There’s no ambiguity in Putin’s policy.
Reminding the world that Russia has a nuclear arsenal isn’t insane in the slightest. It plays well for domestic propaganda, and has had the effect of the West delaying the delivery of ‘escalatory’ weapons of all manner, whether they are actually ‘escalatory’ or not from modern MBTs, IFVs, long range weapons, combat aircraft, cluster munitions, etc., etc., etc. There’s no reason the West couldn’t have started putting those items into the delivery pipeline on Feb 24, 2022, apart from fear of ‘escalating’ what was already an all-out conventional war with a nuclear armed power.
Notably, Putin has not in fact been firing nuclear weapons at NATO countries or submerging the UK and Ireland in a nuclear tsunami or used nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Or was George Bush the Elder insane when he reminded Saddam back in 1991 that the US had nuclear weapons when Saddam was making threats to use chemical weapons against any attempt to liberate Kuwait?
And finally, yes there is no ambiguity in Russian nuclear use policy, but it’s not what you seem to think it is. Nuclear armed nations tend to write defense papers spelling out quite clearly the conditions under which they will consider the use of nuclear weapons an option so as to avoid any confusion. It’s almost cliche at this point, but Perun has a video on that. Section directly discussing Russian nuclear doctrine and declaratory strategy starts at 19:10, video is chaptered.
Threatening to use nukes is not the crazy. Part invading Ukraine under the assumption that his second rate army had an advantage, uniting NATO to work against him, and destroying Russia’s second rate economy is the crazy part. This is a no win situation for Putin and when a crazy dictator puts himself in that position he’s more likely to double down on the crazy and go nuclear. Xi has not made reckless moves like that. He’s dangerous because he’s not crazy, but he’s not going to start a nuclear war in a hissy fit.
Then why did you claim it was?
Yeah, we already dealt with this part as not being batshit insane before you decided him reminding the world he has nukes was what made him insane. See his echo chamber feeding him bad intel that Ukraine would fall in 72 hours, how easily and quickly he had taken Crimea in 2014, how longer wars in Georgia and Chechnya had still given him victory and territorial gains, and how Russia still physically occupies 20% of Ukraine and it looks unlikely at this point that Ukraine is going to be able to drive Russia out.
Again, Putin hasn’t used nuclear weapons. There is no indication that he is going to. A failed invasion of Taiwan by Xi would put Xi in the exact same position you seem to think Putin is in, “more likely to double down on the crazy and go nuclear.”
By your logic, every US president in power during the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan was batshit insane and in the position that they were more likely to double down on the crazy and go nuclear.
Ukraine is in a stalemate. As it stands, Ukraine is losing. Embarrassing reverses and performances by the Russian military don’t undo the fact that they have occupied 1/5 of Ukraine, and a ceasefire in place would mean Ukraine has lost 1/5 of its country.
And since you clearly didn’t watch what Putin and Russia’s nuclear use policy actually is, I’ll have to summarize it for you. There are four conditions under which Russia has stated the use of nuclear weapons is an option in the 2020 document “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence”:
a) arrival of reliable data on a launch of ballistic missiles attacking the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies
- i.e., a nuclear attack against Russia is underway
b) use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction by an adversary against the Russian Federation and/or its allies
- i.e., nuclear weapons or other WMDs have been used against Russia
c) attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions
- i.e. attacks which would blind Russia to the launch of nuclear weapons against it or destroy the command, communications and control structure controlling the release of its own nuclear weapons will be treated as the prelude to a nuclear first strike and Russia will launch its own nukes rather than wait until it has lost the ability to command them.
d) aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the existence of the state is in jeopardy
- i.e. If NATO launches a full-scale invasion of Russia using conventional arms with the goal of conquering Russia, Russia reserves the right to nuclear first use long before NATO tank columns are racing for Moscow.
Notably, none of those conditions are present in Ukraine. Nuclear saber rattling to remind the world that Russia has nuclear weapons costs Russia nothing and isn’t an actual serious threat that they are going to use them.
He’s the most powerful person in his nation. If he’s surrounded by an echo chamber, it’s only because he’s chosen to put himself in that position. Which is, itself, insane.
That’s not a useful definition of insanity. By that definition most dictators and an awful lot of non-dictatorial leaders are insane. And again, expecting Ukraine to fall within 72 hours wasn’t in and of itself a completely insane assessment without the benefit of hindsight. All he had to do in 2014 to conquer Crimea was walk into it.
Additionally, intelligence services and leadership in the West didn’t think the Russian military would perform this poorly before the invasion. Were all the Western leaders and their intelligence services insane for also believing the Russian military was the formidable force it presented itself as rather than the rusted-out hulk of mismanaged corruption that it was concealing from its own leadership through lies and falsified reports?
