The 1001st nuclear strategy thread

Great Debates
1

Because I don’t have enough problems in my life, I like to terrify myself with the latest nuclear annihilation scenarios. Here is a recent and impressive sample of the genre.

In the event of a crisis, I’ve no doubt Russia wouldn’t hesitate to adopt “nuclear de-escalation” now that the US has publicly disavowed this strategy (meaning, use small nukes first to demonstrate that you’re serious).

The question: I’m sure Russia would love to control Eastern Europe and the Baltics again, and I could see them pursuing a quasi-war to this end in the Ukranian style, but in an international crisis involving Syria or some other overseas territory, is it really in their interest to invade Riga, occupy Poland or pre-emptively nuke Brussels? To me this seems like Fulda-Gap style thinking that went out of style in the Cold War.

2

I don’t see how any factual answer to this is possible. Was this meant for IMHO or GD?

3

Moderator Action

Since a factual answer seems unlikely, let’s give this a shot in GD.

Moving thread from General Questions to Great Debates.

4

TL;DW

I’m afraid you’re going to have to build your own bomb if you want nuclear annihilation. I can’t imagine Russia lighting them things off in Europe.

5

Well, there’s an idk, a move, and another idk. Wouldn’t object if someone walked through an actual scenario.

6

During the Crimea crisis, Russia let it be known that they could use nukes if NATO was tempted by interventionism.

7

If anyone is likely to use nukes in Europe its NATO; to protect the currently indefensible Baltic s and Poland East of the Vistula.

8

Anyone using nukes except in response to a nuclear strike will become an international pariah with instant mega-sanctions and, likely, no more trade at all. I don’t think Russia is dumb enough to do this.

9

:dubious:
Worrying about sanctions and trade embargos after a nuclear strike is like worrying about migraines after a bullet to the head.

10

Fair enough.

11

I’ve read the OP a couple times and I don’t understand what you’re asking. Are they going to invade the Baltics? Nuke Brussels because Aleppo? Rebuild the Berlin Wall?

If you could rephrase the question, I’d be happy to share opinions.

12

Those countries are part of NATO, so if Russia was tempted to try and take those back they know it would be a full on war up to and including nuclear weapons. In any such war, while Europe and the US would certainly take it on the chin, Russia would be essentially annihilated. That’s definitely not in their interests and I doubt they would be crazy enough to push things to that point

13

I think the most likely theater for nuclear attacks is North Korea. But not very likely. Their leadership is not crazy enough to start a nuclear war, because they know it’ll end in their own deaths (killed by military action, or by their own citizens, or by international tribunal). But, if their back is against the wall and they realize their end is near, they may lash out with a nuclear attack and orders might be carried out. And once North Korea attacks someone with nukes, you can be sure that their remaining nuclear capability will be neutralized by nuclear strikes.

The triggering scenario could be an internal revolt or an invasion, most likely South Korea (with or without American help) or China (who might decide an obedient puppet is preferable to a rabid puppy).

There’s also a non-zero chance that India and Pakistan might have a nuclear exchange. I’m not very familiar with that theater, but my impression is that is not very likely either.

14

That’s the basic question, but I’ll be happy to try to rephrase for clarity.

Is there, or has there even been a conceivable international crisis scenario where Russia would find it equally necessary to invade Europe AND release nuclear weapons? It seems like we tend to imagine the first step as them taking back some coveted European territory, but intuitively it seems like such gains would be extremely short-lived.

15

My guess is the most likely use of a nuclear weapon would be by a terrorist organization rather than a nation. A non-national nuclear attack would be much more difficult to retaliate against.

The second most likely nuclear attack (in my opinion) would be an orbital explosion. It would be designed to attack a nation’s C3 grid by an EMP. It would cause a large amount of damage but it wouldn’t directly kill anyone so retaliation against conventional targets would be questionable. There would undoubtedly be an orbital counter-attack to knock out the opponent’s C3 grid but some countries might figure this was an acceptable exchange.

