But what would Putin get by using nuclear weapons? What would the upside be for him? A quicker death?
If we asume his actions are irrational, then there is no point in wondering what would happen if this or that: irrational means we don’t know and cannot figure out. Should he really convince us that he is irrational the only rational thing to do would be to pre-emptively nuke him before he nukes us. Should that be his objective then yes, he would indeed be irrational. In which case we would have to nuke him faster, QED.
I see no way this takes a turn to his advantage.
He is nuts, three fries short of a happy meal. No one wins a nuclear war, we all lose. Attacking Russia might give him support from the Russian Federation, who would otherwise consider it a Bad Idea.
The Russians would quickly take the Suwałki Gap. That creates a land bridge from Belarus and Kaliningrad. It also cuts off the Baltic States and making NATO supply and support almost impossible.
Its similar to the Crimea land bridge the Russians established with the Ukraine invasion.
Russia has built a formidable military presence in Kaliningrad, spanning nuclear weapons, its Baltic fleet and tens of thousands of soldiers.
It’s actually quite possible much of the Russian empire could be rebuilt. NATO has many vulnerabilities in that area.
Link https://www.politico.eu/article/suwalki-gap-russia-war-nato-lithuania-poland-border/
The Russians can’t project power into Ukraine. There’s no way they could project power into NATO territory.
Any incursion into Poland would likely be relatively brief with Russian forces being brutalized. And I’m deliberately calling them Russian forces because Wagner does not act independently. The Russian military can’t even run a successful campaign against Ukraine, what chance do they have against NATO?
Why open a second (or third or fourth) front against even more opponents when you are having logistical and operational issues already?
But anyway, any incursion remotely likely to work would require an obvious build up of material and forces that somehow aren’t already being used for Ukraine. A build up we’d see coming for weeks along the lines of what we saw ahead of the invasion of Ukraine.
More or less the same point as stated repeatedly above - any sort of invasion that is both powerful enough to be effective yet small enough to escape detection beforehand would be self-contradictory. And counterproductive. It’s one thing if Russia had infinite troops and excellent logistics. But splitting attention and material between a new invasion and Ukraine is insanity.
But there wouldn’t be a need to attack anything in Russia (except for maybe Kaliningrad, if Wagner is attacking out of there.) If Wagner masses on Belarusian soil and attacks Poland or the Baltics from there, they could be entirely handled by NATO with maybe, at most, a few strikes on Belarusian soil itself, and of course, mopping them out of NATO territory.
My only disappointment with such a war is that it would be over before my microwave has even finished making my popcorn.
An above post suggests attacking Russian missile sites that fire on NATO troops in Poland.
I’d imagine that if the Russians do that, they’d have to understand that they’re fair game for (conventional) counter-strikes. It would be hard to see the Russians going nuclear over that, any more than NATO would go nuclear if NATO started bombing Kaliningrad from Polish airfields and Russia started hitting those airfields.
We are talking about Putin who seems anxious to prove that he is a tough guy and is apparently not in possession of all his marbles.
I don’t believe this Russian “we might invade the Baltics” stuff is anything more than saber-rattling meant to project a false confidence to compensate for their weakness in Ukraine, and it’s even more obvious now that Russia can’t (and won’t) back it up. It’s almost comical, and it’s definitely pathetic.
If pretending Wagner (and Belarus) are independent agents allows NATO to defend itself while avoiding a direct war with Russia then I’d say the pretense is worth it.
The problem is that it’s also really dangerous. Putin still has control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. If he feels he’s really on the verge of losing everything, he might decide to take the world down with him.
So our best policy is to keep Russia contained but not push so hard we drive Putin to the point of collapse. Our goal should be a return to the pre-2014 status quo. And then we should wait for time to solve the Putin problem.
It’s not like Putin can single-handedly launch nukes from his desk. I doubt the MOD will carry out a spiteful order to launch, and IMO people are overdoing the kid gloves treatment of Putin on this board.
I found a link on Russian launch protocol.
It’s not the kind of thing you want to gamble on.
After all, it’s not like we really gain all that much by forcing Putin out of power. Russia just gets a different dictator.
As @Dorjan says, he needs the General Staff to support him. As long as he thinks they will carry it out, he can order a nuclear strike. Any excuse will be whatever is necessary to get the General Staff on board, and does not have to be true, or convince any of us the response is justified.
I think the big thing he would gain by a limited nuclear response is proving that he is willing to use nuclear weapons, and the General Staff will carry out the strike. NATO is already very wary of a nuclear response, but in the face of the use of Russian nukes how will NATO react given the choices of back off, increase conventional strikes and risk more nuclear responses, or go nuclear?
Many posters on the Ukraine invasion thread are upset at NATO for being afraid of Russian nukes. That fear is kind of the whole point of MAD, and has been the doctrine of East/West relations for the last 75 years.
We might not think it is a good excuse, but all that matters is if Putin and his general staff think it is a good excuse. If Russia played fair and by the rules they wouldn’t be a pariah state.
All of the quick win scenarios assume NATO has total air superiority. Once that happens, I think a Russian/Russia-proxy defeat will quickly follow. I do not know how quickly NATO will be able to achieve air superiority. Destruction of fixed air defense systems could happen in the first few minutes, but mobile systems and MANPADS will continue to be a threat.
An invasion by any Russian/Russia-proxy group without air support is suicide, and the only thing holding back a NATO response more significant than just destruction of the invaders is fear of a Russian nuclear response.
The best outcome of an invasion would be that maybe it would move China and India to join the sanctions.
We talked about this in another thread last year, and I made the point: The whole reason we’re leery of direct conventional strikes on Russia itself is that we don’t want to provoke a nuclear response, even a small one.
But if Russia has already used a nuclear weapon, that concern is now moot. The worst case scenario is already happening. So there’s no reason not to launch a full-scale, conventional attack, while being ready to respond with nuclear weapons as well. At that point, our only hope of avoiding a nuclear holocaust is wiping out Russia’s current leadership before they go full nuclear.
I’m not talking about Russia having already launched a full scale nuclear attack, but maybe a nuclear strike on a carrier group in the North Sea, or something else that was pretty limited. Things can get much worse from there.
A full scale conventional follow up will probably bring more nuclear responses, so do we do that? There is a big difference in the survivability between a few small nuclear attacks in Europe, and global thermonuclear war.
Except using a nuke is a bright line, and using that first one is a lot harder than using the second, or the tenth, or the hundredth.
And using the second one is even easier if they start thinking, “Okay, we nuked them, and yet, we’re still here…”
It’s been widely understood for decades that the first use of nuclear weapons will almost certainly end up in a full-scale nuclear war. Once that first one goes off, we’re going to be left scrambling to do whatever it takes to prevent that second one. Other than immediate surrender, what could we do to prevent a second nuke?
I’m not under any illusions that we’ll have good odds at stopping a full-scale nuclear war at that point. My point is, a full-scale conventional assault is the only thing that gives us any chance of avoiding the full-scale nuclear war, unless we’re willing to just surrender, as slim as that chance might be.
If we’re not willing to do this, we might as well just surrender now, and avoid the stress.