As a blanket statement, I would say that is true; Russia gains nothing tactically by using nuclear weapons, and it would be a strategic nightmare even if the result wasn’t a massive escalation. Putin can use words to try to intimidate the leaders of NATO nations (or more to the point, the electors who vote for them, which is a problem Putin himself doesn’t have to worry over). However, Russia is coming into a catastrophic demographic collapse, is pouring a majority of its economy into what weapons and materiel it can produce domestically or buy from pariah states like North Korea and Iran, and is run by an aging demagogue who is so used to getting his own way, largely by bullying weak and venal kleptocrats or wink-and-nod poisoning of expatriate dissidents. Russia as currently constituted will likely not exist in two decades, and an even faster, precipitous decline is not unimaginable. It is not a far reach to imagine that if some competitor or nation puts up a direct confrontation which could serious compromise Russian security Putin might feel backed up against a wall and talk himself into a confrontation that no sane person would plan for.
And that is the danger of nuclear weapons in general; not that sensible people will make a conscious decision to use them in full knowledge that retaliation will spell almost certain destruction, but that in the ‘fog of war’ people will get panicked, make errors of interpretation or judgment, and find themselves in a position of having to make a critical decision of whether and how much to launch with insufficient information. This happens so frequently in strategic wargaming scenarios that many experts doubt the entire basis of strategic deterrence in a multi-polar conflict, or even in a bipolar conflict one where their is a perceived weakness or lack of parity on one side.
This isn’t a reason to not support Ukraine or even hedge in Russia from making further advances elsewhere. But even something that starts off as bluster doesn’t mean that the bloviating bully won’t work himself into a genuine frenzy where he is convinced of a singular option regardless of how bad, and the fact that Russia has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons (although in a largely unknown state of maintenance) is part of the calculus in assessing how to deal with Putin.
Stranger
I thought you understood the issue so didn’t elaborate further.
Yes, I understand the issue. What isn’t clear is if you do. You’ve gone from claiming nuclear threats are what makes Putin batshit insane and Xi sane when shown that the invasion of Ukraine wasn’t batshit insane to now claiming the invasion of Ukraine was batshit insane when shown nuclear threats aren’t batshit insane. The invasion of Ukraine was morally reprehensible, and with the advantage of hindsight foolhardy, but it was by no means batshit insane. Again, no one in the Western intelligence community, military community, or leadership predicted that the Russian military would be as incompetent and hollow of a force as it turned out to be before the invasion. If Putin not knowing this is evidence of him being batshit insane, how is it not also evidence that the entire Western military, intelligence and leadership community is batshit insane?
And for the record, this:
Isn’t even true. Let’s look at what Putin actually said:
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened, issuing another blunt warning to the West just days before an election in which he’s all but certain to secure another six-year term.
Putin’s comments appeared to be a message to the West that he’s prepared to use all means to protect his gains in Ukraine. He said that in line with the country’s security doctrine, Moscow is ready to use nuclear weapons in case of a threat to “the existence of the Russian state, our sovereignty and independence.
“All that is written in our strategy, we haven’t changed it,” he said.
That is explicitly case d) above from the 2020 “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence”, to reiterate:
d) aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the existence of the state is in jeopardy
- i.e. If NATO launches a full-scale invasion of Russia using conventional arms with the goal of conquering Russia, Russia reserves the right to nuclear first use long before NATO tank columns are racing for Moscow.
In other words, what he said was a big nothingburger that the media chose to blow out of proportion because it sells more papers. All of the calls and threats to nuke Washington DC, Paris, or to submerge the UK in a nuclear tsunami have come from Russian state-run news propaganda commentators, not from official Russian governmental figures.
I think people are using “crazy” and “insane” in different senses here, and so there’s a lot of talking past each other.
Strategically, Putin has often been very shrewd, and continues to be. But not always, and of course overall the invasion of Ukraine has been a monumentally stupid move. The proxy-war, plus seizure of Crimea, was win-win for him, he didn’t need to do anything.
Sure he got bad advice but if that excuses a world leader then consider them all excused.
If we’re using crazy in the sense of aggressive, or volatile, I think Putin gets the win again. We only mention Taiwan and Ukraine in the same breath, because China is an adversary of the US right now so they get brought together, like a new “axis of evil”.
Russia has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians and caused ~$150 billion of damage, and prior to that was fighting a proxy war and seized a big chunk of Ukrainian territory.
Meanwhile China’s…rhetoric…has changed slightly from past decades…or has it? Not all analysts even agree if the current saber-rattling is substantively different.
Spot the difference.
But yeah, when we’re talking about, say, threatening the use of nuclear weapons, the word “crazy” might mean either or both of these meanings.
I have a suspicion that this clearing of longer-ranged weapon use is more intended to be something of a disruptor and to allow the Ukrainians to level the playing field a bit by both hitting into Russia with all the public opinion hits that’ll cause, as well as letting them hit the Russian logistical system further away where it’s potentially more concentrated and vulnerable. And in the process, causing the Russians to disperse it, take different routes, etc… all causing more inefficiency and stuff along those lines that will likely degrade their effectiveness on the battlefield.
I feel like this is also Biden, et al. trying to call Putin’s bluff to some degree- wasn’t there some Baghdad Bob style statement about how Ukrainian use of these sorts of weapons against targets in Russia would result in dire consequences? I think this is meant as a “What are ya gonna do 'bout it?” sort of move.
China has a ‘no first use’ nuclear policy where they’ve agreed to only use nuclear weapons in retaliation for an initial nuclear strike against them. This means China wouldn’t use nukes unless the US used them first.