating that a nuclear strike is allowed: “in the existential fight between the good and the evil” (direct quote) influence his decision-making?
After the failure of 15 years policy of fear trade the West will not buy it again. The nuclear narrative started last year, but the Kremlin saw multiple clear signals from the US, Europe, India, and China warning Russia against using nuclear, even tactical nuclear, in the war with Ukraine.
On June 16 Putin announced that “Nuclear weapons are being created to ensure our security in the broadest sense of the word and the existence of the Russian state. But firstly, we do not have such a need, and secondly, the very fact of reasoning on this topic already reduces the possibility of reducing the threshold for the use of weapons.” Before sighing with relief though, remember Putins’ statement from 2015 when he assured that the war with Ukraine seemed “impossible.”
With all the negative and firm international signals Russia may still consider a tactical nuclear strike, or “a tragic accident leading to nuclear catastrophe” some kind of wunderwaffe capable of changing the result of the losing war.
Since Stalin’s time, Russia’s security doctrine has rested upon conventional forces and nuclear weapons. Now that the conventional army (and fleet) struggle hard to achieve military goals, some Russian political leaders start to attend to the lucrative nuclear opportunity. Besides a decision to station nuclear missiles in Belarus in 2023 Putin publicly demonstrate his seriousness about using nuclear weapons’ issue ending joint US-Russia inspections of strategic nuclear weapons.
Military experts considered the fact that Russians used Kh-55 nuclear sub-sonic missiles with dummy warheads as a sign of the early depletion of Russian missiles as these Soviet-era missiles were designed to carry only a nuclear weapon. Though, we might also suspect that Russians did it to test if these missiles could penetrate Ukrainian air defense if they carried real nuclear later.
Putin was warned more than once that a nuclear strike will lead to escalation with NATO. The Kremlin should be aware that the USA has successfully developed a concept of Prompt Global Strike (PGS) allowing to use of conventional (non-nuclear) weapons within one hour to any point on Earth. In 2014 Russian Colonel-General Leonid Ivashev estimated that American PGS may destroy up to 70% of the Russian strategic nuclear force. We may now add at least 10% more.
It is hard to imagine that 20 years ago any serious political leader or an expert would discuss a real possibility of a nuclear escalation. Now we try to predict it preparing for its aftermath. What is worse is that the younger generation that has no internalization of the nuclear threat considers a nuclear strike some kind of a game, a part of a computer-generated apocalypse. They are not afraid that it may become a reality. And this is frightening.
Russia is an heir of the USSR, and its current leadership is a product of Soviet history. Surprisingly, you can call Putin’s current politics Maoist, some Russian version of it. Mao Zedong used to say that he was not afraid of the world nuclear war. In the 1950-s when the world population was 2,7 billion people, China accounted for almost 600 million. So, his idea was that if half of the Chinese died in the nuclear he would still have 300 million left. He developed and supported the concept of provoking a nuclear war, not fearing it.
Mao Zedong’s “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war, but war can only be abolished through war, and to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun” reminds Putin’s ‘we start the special military operation …. to bring peace to Donbas.” And to bring peace to Donbas he bombed the whole Ukraine.
It is unlikely that Putin follows Mao consciously, but it is ironic that out of all he could borrow from China, he borrowed Mao’s attitude to war forgetting that Russia does not have 600 million people.
Moscow-based Levada Center conducted a poll showing that 68% of Russians consider unacceptable the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The same poll shows a solid 18% who agreed definitively with the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The public accord is small but alarming, knowing how effective Russian propaganda can be and how non-opposition Russian people are.
Last year the Kremlin warned the West that it might use the nuclear weapons in Ukraine by words, and this year by deeds. We see that it has started to methodically prepare the Russian people with the reasons why nuclear weapons should be used. Putin can always use his rhetoric of an existential threat to Russia to justify it.
February 24, 2022 Putin exposed his change from a man of compromise to the man of hard action. Yet, the recent crisis with Prigozhin does not prove that. It is unlikely that he can really change his behaviour and power management style, as the Kremlin needed more than 10 hours to produce a verbal response to a very dynamic and threatening situation, A nuclear may become what Putin would consider as a firm response to reaffirm his shaking authority.
We all are playing the Russian nuclear roulette because when you pull the trigger you never know what is coming. And we never know what to expect from Putin, just because he, himself, does not know it, living in his imaginary world. Indeed, the most dangerous fool in the world with a nuclear gun.
