I’ve seen speculation and claims that assessing this question was one of Valeriy Gerasimov’s tasks on his recent short lived appearance in-theatre in Ukraine.
Wishing Mr. Gerasimov a long and eventful recovery as he takes an involuntary holiday from his burdensome responsibilities in hospital.
It’s a hard question to think about, and an even harder one to answer. There are a few possible scenarios here.
If any nuclear weapons are used in a planned fashion (and this is a big if, it’s still unlikely), the exact way that they’ll be used depends on a couple of things, in particular on the objectives that the Kremlin might hope to achieve with them. I’ll outline a couple of possible scenarios and leave it at that. For now, that’s the best I can do.
Scenario 1: Battlefield use for a local tactical advantage.
The Russian military has performed very poorly in this war. There has already been a major front collapse in the North, and the Russian forces in the East have suffered from the same failures of planning, logistics, command and control, discipline, and force integration that were seen elsewhere. Their military is badly hampered by systemic corruption and institutional failures that are ultimately foundational. I’ve talked about this before. This ineptitude is impairing the Russian ability to conduct successful offensives, even in the East.
However, this does not mean that the Russian war effort is completely ineffective, nor does it mean that Russian military doctrine should be totally discounted. There are multiple locations where Russian assaults are posing a very significant threat to Ukrainian forces. In particular, the Ukrainians risk being encircled in a ‘cauldron’ between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk:
If this encircling manoeuvre is successful, then the Russians could conceivably score a very significant victory that would be a serious blow to the Ukrainian defenders.
However, as things stand, offensives to cut off this salient and mount a full encirclement of the defenders have been unsuccessful. This is because of well-consolidated, deep, and effective Ukrainian defences but also for the usual Russian reasons.
I could see a scenario where the Russians use low-yield nuclear weapons to try and breach Ukrainian defences, either to facilitate encirclement at the ‘Donbas cauldron’ or to break through elsewhere on the front.
This is especially possible if the Russians think that there is some stretch of the front where they could destroy significant troop concentrations, then move in and occupy territory that they could not hold otherwise, or where they could break through into the rear of Ukraine’s defensive lines. There is reason to believe they might be considering a move like this.
One thing to remember about the layout and composition of the Russian army, as well as the kind of equipment they field, is that much of it is completely inherited from the Soviet army, which was explicitly built up for the purpose of fighting a nuclear war in Europe. Since some Soviet war-plans were declassified, we now have a fairly good idea of how they intended to use nuclear weapons to break through defensive lines and occupy ground using armoured columns advancing through sites of recent detonation. Given Putin’s well-documented insistence on building up his nuclear forces in recent years, there’s very good reason to believe that Russian modern military organisation still leans very heavily on the nuclear component, both as a relic of former times through equipment and institutional habit and also through explicit policy. The Russian military is, at least in part, a nuclear-reliant force stuck in a conventional war at the moment.
You can see this in the design of some of their older equipment, such as the BMP-1, which has proven to be very vulnerable on the modern battlefield. Like much of the Russian (and Ukrainian too, as a former Warsaw Pact nation) equipment, one of the functions it was designed for was advancing across recently-nuked territory. It is not designed for facing well-integrated defenders using combined arms effectively. Instead, it’s intended more for shielding infantry (somewhat) while traversing irradiated wasteland.
Since Russia is the only former Warsaw Pact nation left that has the option of leaning on its nuclear arsenal, and since the modern Russian military very clearly hoped that they could make up for the shortcomings of their military by investing in nuclear weaponry and threatening nuclear strikes, it is very possible that Russian tactical doctrine and organisation is still frozen in the Soviet era. They may be tempted to turn this war into the kind of nuclear conflict that their armed forces were actually designed for. If they are thinking short-term and stupidly enough (which this entire war suggests they might be), then this could be an attractive option for Russia in the hope that they can secure a battlefield victory.
Drawbacks:
Although people have suggested that the risk of fallout blowing back into Russia might deter the Russians from doing this, the truth is that the radiation hazard probably won’t faze them much. Not only is the likely fallout from a modern tactical nuclear strike much more limited than most people realise, and pales in comparison to the environmental risks that Russia is perfectly happy to expose its citizens to on a regular basis, but it’s clear that the current Russian state is breathtakingly irresponsible around nuclear hazards. We saw what they did at Chernobyl and Zaporizhia.
The real drawback is the NATO military response, which would almost certainly be immediate, intense, but probably conventional in nature. The kind of damage that NATO could do to Russian forces if they began to run military operations in Ukraine would probably negate any tactical advantage Russia could hope to attain by using smaller nukes against the Ukrainians on the battlefield.
So pursuing this strategy would be self-defeating for Russia. Naturally, they might do it anyway.
But there are other uses for nuclear weapons beyond the battlefield as well.
Scenario 2: Use of nuclear weapons on a city or civilian centre.
To understand this scenario, we need to remember that using nuclear weapons is a political act, and that the war is being fought over mainly political and ideological objectives, rather than military ones.
For sure there are ‘military’ or even geopolitical concerns driving the invasion (Russia wants a border running along the Carpathian Mountains to the South, and the Vistula to the North. They want to have control over unexploited Ukrainian hydrocarbons, etc), but ultimately this war is political and ideological. This is very much a struggle over ideas and values. Which is why Russian claims about feeling ‘threatened’ by the geographical position of Ukraine must be taken with a certain grain of salt. This is not mere ‘hard-nosed geopolitics’, this is deeply psychological and sociological as well. Attacking Ukraine was about destroying a nascent liberal democracy in its early phases taking root among a closely-related slavic people.
