Could Putin's "Escalate to Win" Nuclear Threat Strategy Work?

PETER HUESSY 

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By Peter Huessy, Warrior Maven Senior Nuclear Weapons Analyst, Senior Fellow Warrior Maven, Atlantic Council, Hudson Institute -- President of Geo-Strategic Analysis

(Washington D.C.) The war against Ukraine initiated by Russian aggression 13 months ago has been accompanied by multiple threats from the Russian leadership, including President Putin, to initiate the use of nuclear weapons against the United States, NATO or Ukraine itself, threats that are linked to NATO support to Ukraine of military hardware.

The threats from Russia are taken as serious given Moscow’s adoption of a strategy often referred to as “escalate to win” where Russia decides to use limited nuclear weapons, probably of the theater or tactical type, in the Ukraine region to counter a losing conventional fight and achieve some kind of “victory” usually not clearly delineated. Thus, NATO has decided to split the difference: arm Ukraine with weapons but not involve NATO forces.

Russia, China & Ukraine

But there is a larger strategy at play and it involves both Russia and China.

First, irrespective of the outcome of the war against Ukraine, Moscow’s current gambit is to eventually secure the US withdrawal of theater nuclear weapons from a number of NATO nations where American fighter planes are armed with what are a couple of hundred nuclear gravity bombs.

Second, Putin’s ruse is to claim the moral high-ground by declaring that all Russian theater nuclear weapons are on Russian soil, unlike similar US nuclear weapons, not withstanding the fact that at a minimum Russian theater nuclear forces outnumber those of the United States by at least 10 to 1 or as much as 25 to 1.

Third, having a monopoly of theater nuclear forces in the European theater is Moscow’s objective, which would seriously tear apart of the fabric of the US extended deterrent or nuclear umbrella over our non-nuclear NATO allies. For its part, the US has never adopted a no-first use pledge but which some in Europe might believe was US policy by default if the US withdrew our theater nuclear forces from Europe. Even though it has also been long-standing US extended deterrent policy that our central strategic nuclear forces are a critical part of extended deterrence not only in the European theater but also in the Middle East and Western Pacific.

Fourth, Putin knows that Russian regional nuclear weapons can reach much of Europe, while US regional or theater nuclear forces if only stationed in the continental United States could not of course reach any part of Europe or western Russia. Such US forces would simply be a non-factor in any crisis or conflict having to do with the European-Russian border. Exactly Putin’s goal.

Fifth, this strategy is not exactly new. The Soviet Union previously and now Russia has centered its foreign policy strategy around one critical objective—destroy NATO and de-link the United States from Europe. This was the point of the Soviet era deployment of SS-20 missiles in Europe (and Asia) that the US responded to along with key NATO allies Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Italy when President Reagan deployed the Pershing and Ground-Launched Cruise missiles culminating in the surprise adoption by the USSR of Reagan’s arms proposal to zero out all such intermediate range forces in the INF Treaty of 1987.

Even though the Russians violated the INF treaty by deploying prohibited INF range missiles, it was not until the Trump administration that the US called Mocow on this and withdrew from the INF agreement. After all, you cannot have a bilateral treaty when there is only one party abiding by the agreement.

Sixth, Putin has also added a new twist to his campaign of nuclear blackmail. Citing the Ukraine coalition forces use of depleted uranium shells, Moscow has attempted to make the “aluminum” part of artillery shells somehow equivalent to using nuclear weapons. Putin has thus begun preparing a site in Belarus for the implicit “retaliatory” future deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, in violation of numerous agreements to which Moscow is party.

The President of Belarus, Mr. Lukashenko, now claims he was unfairly pressured in 1991 to get rid of the Soviet era nuclear weapons located on Belarus soil when the Soviet Union collapsed. And that this somehow makes it consistent with sound strategic policy and law that Belarus can possibly host Moscow’s nuclear weapons planned for deployment later this summer.

Seventh, it is true that Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan all gave up their nuclear weapons at the break-up of the USSR, in return for a security guarantee from the West that their territorial integrity would be respected, a pledge Russia itself also adopted, including a formal agreement with Great Britain and the United States to protect Ukraine’s independence and security. Some analysts have suggested that the folly of giving up such weapons in 1991 [and by Libya and Iraq) is now clear, but without realizing that if the good guys we support—Ukraine---have a right to deploy nuclear weapons, the same argument can be made that the bad guys---whom we may be at war with including Iran, for example,—also can make a claim to have a right to deploy nuclear weapons as well because of potential aggression.

Apparently, China received a pledge from Putin at the summit of the two leaders that Russia would not deploy nuclear weapons outside of Russian territory, a pledge that Putin apparently would break if Moscow deployed nuclear weapons in Belarus. On the surface, it appears Putin broke his pledge but something more important is taking place that may explain Russia’s behavior.

China may have understood the pledge was good window dressing. But more importantly, China is worried the South Korean or ROK government is continuing to seek a stronger extended nuclear deterrent pledge from the United States, especially given the growing North Korean nuclear arsenal, both short range and longer range missiles and different types of nuclear weapons. The President of ROK while also pledging fealty to the NPT or Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that prohibits the ROK from developing its own nuclear weapons, has called for the US to redeploy American nuclear forces on the peninsula to counter the expanding North Korean nuclear threat, although it would not include nuclear weapons built by the ROK.