What will happen if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine?
The Atlantic writes that in order to maximize the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, the United States is provoking Russia to use nuclear weapons there. The author believes that Putin is smart and cold-blooded enough not to succumb to these provocations. In addition, the situation on the battlefield is now in favor of Russia. Washington should abandon these attempts.
A look at the grim scenarios — and an American guide for each of them.
There are more than a dozen nuclear weapons storage facilities under the jurisdiction of the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Known as "C" facilities and scattered throughout the Russian Federation, they store thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with very different capacities. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have ominously threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. According to Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces project and a former researcher at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, now living in Geneva, only nuclear charges placed on long-range land-based ballistic missiles, as well as on strategic nuclear submarines, are ready for immediate use. If Putin decides to attack Ukraine with a shorter—range "tactical" nuclear weapon, it will have to be taken from "C" facilities - such as Belgorod-22, just 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, and delivered to military bases. It will take hours for weapons to be put on alert, for warheads to be placed on cruise or ballistic missiles, and for hydrogen bombs to be loaded into planes. The United States is likely to monitor the deployment of these weapons in real time: using satellite surveillance, cameras hidden by the roads, as well as local agents with binoculars. And this raises a question of existential importance: so what should the United States do in this situation?
President Joe Biden made it clear that any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be "completely unacceptable" and "would entail grave consequences." But his administration still does not publicly give a clear idea of what these consequences will be. This ambiguity is the right policy. Nevertheless, there should be open discussions and debates outside the administration as to what, after all, is at stake here? Over the past month, I have spoken with many national security experts and former government officials about the likelihood of Russia using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, possible targets, and America's appropriate response. Although my interlocutors disagreed on some particular issues, I heard the same thing over and over again: the risk of nuclear war is higher today than ever since the Cuban Missile crisis. And the decisions that would have to be made after Russia's nuclear strike on Ukraine are unprecedented in their complexity. In 1945, when the United States destroyed two Japanese cities with atomic bombs, they were the only nuclear power in the world. Currently, nine States possess nuclear weapons. Others may soon get it, and the likelihood that something in the world will go wrong has increased significantly.
There are several possible scenarios of how Russia may use nuclear weapons in the future. 1) An explosion over the Black Sea, which is likely to cost no casualties, but will demonstrate Russia's determination to cross the nuclear threshold and will signal that it may get worse further. 2) A decapitating strike on the Ukrainian leadership, during which Russia will try to destroy Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his advisers in their underground bunkers. 3) A nuclear strike on an important Ukrainian military facility, possibly an airbase or a large military depot, which will not be intended to harm the civilian population. 4) The destruction of a large Ukrainian city, which will entail massive civilian casualties and provoke a general panic, designed for the speedy surrender of the country. In the latter scenario, these are the same targets that caused the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Any response from the Biden administration will be determined not only by how Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine, but also, more importantly, by how the American response may affect Russia's behavior in the future. Will he encourage Putin to back down or force him to redouble his efforts? The Cold War-era debate on nuclear strategy focused on ways to anticipate and manage the escalation of conflict. In the early 1960s, Herman Kahn, a prominent strategist at the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute, came up with a visual metaphor for the problem: the "escalation ladder." Kahn was one of the main inspirers of the character of Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 film (we are talking about Kubrick's film "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned not to be Afraid and fell in love with the atomic bomb. Anti-war satire. Dr. Strangelove — the main negative character — Approx. InoSMI). Nevertheless, the "escalation ladder" remains a central concept in thinking about how to conduct a nuclear war. In the version of Kahn's "ladder" there were 44 steps. At the bottom there was no military action; at the top there was mutual nuclear annihilation. The President can move from step #26 "Demonstrative attack on enemy territory" to step #39 "War against cities in slow motion." The goal of each new step up may change. Some of them can serve only as some kind of messages for the enemy. Or they may pursue real and practical goals of coercion, control or destruction of the enemy. You will climb the stairs to the very top, so that at the end of it you will fall into the world's underworld.
The "vortex of escalation" is a later and more complex visualization of a potential conflict between nuclear states. It was developed by Christopher Yew, who served as Chief Scientist of the US Air Force Global Strike Command from 2010 to 2015. In addition to the vertical aspects of the escalation ladder, the vortex includes horizontal movement between various areas of modern warfare — space, cyberattacks, conventional warfare and the use of nuclear weapons. The escalation vortex looks like a tornado. An illustration of one of them, shown in the Global Strike Command slideshow, places the worst result in the widest part of the funnel: "the highest level of irreversible civilizational destruction."