16

It depends on what part of Europe we’re talking about. Obviously Russia is willing to invade some European countries; they invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.

But the parts of Europe that are covered by NATO? I don’t see it happening.

17

I suppose if NATO attacked Russia they might consider it, though that seems unlikely in the extreme. I don’t see Russia pushing the nuclear button for any reason short of a direct attack on their territory, though. I could see a scenario where Russia invaded western Ukraine under some pretext and NATO somehow got involved (or maybe individual nations…the US perhaps, and maybe some of the eastern European nations like Poland), and Russia gets hammered and resorts to limited nuclear strikes in the Ukraine initially but they get out of hand…

But it’s pretty far fetched and unlikely. I certainly don’t see Russia actually attacking any of the NATO nations, even the former Soviet nations who are now in NATO, since that would bring on a general war that the Russia of today would have no chance of winning, conventionally, and would be ruinous if they went nuclear. One thing you might not be factoring in here is that the Russian nuclear stockpile isn’t a known quantity from a usage standpoint. No one, even the Russians, know exactly how reliable (or unreliable) it is these days. Much of it is just old Soviet era weapons and systems, with a lot of it having gone years without proper maintenance and testing. The Russians are only getting around to a new (limited) main battle tank design, and their nukes are pretty far down on the list of things they have money for.

18

Oh, I don’t think that there’s any doubt whatsoever of that: Russia does not view large-scale conventional war as being in any way incompatible with use of nuclear weapons.

Russian nuclear weapons doctrine is evolving at a pretty rapid rate, but here’s one example of how its view of tactical nuclear weapons has changed over the years:
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_05/dc3ma00

Fundamentally, Russia has little confidence in its conventional forces, especially as the United States has made very sizable technology advances over a considerable range of weapons over the past 25 years or so. In contrast, Russia can really only afford to pick and choose which military capabilities to modernize. So right now you see them making significant investments in strategic weapons, continuing efforts to make pretty good 4th generation fighters, etc… while advanced capabilities like 5th generation stealthy airplanes is probably a disaster. Anyway, the question isn’t really whether Russia would use nuclear weapons in a large conventional conflict, it’s probably more correctly focused on the circumstances at which they felt it was necessary, and I think its fair to say there’s ambiguity on that precise point.

But overall, Russia seems to be moving towards a military doctrine that will make the West question whether war is actually occurring at all, as opposed to launching nukes and rolling in the tanks. So, like Ukraine, conducting an attack that is implausibly deniable would probably be how a war in Europe would begin. And should NATO react strongly to a fictional uprising of poor oppressed Russians living in, say, Oslo? Well, that NATO reaction might give Russia the case that the big bad West started a huge war and Russia just needs to defend itself… and who knows where that would lead.

19

The most likely cause of a nuclear exchange between the west and Russia will be a case of mistaken intentions, like the Able Archer incident, or the Stanislav Petrov false alarm. If you believe that you are going to be the target of a nuclear first strike, the incentive to strike first yourself is extremely high. If you firmly believed that you would be under attack tomorrow, you would be compelled to strike today.

Or if you felt you were already under attack, you would only have minutes to decide whether or not to launch a massive counterattack. ICBMs can take 20-30 minutes to go halfway around the world, but a stealthy bomber strike or sub-based attack could potentially shorten that significantly. You would have literally minutes to decide whether the signs of an incoming attack were legitimate and how to respond. You would hardly have time to contact the appropriate authorities, verify your information, or take any other action at all. You might wake up the president in the middle of the night and tell him he has 3 minutes to decide on potentially ending civilization. Standing idle could lose your ability to launch an effective counterstrike, and there’s a strong incentive to launch as soon as you believe it’s likely you’re under attack. Launch on warning has more or less officially been the policy of the US and Russia for decades.

