Can you please state your entire position in more than a single sentence not in context of some specific other post? I think you probably have something interesting to say about all this, but I’ll be damned if I can divine what it might be.
I worry (not real) … that Putin tries that, and just like in UKR mis-reads the country … and suddenly has 2 mad dogs chewing on his reproductive glands … now THAT would be intersting … an uprising in Belarus, in a “now-or-never” type of scenario
To whom are you speaking?
Touche’ good Sir. I am speaking to @carnivorousplant.
The Russians are invading Ukraine from Belarus, and giving Belarus tactical nuclear weapons.
So, if Belarus launches nuclear weapons at Ukraine, it isn’t Russia’s problem, is it? I doubt that excuse would go very far, but a desperate Putin may try it.
Got it. Thank you for the restatement. Yeah, agree that won’t go very far.
But what that scenario does do is offer NATO the opportunity to nuke into Belarus, including targeting the “gray-market” military units that are sorta-Belarussian / sorta-Russian. While not directly nuking launch points or other counterforce targets within Russia proper. Which sort of limits the Russians’ opportunities for legitimate outrage. Performative outrage is of course expected.
Said another way, by Putin orchestrating a nuclear attack from Belarus, he will lower, not raise the barriers to entry of a NATO nuclear response. That seems counterproductive and reckless. Then again, that pretty well characterizes the entirety of the thought processes behind this stupid pe-war build-up and live war that’s now almost 24 months old.
An interesting question from the NATO POV is whether the best rejoinder to a nuke into Ukraine from Belarus is to counterattack into Belarus conventionally in strength, or nuclearly in a limited tit-for-tat fashion. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
My thought is that a nuclear attack from Belarus would be conventional air attack on the remaining nuclear weapons in Belarus by NATO.
That’s certainly the smallest logical direct response. But it presupposes we know exactly where all those weapons and launch systems are, and can keep track of them all while the other side is probably playing their best shell game moving them around.
In ordinary doctrine you’d also want to attack the various upstream command and control nodes to decapitate the ability to control the weapons that you’re not sure where they all are. For something as ad hoc as these newly installed weapons in Belarus, it may not be at all knowable what the command and control network looks like. Heck, the first node upstream of the actual shooters may be in Russia proper, and perhaps even in Moscow itself.
Second point:
The Union State of Russia and Belarus is a very interesting legal construct that serves to blur the lines between the two countries as independent countries versus them being a federated whole. Like all other aspects of Russian “hybrid warfare” this is about ensuring there is no clarity anywhere, and everything is gray, soft, mushy, and shape-shifting.
A nuclear or conventional attack on Belarus is also an attack on the Union State. Which is a fuzzy thing more connected than are the NATO or EU members, but less connected (maybe) than the 50 US states are within the USA. Whatever it is, it’ll be redefined on the fly by Moscow to best fit their goals du jour. Shape-shifting.
On your first point, I would hope that the US and NATO are able to track the weapons from Russia and maintain their whereabouts. There are surely at least many satellites watching that area.
True. But when 100 identical trucks leave the weapons depot and some much smaller number have actual warheads, and then once in Belarus the 100 trucks go to 100 different locations, well … now NATO has a problem. Even moreso after those trucks mingle with some other identical trucks already in Belarus then they all move out again. “Shell game” is an apt comparison.
Satellites don’t give you a non-stop video stare at an area; they tend to give periodic snapshots. Clouds and darkness are also issues.
Now maybe the Russians don’t bother with much in the way of deception. Maybe they just in effect dare NATO to escalate while they’re setting up for launches. Certainly underestimating NATO resolve and NATO initiative has been a hallmark of Russian decision-making throughout this affair. OTOH, NATO has not exactly been a model of consistent coherence either.
Going from the Telegram announcement, they are Russian weapons hosted in Belarus. I read this as only Russia can arm them even if Belarus can deliver them via modified plane or Islander.
I would think Russia retains control, including when they are to be launched and what their targets are. They can still claim that Belarus fired them.
Perun’s weekly slideshow covered the idea of escalating to nuclear weapons this week. A brief synopsis:
- Russia and/or the Soviet Union have “lost” and settled for a strategic retreat and not nuking their adversaries in the past (as has the US). So the idea that superpowers can’t be defeated without nuclear Armageddon kind of doesn’t hold water.
- Russia’s reaction to additional weapons being supplied to Ukraine and/or sanctions on Russia have followed a pattern.
1 Declare that the action (whatever it is) is horribly powerful or provocative, and can lead to nuclear escalation.
2 When that action is taken, say that it won’t make any difference (either the equipment/action will be ineffective or they already have a plan to deal with it).
3 Later declare that they’ve either destroyed the equipment or that the economic action has made Russia even more powerful as a result. This explains why the original nuclear threat was not carried out. - All that said, past performance does not guarantee future returns.
