UPDATED: Putin's escalation and the response of the West

Part One

In response to Putin’s nuclear threats, tell the world what various nuclear exchanges would look like, in detail

Adapted from The Trenchant Observer, September 21, 2022¹

Dispatches

1) Christopher S Chivvis, “Yes, Putin might use nuclear weapons. We need to plan for scenarios where he does; Putin’s saber-rattling doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll deploy nukes. But he certainly could,” The Guardian, September 23, 2022 (12:30 p.m. EDT);

2) Peggy Noonan, “It’s a Mistake to Shrug Off Putin’s Threats; As we saw before World War I, it’s easy to become complacent as trouble builds into catastrophe,” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2022 (6:47 pm ET);

Analysis

Vladimir Putin is making nuclear threats again, seeking to scare Joe Biden and the West with his theats of World War III.²

It has worked for him in the past “If you oppose me, One, Two, Three, World War III.³

While Biden may still be influenced by these threats, there has been a stiffening of positions in the U.S. government, which has allowed close intelligence cooperation with Ukraine and the supply of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, together with authorization to strike targets in any Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine, including the Crimea.

The U.S. and the West are still withholding battle tanks, fighter aircraft, and the most advanced artillery shells for the HIMARS artillery units, which have a range of 180 miles or 300 kilometers.

Putin’s nuclear threats are obviously aimed at scaring Biden and the West so that they do not provide these weapons.

Putin’s latest ploy is to put on sham referendums in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions requesting annexation by Russia. This is the playbook followed in the Crimea, which Russia annexed in March 2014.

As part of Putin’s current round of escalation, he has also ordered a partial mobilization and an increase in war production of munitions.

His nuclear threats come in this context.

Russian nuclear doctrine provides that nuclear weapons should only be used in the case of nuclear or related attack, or in a case of “aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the State is threatened.”

But despite this Russian nuclear doctrine, Peggy Noonan reports⁴ that Putin declared in his speech on Wednesday, September 21 the following:

Mr. Putin said: “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.” He announced referendums in occupied areas that will presumably result in declarations that they are Russian territory. Ukraine’s attempts to push back Russian troops can then be defined as an invasion of Russia, which Mr. Putin must defend by any and all means.

This statement by Putin appears to go beyond the existing Russian nuclear doctrine.

With the annexation of these provinces (oblasts) or regions in Ukraine, Putin clearly hopes to increase Western fears of nuclear war.

As part of a well-choreographed campaign to instill fear of “World War III” in the hearts of Joe Biden and other Western leaders (e.g., Olaf Scholz), Russian media figures and Duma (parliament) representatives have been calling on Putin to use nuclear weapons. The most extreme of these Putin provocateurs have even called on Putin to launch a nuclear strike on London.

Biden, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, pointed out that no one could win a nuclear war.

To effectively counter and neutralize Putin’s threats, the U.S. and Western countries should now gear up their public diplomacy and explain publicly, and particularly to the population of Russia, just what a nuclear exchange would look like.

While Western leaders may be concerned about panicking their own populations, Putin’s threats have reached the point where this risk must be taken. Moreover, such explanations could have the salutary effect of bringing home to domestic populations just how serious the confrontation with Russia in Ukraine really is. This could help shore up support for Ukraine in Europe where some countries may experience a very cold winter.

What type of public diplomacy programs are needed?

Films and simulations showing the effects of nuclear explosions on cities like Moscow and London should be shown, together with footage on the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Various scenarios should be shown, including the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon in or near Ukraine and a  NATO response with conventional forces against Russian forces in and near Ukraine.

Different escalation scenarios should be depicted, including escalation from use of a tactical nuclear weapon to a strike on a major city, e.g., London or Washington, and the likely retaliatory strike on Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Possibilities of limited nuclear exchange to two cities should be discussed, together with the safeguards (if any) that might prevent such an exchange from escalating to a large-scale nuclear war.

The details should be spelled out.