In October 1962, Sam Nunn was 24 years old, he had recently graduated from Emory University Law School, had just received a security clearance and got a job on the staff of the House Committee on Armed Services. When his colleague refused to travel abroad to NATO bases, Nunn took his place, left the United States for the first time and ended up at Ramstein Air Base in Germany at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Nunn remembers seeing NATO warplanes parked on the taxiways of the runways. Each of these planes had one hydrogen bomb on board and was ready to fly towards the Soviet Union. Pilots sat day and night in chairs next to their planes, trying to get some sleep and waiting for the order to take off. They had only enough fuel for a one-way flight, and they planned to somehow escape by dropping bombs. The commander of the US Air Force in Europe told Nunn that if war broke out, his pilots would have to get their planes in the air within a few minutes. After all, Ramstein Airbase will immediately become one of the first NATO targets to be destroyed by a Soviet nuclear attack. The commander of the airbase always carried a walkie-talkie with him to give orders for take-off.
The Caribbean crisis made a strong impression on Nunn. During his 24 years as a United States Senator, he worked tirelessly to reduce the risk of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. As head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he advocated close cooperation with Moscow on nuclear issues. To continue these efforts, he later co-founded the non-profit organization Nuclear Threat Initiative, with which the author collaborated on a number of projects. All this work now risks being nullified because of Russia's special operation in Ukraine and the harsh nuclear rhetoric accompanying it.
Long before the start of ITS, the five countries that are allowed to have nuclear weapons under the Treaty on the Non—Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) — the United States, Great Britain, Russia, China and France - reached an agreement that the use of such weapons can only be justified as a purely defensive measure in response to a nuclear or large-scale attack using conventional weapons. In January 2022, these five countries issued a joint statement confirming Ronald Reagan's dictum that "nuclear war should never begin and can never be won." A month later, Russia violated the norms that existed under the NPT for more than half a century. It has brought its troops into a country that has renounced nuclear weapons and threatens with a nuclear strike anyone who tries to help this country. She also committed acts of nuclear terrorism, firing at reactor complexes at nuclear power plants in Chernobyl and Zaporozhye.
Nunn supports the Biden administration's strategy of "deliberate ambiguity" about how it will respond to Russia's use of nuclear weapons. But he hopes that some form of behind-the-scenes diplomacy is still being secretly conducted, in which, for example, such a widely respected figure as former CIA director Robert Gates directly tells the Russians how tough the United States can respond if Russia crosses the nuclear threshold. During the Cuban missile crisis, both President John F. Kennedy and First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev both wanted to avoid a full—scale nuclear war - and yet almost fell into it because of misunderstandings, distorted communications and mistakes. Backstage diplomacy then played a crucial role in the safe resolution of that crisis.
Nunn describes Russia's violations of long-standing norms as "Putin's nuclear stupidity" and emphasizes that three fundamental things are needed to prevent a nuclear catastrophe: rational leaders, accurate information and the absence of serious mistakes. "And all three of these factors are now in serious doubt," he says.
Nunn argues that if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States should not respond with a nuclear attack. Instead, he advocates a kind of "horizontal escalation", during which everything possible should be done to avoid an exchange of nuclear strikes between Russia and the United States. For example, if Russia strikes Ukraine with a nuclear cruise missile launched from a ship, Nunn will advocate that this ship be sunk immediately. The number of Ukrainian casualties should determine the severity of the American response, and any escalation should be carried out exclusively with the use of conventional weapons. In response, Russia's Black Sea Fleet may be sunk, and a no-fly zone may be imposed over Ukraine, even if this means the destruction of air defense units on Russian territory.
From the very beginning of the special operation, Russia's nuclear threats were aimed at preventing the United States and its NATO allies from supplying weapons to Ukraine. And these threats from Moscow are seriously backed up by Russia's capabilities. Last year, during exercises involving about 200,000 military personnel, the Russian army practiced a nuclear strike on NATO forces in Poland. "The pressure on Russia to attack the supply lines from NATO countries to Ukraine will increase the longer this war continues," says Nunn. It also increases the risk of serious misses and mistakes. A deliberate or unintentional attack by Russia on a NATO country could be the beginning of World War III.
