Still, if we rein this free-running panic fest back to the original hypotheticals:
A Wagner (not Russian, not Belarusian, just Wagner) incursion on NATO territory would be obliterated on the NATO side of the frontier, presumably down to the last mercenary and vehicle. Wagner long-range strikes from over the border (artillery, etc.) would probably be countered in kind (if possible to do with minimum collateral damage) or tolerated and defended directly (like air defense systems). Plus lots of diplomacy with the hosting neighbors, to the effect of “leash your dog or else.”
I’m pretty sure NATO’s response will not involve a counter-incursion unless the actual armed forces of the neighboring nation are explicitly involved.
According to orthodox nuclear MAD strategy, no side can strike first with nuclear weapons, for obvious reasons, so we can rule out that scenario, at least.
I completely agree. It is unlikely they’ll stop at just one, and even if we don’t have a nuclear response after the first, the probability will definitely go up at n+1.
Immediate surrender (or cessation of hostilities) may be the appropriate response to prevent nuclear apocalypse. I know that get people upset, “we lose!?” “We just let them get away with it!?” Yeah, maybe. Will that embolden the next nuclear state who wants to misbehave? Definitely. But if the choice is make China think they can get away with invading Taiwan, or make China try to survive with the rest of us in a world full of nuclear fallout, Taiwan may be done for.
As for the OP, I agree that an immediate and strong response by NATO would be required. The named countries may even have the ability to repel a small attack without any NATO assistance. To me, the purpose of any response should be to contain and limit the conflict as much as possible, so that it doesn’t expand into one of the horror scenarios. Perhaps accept the fiction that it was an unauthorized action by rogue elements.
It doesn’t even need to be the “next” nuclear state. If Russia successfully conquers land by using a nuke, they’ll follow by conquering more land by using more nukes. And it wouldn’t be just Taiwan that’d be done for; it’d be all of Eurasia.
As I understand it, Wagner has no airpower and precious little air defense. So it would be about half an hour of Reaper drone controllers and F-35 pilots having the time of their lives, maybe a few AC-130s going Call of Duty on Pigozhin. Wouldn’t be fun to be the cleanup/hazmat crew tasked with the remains afterwards though.
I think he’s irrational, but not in that way. His irrationality seems to be that he is assuming that NATO is a lot weaker than it actually is. He probably his this idea in his head that his forces would take large swathes of land initially. Then NATO forces, once organized, would end up trying to take back territory meter by meter, the way Ukraine is currently doing, and exhausting themselves in the process. If he genuinely believes that, then an attack might make sense, at least from Putin’s perspective. Not that it would actually make sense to someone looking at things rationally.
The worse case scenario is not a Russian limited nuclear attack against Ukraine. The worse case scenario is a Russian general nuclear attack against the United States and its allies. If the United States launches a conventional attack against Russia in response to the first, the Russians may respond with the second.
I don’t think this is correct. I believe the MAD doctrine was that the United States would respond with a general nuclear attack against the Soviet Union (or other nuclear states) if a nuclear attack was made against the United States or an ally. So hypothetically, Russia could use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine without provoking an American nuclear counter-attack.
I believe this has been Putin’s argument. He has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine but wants the use of nuclear weapons to be limited to that. He wants to prevent an American nuclear attack against Russia in response to a Russian nuclear attack against Ukraine. In diplomatic terms, he’s trying to de-link attacks against non-nuclear powers from attacks against nuclear powers.
What can I say. I don’t agree. I don’t think the conventional belief in government circles is that a general nuclear war is inevitable once any nuclear weapon is used. There have been plenty of government and military figures who have argued otherwise so there’s certainly no consensus agreeing to this.
IMO anyone who sincerely believes that Russia can initiate a nuclear strike of any magnitude in the Ukraine without a nuclear response is kidding themselves. That includes the Russian and US leadership. There’s only two possible responses to Russia using a nuclear strike in the Ukraine - either we respond in kind, which will either escalate into a general nuclear exchange or result in an immediate actual Russian coup to remove Putin and prevent a general nuclear exchange. Or we respond with a massive conventional strike on Russia to immediately decapitate the Russian MOD before they can get off another nuclear shot to defend themselves, because that’s exactly what their military doctrine will call for. Which takes us right to scenario one. And we’re not going to allow Russia to shoot off a second or a third “limited tactical” nuclear strike without responding in kind, because if we did, there’s no point in having a nuclear arsenal.
My analysis (simplistic as it was) was based on Poland/Lithuania/Latvia being a formal US ally (and the Soviet Union vs NATO is a pretty classical scenario for escalation to Global Thermonuclear War). You are correct that MAD does not say anything about Russia nuking Ukraine.
Some would argue that the point of having a nuclear arsenal is to protect your own country and its allies from attack, not to defend every country in the world.
This is not a new debate. Back in 1991, when the United States was deciding how to respond to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq. So the American government had conceded the point that the use of nuclear weapons is not automatically sufficient cause for other countries to use their own nuclear weapons. We can’t claim that we’re allowed to use nuclear weapons but other countries can’t.
So nuclear weapons become like other weapons. Their use is controlled by whether a country thinks it can get away with using them. Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine both in order to see if he can push Ukraine into making concessions and also to see what the United States says about the possibility.