The tensions between Russia and the west make some sort of misunderstanding more likely. When hostilities are high, you are more likely to interpret ambiguous data as hostile. You’re looking for reasons to suspect enemy hostility or attack. People seem to think that the threat of nuclear annihilation vanished at the end of the cold war, but we’ve still got thousands of warheads ready to go at a few minutes notice. Tensions have been as low as they have been because we settled into a stable situation. But the west’s encroachment into Russia’s sphere of influence after the cold war has been threatning to them. Russia’s historical need for a buffer zone comes from a deeply embedded cultural fear of foreign invasion, since they’ve almost been destroyed that way many times throughout history. The US exploited the waning of Russia’s global influence after the fall of the Soviet Union by encroaching upon and influencing what has traditionally been a Russian buffer zone. And because of this, we’re now obligated to annihilate civilizations for the sake of places like Estonia or Latvia just as we would be for somewhere like France or Great Britain. We’ve taken on obligations and liabilities and increased tension for no real benefit other than that the people who were coming into power during the cold war got to stick it to those Ruskies after it ended. Imagine how we’d feel if we lost the cold war, and Russia was the world’s only superpower, and they convinced Mexico to join the Warsaw Pact. Now that Putin is in power and Russia is regaining some of its military power, economic power, and international influence, they’re pushing back against these encroachments and we face the highest likelihood of war that we’ve faced in 25 years.

The development of ballistic missile defense systems and arms reduction treaties also increases the likelihood of a nuclear exchange. It may sound counterintuitive, but imagine if there were two hostile powers who weren’t at war but tensions were high. Each of them has one nuclear bomb, and has a good idea where the other side stores their nuke. They would both be compelled to race to launch at each other in the hopes that they could take out the other side’s nuke. Whereas if each side had a thousand nukes with survivable delivery systems, there would be an extreme disincentive for both sides to engage in any sort of strike, fearing that counterattack. MAD works, and it works best if both sides have large arsenals, capable delivery platforms, and survivable platforms for second strike options. It seems paradoxical but the more heavily armed the the two sides are, the stronger the disincentive to ever go to war in the first place, even if a war would be more destructive in the unlikely event that it happened.

The more likely your first strike is to disable the enemy’s ability to strike you back, the more incentivized you are in making such a strike. Having few warheads, poor delivery platforms, or platforms with low survivability makes an exchange more likely for that reason. So on the opposite side, having many warheads with survivable platforms makes an exchange less likely. We’ve been reducing the number of total warheads and active warheads since the end of the cold war, which creates a situation in which a counterforce strike becomes more viable. The fewer nukes each side has, the more winnable (or managable) a nuclear war seems.

If one side developed an effective ballistic missile shield, it would have the ability to strike at its enemies with relative impunity, which greatly upsets the balance of power. As such, if that power were in the process of developing and deploying that effective missile shield, the other side would have an incentive to attempt to strike before it was ready, since they would otherwise potentially lose the ability to strike at that power at all, leaving them in an extremely vulnerable position. Fortunately along these lines the development of anti-ballistic missiles is extremely difficult and as such the systems on either side are only effective - if at all - against a limited arsenal. But as they improve they continue to destabilize the situation. There’s a reason we created an anti-ballistic missile treaty in the first place. Just like bans on space-borne weaponry, it had a stabilizing effect on the situation and lowered tensions. But pulling out of it is another move that increases tension between Russia and the west.

It’s extremely unlikely either side would simply decide one day to attack the others with nukes - the cost on both sides is simply too high. But as tensions raise, each side becomes more paranoid and more convinced that they’re the ones that are going to be under attack. I think it’s extremely likely that if such an exchange occured, it would be because one side or the other felt like they were in imminent danger, rather than a deliberate plan on their part to be the aggressor. But we’re on a path to reigniting those tensions so that one false step or one misunderstanding could lead to the greatest tragedy the human race has ever seen.

20

Don’t worry, Commodore; the Bedford will never fire first. But if he fires one, I’ll fire one.