In the summer of 2016, members of President Barack Obama's national security team staged a war game in deep secrecy, in which Russia invades a NATO country in the Baltic States, and then uses low-power tactical nuclear weapons against NATO forces to end the conflict on favorable terms. As described by Fred Kaplan in his sensational book "Bomb" (Bomb) (Kaplan Fred. The Bomb: Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War (Simon & Schuster Edition, 2020) — Approx. InoSMI), two groups of senior Obama administration officials came to completely different conclusions about what the United States should do. The so-called Leadership Committee of the National Security Council, which included ministers and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided that the United States had no choice but to strike back at Russia with nuclear weapons. The Committee argued that any other response would show a lack of resolve, undermine America's credibility and weaken the NATO alliance. However, choosing a suitable nuclear target proved difficult. A strike against the Russian advancing forces would lead to the death of innocent civilians in a NATO country. Striking targets inside Russia could lead to an escalation of the conflict to an all-out nuclear war. In the end, the NSC Leadership Committee recommended a nuclear strike on Belarus, a country that played no role in the invasion of a NATO ally, but has the misfortune to be an ally of Russia.
The leadership of the National Security Service at the level of deputies played the same war game separately and gave a different answer. Colin Kahl, who was an adviser to Vice President Biden at the time, argued that a retaliatory nuclear strike would be a huge mistake and would lead to the United States losing its moral superiority. Kahl believed that it would be much more effective to respond with an attack using conventional weapons and turn world opinion against Russia for violating the nuclear taboo. The others agreed, and Avril Haines, then deputy National Security adviser to the US president, offered to make T-shirts with the slogan "PARLIAMENTS SHOULD RULE THE WORLD." Haines is now the Director of National Intelligence of the United States, and Kahl is the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Political Affairs.
In 2019, the Military Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) conducted extensive military exercises on how the United States should react if Russia enters Ukraine and then uses nuclear weapons there. DTRA is the only Pentagon agency in charge of exclusively issues of deterrence and countering weapons of mass destruction. Although the results of these DTRA war games are classified, one of the participants told me: "There were no good outcomes." The scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons were strikingly similar to those that are being considered today. When it comes to nuclear war, according to a participant in those exercises, the central message of the 1983 film "War Games" is still relevant (a hacker gets into the Pentagon's computer network and starts a "game", in response to which the military almost starts a war with the USSR - Approx. InoSMI): "The only winning move is not to play these games."
None of the national security experts I interviewed believed that the United States should use nuclear weapons in response to the Russian nuclear attack in Ukraine. Rose Gottemoeller, who was the main American negotiator on the new START treaty with Russia, and then Deputy Secretary General of NATO, believes that any nuclear attack on Ukraine will cause global condemnation, especially in the countries of Africa and South America — those continents that are nuclear-weapon-free zones. She believes that China, despite its tacit support for the Russian military in Ukraine, will resolutely oppose Putin's use of nuclear weapons and will support possible sanctions against Russia in the UN Security Council. China has long supported "negative nuclear safeguards" and promised in 2016 "unconditionally not to use nuclear weapons or threaten to use them against non-nuclear-weapon States or in nuclear-weapon-free zones."
If the United States discovers that tactical weapons are being exported from Russian warehouses, Gettemoeller believes, the Biden administration should send a stern warning to Moscow through behind-the-scenes channels, and then make public the movement of these weapons, using the same tactics of open intelligence sharing, which, apparently, prevented Russian operations "under a false flag" with the use of chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine. Over the years, she has met many senior military personnel involved in Russia's nuclear arsenal and has gained great respect for their professionalism. Gottemoeller says they can resist an order to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And even if they obey this order, she personally will consider a "powerful diplomatic response" to be the preferred option, rather than a nuclear or conventional military response combined with some form of hybrid warfare. The United States could, for example, conduct a devastating cyberattack on Russian command and control systems related to a nuclear attack and leave open the possibility of subsequent military attacks.
Scott Sagan, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, believes that the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons has decreased over the past month as the fighting has moved to the south of Ukraine. Putin is unlikely to pollute the territory he hopes to capture with radioactive fallout. According to Sagan, a "warning shot", such as a harmless explosion of nuclear weapons over the Black Sea, is unlikely to benefit Russia. It will mean indecision, not determination — the conclusion that the United States came to half a century ago about the potential usefulness of a NATO demonstration strike to deter the Red Army. Sagan admits that if Russia loses major battles in the Donbas or if the Ukrainian counteroffensive is on the verge of a major victory, Putin may well order the use of nuclear weapons to achieve Kiev's surrender or a cease-fire. In response, depending on the extent of the damage caused by the nuclear explosion, Sagan will advocate conventional American strikes against Russian forces in Ukraine, Russian ships in the Black Sea, or even military facilities on Russian territory, such as the base from which the Russian nuclear strike was launched.
