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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| An unprepared West contemplates threat of Russia's nonstrategic nukes |
| 2024-01-29 |
| [Yahoo] Nuclear threats have been a regular feature of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s discourse since even before he was president. My first memory of reading his name came with the title of secretary of Russia’s national security council in 1999, reporting to then-President Boris Yeltsin that Russian forces had successfully defeated NATO through the use of theater-range nuclear weapon strikes on Poland and Hungary. At that time, Russia’s nuclear-capable, theater-range (nonstrategic) nuclear weapons were less accurate, stealthy and numerous than they are today. Since 1999, Russia has invested tremendous amounts of money in maintaining legacy systems as well as developing and fielding new types, totaling more than 30 types of nonstrategic nuclear weapon delivery systems, ranging from cruise and ballistic missiles, torpedoes, air-dropped bombs, and anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missiles. Clearly, Russia values nonstrategic nuclear weapons, or NSNW, particularly those that serve a dual duty — delivering conventional or nuclear warheads. President Vladimir Putin has asserted that Russia’s nuclear weapons are a guarantor of its sovereignty and its status as a great power. The roles of NSNWs in Russian strategy include deterring unwanted conflicts, coercing adversaries, shaping the battlefield for planned conflicts, controlling escalation within conflicts to protect the Russian homeland, preventing outside powers (read: the U.S.) from intervening in its conflicts, and ensuring that it prevails in war. NSNWs provide Russia with a comparative and asymmetric advantage over its immediate neighbors as well as the U.S. and its allies, especially considering that the NATO alliance relies entirely on U.S. air-dropped B61-12 bombs for theater nuclear strikes. Russia, on the other hand, employs and continues to develop NSNWs of varying types and ranges to provide a nuclear option at every rung in the escalation ladder. Recent developments reinforce these observations about Russian thought and doctrine regarding NSNWs. In its war on Ukraine, Russia has used direct nuclear signaling to the U.S. and NATO with its strategic and theater nuclear forces. More recently, it has shown with Belarus that it sees NSNWs as a useful tool to exert further control over its near abroad and increase its coercive power against NATO. China is watching carefully and drawing lessons that it may apply in a potential war against Taiwan — a fact well known to the countries across that region. A particularly concerning development, from the perspective of the West, is Russia’s belief in its ability to gain and maintain escalation dominance. Russia also has demonstrated during its war on Ukraine that it can absorb personnel and materiel losses in conventional combat to a degree unimaginable to the West, calling into question the very concept of unacceptable costs through mutually assured destruction. This tolerance for casualties and indifference to mutually assured destruction may also be shared by China, which demonstrated a similar indifference to casualties in the Korean War. While the performance of Russian conventional forces and depletion of its armies may stay its hand for a while, Russia surely will rearm with its enormous stores of oil and gas money built up over the past few years. Yet many in the West have not grappled with the realities of Russia’s NSNW arsenal, nor developed means to counter Russia’s likely stratagems, systems and doctrine. I am not advocating for the West to mirror Russia’s nuclear posture by any means, but a deeper and broader study of Russia’s NSNW thought and doctrine is essential to maintaining the peace in Europe. Within Russia itself, a wide-ranging debate continues in political and military journals on the best way to prevail in a conflict with the West, examining the role of China and other powers such as Iran and North Korea in a potential wider conflict. In the West, the debates on a “two-peer” problem — maintaining deterrence against Russia and China simultaneously — are only now getting underway. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #3 The Red Sea fighting shows the humiliating difference between the US and Royal Navies |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-01-29 09:19 |
| #2 I am of the personal opinion that the telling blow will not be from ICBM swordsmanship but from catastrophic, perhaps induced, failure of critical infrastructure. Intercontinental gas lines. Fuel transport load and off load facilities, potable water and supply chain vulnerabilities have been demonstrated. Thank you Houtis for illustrating the immediate impact of seaborne shipping. Pete's rail crises not withstanding, a nuclear device aboard a cargo vessel detonated in the narrow straits of a man-made canal will have immediate economic impact. Crushing national economies with low loss of life. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-01-29 08:46 |
| #1 NSNWs provide Russia with a comparative and asymmetric advantage over its immediate neighbors as well as the U.S. and its allies, especially considering that the NATO alliance relies entirely on U.S. air-dropped B61-12 bombs for theater nuclear strikes. Russia, on the other hand, employs and continues to develop NSNWs of varying types and ranges to provide a nuclear option at every rung in the escalation ladder. Short reply: No. Long reply: Nooooooooooooooooooo. The only thing off the table for 'theater' nuclear strikes are US ICBMs. Mike |
| Posted by: MikeKozlowski 2024-01-29 06:22 |