Empire building is secondary to the fight over values, although both are important to understanding what Russia’s doing right now.
The bottom line is that Putin cannot have a successful democracy on his borders that is composed of ‘brother-slavs’.
Putin is losing this struggle to destroy Ukraine, but the desire to ruin the nation could still drive him to go nuclear.
Nuclear weapons used against Ukraine’s population centres would be the ultimate act of spite. It would change the world utterly, and irreversibly and irredeemably damn Russia for all history. It would be unforgivable, far beyond even the madness that has been unleashed already. But it would unfortunately help Putin achieve his destructive goals. Perhaps he would even consider the inevitable NATO counterstrikes acceptable losses if:
- His nuclear attacks lead to a decapitation of Ukraine, or even a capitulation.
- They are intimidating enough to the West that they back off.
But even if neither of these outcomes were achieved, Putin could still conceivably see it as a victory.
The damage to Ukraine will have been done. Since he thinks like a gangster, this may be enough, even in the face of a general military defeat. As long as he is in charge of his protection racket, and challengers are destroyed, even if only for the crime of living well independently of him, he might consider this kind of nuclear strike to be worthwhile.
The reality is that there is a level at which the Russian propaganda line of Putin feeling threatened by ‘Eastern expansion’ is true. However, the Eastern expansion Putin truly fears is not of NATO, but of Liberal Democracy. He fears that if a people who the Russians think of as ‘little brothers’ grow far more successful and prosperous than the citizens of ‘great Russia’, then his own people will start to get ideas. Russians may come to conclude that a system of gangster-fascism that brings corruption and poverty and is predicated on mystical musings about the ‘Russian soul’ is not so appealing after all. They may look at a prosperous and liberal neighbourly nation, whose people they think (thought) of as brotherly, and ask themselves “why not us?” If there could be a revolution at the Maidan in 2014, then why not one at Red Square in 2024?
This more than anything is what Putin fears. This is why tyrants like him are incentivised to crush democracies on their borders. In the ethnonationalistic ethos of the major 21st century tyrannies, it’s doubly galling and dangerous if such democracies are formed from more or less the ‘same people’ ethnically as themselves. This dynamic also fuels much of the PRC’s aggression towards Taiwan, for example.
Living well is the most dangerous thing democratic people can do when neighbouring a tyrant. It’s an existential terror for autocrats everywhere, which they wrap up in paranoid conspiracy theories about the CIA and ‘colour revolutions’. But the reality is that tyrants fear above all what their own people will do to them, should they reject the tyrant’s proffered deal of reduced freedoms in return for reduced quality of life. They fear the example that a prosperous democratic neighbour provides.
So they will do anything in their power to prevent such a nation from prospering.
Unfortunately, this need to tear down democratic prosperity and break the spirits of free people could cause Putin to do the unthinkable. Such is the nature of the gangster. We’ve even had Putin cheerleaders on Quora call for this very atrocity. It is in the air, and so I cannot discount it as a possibility.
I would say the best way to prevent this scenario is with very clear red lines and credible threats of retaliation from NATO, that would make the consequences of going nuclear so unacceptable to Putin that he would be deterred. Ways of achieving this will be being gamed out and considered right now, and I hope that if necessary, this message will be communicated very clearly to the Russian side.
But Putin might also be tempted to use the nuclear threat more generally, in the hope of attaining greater goals in his wider strategic confrontation with ‘The West’.
Scenario 3: Strategic sabre-rattling. Warning shots in the arctic?
The third scenario for nuclear escalation that I can see right now concerns strategic signalling to NATO to back off, somehow. Perhaps this would be done in the hope that the West will fold and make concessions somewhere.
This could take multiple forms, whether a detonation of a larger device within Ukraine, or perhaps a ‘warning shot’ fired even outside of Ukraine, maybe in the North Sea or in the Arctic north of Scandinavia. The possibility of Finland signing up to NATO later this month will lead to a tense moment. Putin may attempt to escalate in order to terrorise the West in the hope of avoiding such a geopolitical humiliation. I could even potentially see a nuclear detonation within Finland.
Needless to say this would be an insane escalation, but given the increased reliance of Russia’s strategy on nuclear blackmail, I can’t rule it out.
Conclusion:
These are just a few of the scenarios that might lead to nuclear escalation of this conflict, either within Ukraine or elsewhere. I’d like to emphasise again that though they are no longer beyond the realm of possibility like they were just a few months ago, they remain unlikely. It is still more probable that they will not happen. In order to keep that possibility as low as possible, the world must continue to put pressure to disincentivise the regime from taking such monstrous actions, and make clear that they are not worthwhile. This is a tense moment of world history, to be negotiated with eyes wide open and while fully alert.
But equally it’s important to remember that these scenarios are no longer mere fantasy, and must be considered seriously before time, in proportion to their severity.
What a time to be alive.
Slava Ukraini.
Note: Because Quora has now collapsed every single answer I have written so far that contained footnotes as ‘spam’, I am no longer including footnotes in my answers. If you want more reading and clarification on any one issue, let me know in the comments.
Also, I am moving to Medium, where most of my new writings will be posted from now on. Here is one of my latest pieces on Medium, which hasn’t been put on Quora and which is on a similar topic to this answer:
Enjoy!
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