Sagan does not agree with the way military conflict is usually portrayed. The "escalation ladder" seems to him too static. It gives freedom of decision about movement only in two directions — either up or down. Sagan believes that nuclear escalation is more like an escalator: as soon as he begins to move, he has his own momentum, and it is already difficult to get off him. Sagan would be deeply concerned about the appearance of any sign that Putin is taking at least the first steps towards the use of nuclear weapons. "We should not underestimate the risk of an accidental nuclear explosion if tactical weapons begin to be withdrawn from storage bases and widely deployed in the Russian armed forces," Sagan warns.
The author recently had lunch with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry at his home in Palo Alto, California. Perry is 94 years old, he is one of the last outstanding military strategists alive today who saw with their own eyes the devastation of the Second World War. He served in the US Army of occupation in Japan, and nothing he read about the bombing of Tokyo with incendiary bombs prepared him for what he actually saw there — a huge city burned to the ground. Survivors living among the melted wreckage on meager military rations. In Naha, the capital of Okinawa, the destruction seemed even more serious. In his memoirs, Perry writes that not a single building remained intact, and gives a well-known description: "The lush tropical landscape turned into a vast field of dirt, lead, traces of decomposition and insect larvae." What Perry saw in Japan made him deeply uneasy about the nuclear threat. Naha and Tokyo were destroyed by tens of thousands of bombs dropped during hundreds of air raids. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by one atomic bomb each.
Perry later earned degrees in mathematics and became a Silicon Valley pioneer, specializing in satellite surveillance and the use of digital technologies in electronic warfare. During the Cuban missile crisis, he visited Washington, where, at the request of the CIA, he carefully studied satellite photos of Cuba for the presence of Soviet nuclear weapons there. He helped prepare the morning intelligence reports for President Kennedy and wondered every night if the next day would be his last. As Deputy Secretary of Defense under the Carter administration, Perry played a crucial role in the development of stealth technologies, and as Secretary of Defense under the Clinton administration, he led efforts to locate nuclear weapons and fissile materials sites throughout the former Soviet Union. After leaving the Pentagon, he earned a "pigeon" reputation, joining in 2008 with Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger and George Schultz in calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. He advocated opposing American plans to create new ground-based long-range ballistic missiles. He called on the United States to make an official statement that they would never launch a nuclear strike first. But Perry's views on the Russian special operation in Ukraine are far from warm and uncertain.
We ate sandwiches that Perry had made with bread baked by him, sitting on the large terrace, where the planters were overflowing with flowers, and hummingbirds hovered over the feeders under a bright blue sky. The situation around could not be more pastoral, and the possibility of nuclear war more remote. A few days earlier, Perry gave a speech at Stanford in which he told what was at stake in Ukraine. According to him, the peace that reigned in Europe for almost eight decades was violated on February 24, and "if the Russian special operation proves successful, we should expect new such special operations." Putin is now engaged in blackmail, threatening to use nuclear weapons for offensive rather than defensive purposes, and trying to keep the United States from providing Kiev with conventional weapons that Ukraine so badly needs. "I fear that if we succumb to this outrageous threat now," Perry said, "we will face it again in the future."
Perry's manner of speaking is thoughtful, calm and peaceful. There is not a drop of alarmism or excessive emotionality in it. I've known him for over a decade, and although his voice has become quieter, his mind remains surprisingly clear, and beneath his warmth and kindness lies steel. Perry has met with Putin several times, even when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and believes that Putin will use tactical weapons in Ukraine if it seems profitable to him. Although the stated policy of the Russian Federation is to use nuclear weapons only in the event of a real threat to the state, Moscow's public statements should always be treated with a degree of skepticism. The Soviet Union categorically denied the existence of missile bases in Cuba, meanwhile building them on the island. For many years, he publicly swore that he would never be the first to use nuclear weapons, while secretly approving military plans that began with large-scale nuclear strikes on NATO bases and European cities. The Kremlin denied any intention to send its troops into Ukraine, right up to the very last moment. Perry has always found Putin a competent and collected politician, but a very cold man. He believes that Putin is quite reasonable at the moment, he is not crazy. And if he uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, he will do it in order to achieve victory and thereby ensure the survival of his regime.