He explains this pretty well through game theory. There’s really no where else for Russia to threaten to go, they’re already in a pitched war. They can’t really threaten much else. It’s unlikely that they’ll even resort to nuking Kyiv unless NATO troops got directly involved, which generally seems politically unlikely at the moment. In general, it seems that the trigger for Russia to use nuclear weapons is still much higher than the west’s threshold for supplying aid to their Ukrainian allies.
@scabpicker just above. Overall I agree with the thrust of your post & the cite behind it. But I’ll take small issue with this tidbit
The word “defeat” means several things. Was the US able to be persuaded to abandon its Viet Nam efforts without the US nuking Hanoi, Peking as it then was, or Moscow? Yes. Was the US government destroyed in a “defeat” of that government? No.
Ditto for the Soviets in Afghanistan. They abandoned the field and didn’t nuke their adversaries on the way out. But they also survived starting and losing (or at least failing to win) the war they started.
Nobody with a clue is seriously suggesting Russia can’t be driven to abandon active combat in Ukraine w/o Russia first using nukes along the way. Many but not all well-informed commentators believe it is possible to push Russia back to the 2021 Ukraine / Russia border (or the 2016 one) without Russia resorting to nukes along the way. Nobody anywhere believes we can unseat the criminal regime in Moscow using military force without Russia using nukes along the way.
So which “defeat” are you discussing? Remembering that any “defeat” short of regime change is one that leaves a revanchist imperialist totalitarian in charge of a country surrounded by pipsqueak nations that all used to be under its thumb, and every one of which the Russian regime wants back during its lifetime. And substantially none of which want that treatment visited upon them by the Russian imperialists.
Pipsqueak is very, very relative here and increasingly less the case. So any nation in NATO, including the tiny Baltic states, is NOT a pipsqueak. Russia’s military has not only been shown to be at least partially a paper tiger, but it also has burnt many, many resources that they will be a long time recovering. I was arguing all the way back in 2017 (I think, I ran across that old thread the other day) that Russia was no longer all that relative to NATO and their stock has slid considerably more sense then.
That covers a lot of the European borders. Post-war Ukraine will very likely be in NATO, one way or another. Even if they aren’t, they’re going to be armed to the teeth and relative to Russia no pipsqueak.
So Belarus and Moldova, effectively already client states - agreed, pipsqueaks. Belarus might cause serious indigestion on absorption, but it is impossible to say right now. Moldova is easily grabbed, but as an enclave on the other side of Ukraine it is an uneasy hold.
The Caucasian states, variably pipsqueaks sure, but an order more indigestible than Belarus, aided by inhospitable terrain, ethnic and some religious nationalism. I don’t know just how easy they are for Russia anymore.
The central Asian states are arguably pipsqueakish, but like the Caucasian states x3. Very far away from the Russian center, inhospitable terrain, even more religious nationalism on top of the ethnic nationalism.
I just don’t see much scope for renewed, successful Putinesque empire-building by Russia for another generation. I suspect to a considerable extent they’ve already shot their bolt on this one.
They declared victory and went home. I do hope they will announce that Russia has destroyed all of the Ukrainian nazis and are bringing their victorious troops back to Mother Russia.
There was another element to this: the “nativization” of the combat. Something we did in Vietnam, too:
As well as in our own Iraq and Afghanistan experiments. Train and equip the native friendly forces the best we care to, wish them good luck, and then unass the field.
The Soviets did this in Afghanistan as well.
The applicability to this conflict would be that the Russians might do something to strengthen the separatists in whatever is left of their enclaves, declare victory, and depart the theater.
This feels like a sensible alternative to Ragnarok.
I was meaning them being pushed back beyond the 2014 borders. I don’t know of anyone sane who’d believe that Ukraine has a chance of doing much more than that.
Well, this thread is about whether or not Russia is likely to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. I don’t have a real comment on how we’ll deal with Russia invading its other neighbors other than we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
@Tamarlane: Agree with almost all of what you’ve said, and my disagreements are quibbles. My “pipsqueaks” was meant mostly in terms of geographic depth and economic power. You’re certainly correct that once allied to NATO they pack a much larger bite. Those small states that can’t or won’t are subject to hybrid warfare at the whim of the aggressor.
I agree completely their odds on success with imperialism by force were poor in 2017 (to use your quite reasonable date), have gotten worse since, and are now much worse over the last 14 months. That doesn’t completely rule out them trying something even more ill-starred than this current invasion.
How and when Putinism ends and how imperialist the next group wants to be are very much open questions. I’ve said elsewhere that Russia is a nihilist power now. And has been for centuries. That’s a tough headspace for us in the West to get into.
That’s an interesting insight. It seems to me that nihilist is an adjective that could be used to refer to the Republican party these days. I wonder if that is the source of the rather strange (In my opinion) alliance between certain factions in the Republican party and the Russians.