Agree.
I have always felt the only, maybe, viable use of tactical nukes is a last ditch, purely defensive option. It only happens when the opponent is about to cross your border in force. You warn them. You target only those forces, with the minimum required weapon.
But even that is mostly wishful thinking as to escalation from that point.
In the good old days, the army issued field manuals
with handy graphs and illustrative examples of what yield to set on a backpack nuke to take out this bridge or that dam.
I can’t decide whether that read was grimly fascinating or fascinatingly grim.
My understanding of the first Iraq war was that the US was very ambiguous about our response if they invaded Kuwait. Had Iraq known that we would retaliate, they likely wouldn’t have.
I don’t entertain it as a serious possibility, but I do sometimes wonder if the world would be more peaceful if every country had exactly one nuke.
I suspect that the West’s rather wimpy and lukewarm response to Putin’s “annexation” of Crimea, and virtual non-response to actual Russian troops deploying in support of the separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and thereafter, had a LOT to do with emboldening Putin into thinking that the West would click our tongues and wag our fingers, and maybe levy some economic sanctions without any bite, but that would be it.
Instead, he pushed past whatever invisible line there was, and got surprised by the West’s willingness to supply and arm the Ukrainian forces, as well as share intelligence info from sources they wouldn’t otherwise have access to, such as satellite and signals intelligence.
Russia has stated that it views Ukrainian membership in NATO as an existential threat. True or not, that is the policy of the current Russian government
I agree. Also, the Russian military was just not prepared to conduct this operation. It really was a major screw-up for them, all around.
And NATO is getting very close to stating that it views Russia’s wanton aggression against it’s neighbors as an existential threat.
How so? I don’t think NATO as an entity has really said anything close to that. The leaders of certain nations in the alliance have definitely made statements.
I do not think that is consistent with the actions taken however. Since their response to Ukraine considering it is military conquest and annexation.
Sure they say that it’s an existential threat, but what they’ve been saying for years is that everything that was once Russia, will always be Russia. And anywhere Russians live is also Russia.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/10/europe/russia-putin-empire-restoration-endgame-intl-cmd/index.html
“When he [Peter the Great] founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognized this territory as part of Russia; everyone recognized it as part of Sweden,” Putin said. “However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia’s control. The same is true of the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing.”
Alluding directly to his own invasion of Ukraine, Putin added: “Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well.”
Putin keeps telling the world who he is, with a rare fig leaf here and there. The fact that you chose to look at the fig leaf, and ignore the rest of the statue is your choice.
Back to the point of the thread, which is pretty clear however, is that he feels the threat to any territories he considers his, despite UN resolutions to the contrary, is sufficient to justify retaliation with weapons of mass destruction including tactical nuclear weapons.
The response to which will almost certainly be a literal existential thread to Putin at a minimum, Russia itself most probably, and very possibly the whole damn world sadly.
I don’t have any disagreement with what you said. I have no illusions about Putin. I criticize my own nation because I have a tiny bit of responsibility and control, here.
Sorry, previous post was a reply to you.
Modnote, this is not on topic. Stay on topic.
You literally have your own thread for your questions and statements.
Sorry about that
Bumping this thread to comment that after a brief pause in the nuclear saber rattling, Putin’s at it again.
Since the live updates news feed doesn’t often load properly, I’ll give a quote for context (from 12/7/2022).
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the threat of nuclear war is increasing.
In a meeting at the Kremlin with Russia’s Human Rights Council, Putin said “In terms of the threat of nuclear war, you are right, such threat is increasing. As for the idea that Russia wouldn’t use such weapons first under any circumstances, then it means we wouldn’t be able to be the second to use them either — because the possibility to do so in case of an attack on our territory would be very limited,”
This is still, to be clear, being spoken of as deterrent and retaliatory in nature - to protect Russian soil and assets. I suspect it is a warning to the Ukraine about drone and other attacks on territories within the Russian heartlands. Since so far Putin hasn’t indicated a willingness to use nuclear weapons in the captured territories, I am less worried than when I opened the thread months ago, but I think this is pointing to Putin’s bottom line: anyone’s boots cross over into ‘his’ territory (and I’d bet it includes Crimea) and there will be consequences.
Notice I don’t say ‘the kid gloves come off.’ He’s long since past that despite what some Russian hardliners say.
Well, I would say he is bluffing. But I thought that when his troops were massing on the border back in a February. I was wrong.
There must be plenty around him who are as worried by this as anyone in the West.
Instead of this sabre rattling, he could do something sensible, like organising an effective air defence of his bases. It points to another Russian military weakness. Is this, perhaps, an attempt to cover up this inconvenient truth?
On the other hand there is Ukraine. I am sure they could be persuaded to desist in these drone attacks if they were given the latest anti-missile systems. If, indeed, these were drone attacks.
But is that practical over such a large country with many targets? Indeed, is there an effective protection against supersonic ballistic, as opposed to much slower cruise missiles?
Lots of unknowns….
At the rate they’re expending conventional long-range munitions, at some point they’ll have nothing left with which to threaten Ukrainian infrastructure except their remaining nuclear-armed medium- and long-ranged weapons. And then it comes down to three choices: quit until they can scrounge up more conventional cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, convert some of their medium-ranged nukes to conventional warheads, or just start nuking.
That’s an interesting topic I’d not heard broached recently. Both sides are learning that modern warfare burns up expendables at a very fast rate. Faster than both had assumed.
The Russians will run out before the West does and has far less realistic opportunity for re-supply any time soon once the magazines are empty.
Then what? They’ll have an untouched nuclear arsenal, and a bunch of policemen, border patrol troops and such, and an ammo-less army & air force mostly deployed in or near Ukrainian (i.e. enemy from their POV) territory.
The punditocracy and the think-tanks did a lot of war-theorizing and war-gaming back in the 1970s and 80s about the evolution of WW-III after a putative Soviet / Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg into Europe.
The problem then for NATO was running out of troops, tanks, and ammo. Or running out of room into which to retrograde before their back was to the sea. What then? There were very few answers between “Sue for peace at the present line of advance/retreat” and “Nuke the invaders”.
Part of the big NATO build-up back then was motivated by the desire to create a third option somewhere in the middle between those two different apocalypses.
The shoe now is on the other foot although in each case the Soviets / Russians are the initial aggressors. I have no doubt the US, NATO, and the Russian high command are thinking about all this. A lot. Nobody is real pleased by what their crystal balls and scenario planners are telling them.
And for the crazy values of interesting, we’re certainly in the crazier regions. I am pretty sure that the number of wargames or even thought experiments that included “Russia invades a smaller neighbor, and through incompetence gets in a bad strategic position to where it might actually consider using nuclear weapons in a defensive manner.” are very few.
To quote Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. Unfortunately the going has gotten pretty dang weird, and I fear that most of the folks employed viewing the crystal balls don’t have sufficient depth of weird to turn pro. We’re in what I figure is uncharted territory. Any gaming out of the situation will have to be played by ear.
“Russia” in this case means the Kremlin, which in turn effectively means two parties: Putin, and the rest of the political and military establishment. Presumably while comparatively few people in the latter are going to dare say “хрен тебе” to Putin’s face, they retain enough influence that if they think that using nukes would be a really, really bad idea, whether even Putin would have enough political capital to make it stick is questionable.