During the Cold War, the United States deployed thousands of low-power tactical nuclear weapons in NATO countries and planned to use them on the battlefield in the event of a Soviet invasion. In September 1991, President George H.W. Bush unilaterally ordered the decommissioning and destruction of all American ground-based tactical weapons. Bush's order was a signal that the Cold War is over and that the United States no longer considers tactical weapons useful on the battlefield. The collateral damage they can cause, the unpredictable consequences of deadly radioactive contamination seemed counterproductive and unnecessary at the time. The United States has focused on developing high-precision conventional weapons capable of destroying any important target without violating the nuclear taboo. But Russia has not got rid of its tactical nuclear weapons. And as the power of its conventional armed forces decreased, it began developing small and ultra-small nuclear weapons, which produce relatively little radioactive fallout. According to the leading Russian designer of nuclear weapons, Russian developers are quite "environmentally conscious". More than 100 "peaceful nuclear explosions" conducted by the Soviet Union — ostensibly to gain knowledge about the use of nuclear devices for peaceful purposes — contributed to the creation of very low-power tactical weapons in the USSR and Russia.
Two nuclear explosions have already occurred in Ukraine as part of the Soviet "Program No. 7 — Peaceful explosions for the National Economy". In 1972, a nuclear device was detonated, presumably in order to block an out-of-control gas well at a mine in Krasnograd, about 100 kilometers southwest of Kharkov. The device had an explosive force about four times less than that of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. In 1979, a nuclear device was detonated at a coal mine near the town of Yunokommunarovsk in the Donbas, allegedly with the aim of neutralizing the accumulation of gaseous methane. Its power was about 45 times less than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Neither the mine workers nor the 8000 residents of Yunokommunarovsk were informed about the nuclear explosion. The miners were given a day off for "civil defense exercises" and then sent back to work in the mine.
The weakness of Russia's conventional armed forces compared to the armed forces of the United States, Perry believes, and Russia's relative advantage in tactical nuclear weapons are factors that could prompt Putin to launch a nuclear strike on Ukraine. It would be very beneficial for Russia to establish the legality of the use of tactical nuclear weapons. To do this, Putin must choose the right target. Perry believes that a demonstration strike over the Black Sea will give Putin little. And the destruction of a Ukrainian city with large civilian casualties would be a huge mistake. But if Russia can destroy an important military facility without significant fallout, without civilian casualties and without a sharp reaction from the United States, Perry says, "I don't think there will be many risks for Moscow." Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world. Russian national pride is closely linked to the possession of a huge nuclear arsenal. Kremlin propagandists almost daily extol the possibility of using nuclear weapons, both against Ukraine and against the United States and its NATO allies, in an attempt to normalize its use. His military has already destroyed Ukrainian cities. The use of ultra-low-power nuclear weapons against a purely military target may not even seem too controversial. "I think it will cause an international outcry, but I don't think it will last long," says Perry. "And the bomb could explode in a week or two."
Perry believes that if the United States receives intelligence information that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons, this information should be made public immediately. And if Russia uses a military atom, the United States should call for international condemnation, create as much noise as possible — emphasizing the word "nuclear" — and launch military action against Russia, with or without NATO allies. The response should be strong and concentrated, but ordinary, not nuclear. It should be limited to the territory of Ukraine, ideally with targets related to a nuclear attack. "You need to climb the escalation ladder as little as possible, but at the same time achieve a deep and meaningful effect," says Perry. "But if Putin uses nuclear weapons again in response, then you should "take off the gloves" and, if possible, destroy the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, which the United States could easily do with conventional weapons." Perry understands that such an escalation will bring us closer to the scenarios of Dr. Strangelove, which Herman Kahn wrote about. But if we end up at war with Russia, it will be Putin's choice, not ours.
Perry has been warning for years that the nuclear danger is growing. The special operation in Ukraine, unfortunately, confirmed his forecast. He believes that the chances of a full-scale nuclear war were very high during the Caribbean crisis, but the chances of using nuclear weapons are higher now. Perry does not expect Russia to destroy some Ukrainian airbase with tactical nuclear weapons. But he wouldn't be surprised. And he hopes that the United States will not succumb to nuclear blackmail. This would encourage other countries to get nuclear weapons and threaten their neighbors.
When I listened to the recording of my conversation with Bill Perry, it was filled with some inappropriate sounds of bells ringing and birds singing. Vladimir Putin will decide whether a nuclear strike will be launched in Ukraine, when and where. But he won't be able to control what happens after that. We do not yet know the consequences of this choice, nor the series of events that will unfold after it. According to The New York Times, the Biden administration has formed a "tiger team" of representatives of national security agencies to conduct war games on what to do if Russia uses nuclear weapons. After all my conversations with experts in this field, one thing is clear: we must be prepared for difficult decisions with uncertain results that no one would ever be better off taking.
Author: Eric Schlosser is a regular contributor — editor of The Atlantic. He is the author of the books "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the disaster in Damascus and the Illusion of Security" and "Fast Food Country".