Many of the films and simulations of such events already exist. They should be shown immediately, while more tailored presentations are being prepared.

Such public diplomacy should deprive Putin from any domestic benefit he might get from making nuclear threats, and stop such ridiculous provocations as calling on Putin to make a nuclear strike on London.

How should this material be delivered?

First, government public diplomacy officials can make material available to private TV networks and news channels in the U.S. and abroad for their use in developing their own programs.

Second, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty can publish these materials on their websites, and in programs provided to other broadcasters in countries outside the United States.

Finally, RFE/RL and other government stations can broadcast this material directly to listeners in Russia and other countries. For Russia, they can be published and made available on the websties of the Russian Service of the Voice of America, for example.

Shortwave broadcasting to Russia and other countries was stopped in 2008, when everyone thought the Internet was the best medium to use. We now know that Internet sites within countries like Russia can be easily blocked, and that Internet users who access such sites can be tracked down by Russian officials.

It is widely believed that the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) will allow users to go undetected, and that messages on encrypted channels like Telegram cannot be intercepted. Whether this remains to be true is unknown.

In any event, we have recommended that shortwave broadcasts to Russia and other autocratic countries be resumed. This is one method of transmission the Russians can’t block, except through jamming. The U.S. has a lot of experience overcoming jamming. Use of satellite Internet service such as Elon Musk’s Starlink service would expose users to detection one way or another, including due to the satellite antenna required. Shortwave listening, on the other hand, leaves no tracks, and a small radio can be easily concealed.

We have to recognize that with Russia we are dealing with an autocratic state which is fast becoming totalitarian, again. We need to use every method we have to punch our news and messages through a new electronic curtain.⁵

Nuclear Decisions Advisory Group

One other step could help deter Putin from threatening or using nuclear weapons.

Biden should form a small “Nuclear Decisions Advisory Group” which would be involved in making any decisions to respond to the use of nuclear weapons. Biden should bring in a small group of 6-12 of the most seasoned current and former defense and diplomatic officials to become intimately involved in the taking of these decisions. People like Bob Gates and Leon Panetta.

The formation of such a “Nuclear Decisions Advisory Group” could go a long way toward disabusing Putin of any misconceptions he might have about Joe Biden and his foreign policy team and the nature of the U.S. and NATO response to any use by him of nuclear weapons, even tactical nuclear weapons.

1. See “Ukraine War, September 21, 2022: In response to Putin's nuclear threats, tell the world what various nuclear exchanges would look like, in detail,” The Trenchant Observer, September 21, 2022.

2. See “Ukraine War, September 22, 2022: Putin's threats, Russian nuclear doctrine, and the risks of nuclear conflict,” The Trenchant Observer, September 22, 2022 , and the articles cited ther

3. See “Ukraine War, March 11, 2022 (II): Putin's brilliant success in implanting fear in Joe Biden's mind--’If you fight me, One, Two, Three, World War III,’” The Trenchant Observer, March 11, 2022.

4. “Peggy Noonan, “It’s a Mistake to Shrug Off Putin’s Threats; As we saw before World War I, it’s easy to become complacent as trouble builds into catastrophe,” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2022 (6:47 pm ET).

5. See “Ukraine War, February 26, 2022: The current fighting; Playing "the China card"--again; Voice of America Russian-language short-wave broadcasts to Russia,” The Trenchant Observer, February 26, 2022.

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Part Two

Putin's escalation, Russian nuclear doctrine, and the response of the West

Adapted from The Trenchant Observer, September 23, 2022

Dispatches

1) Fareed Zakaria, “Putin has just made the world a far more dangerous place,” Washington Post, September 22, 2022 (7:02 p.m. EDT).

Analysis

It is perhaps just another case of Children Editors being allowed to select the articles to display in the digital edition of papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Today, the Children Editors have removed Fareed Zacharia’s chilling column about the risks of nuclear war from the Opinions that display on the digital edition. Zacharia is one of the leading foreign policy commentators in the United States and probably the top opinion writer on foreign affairs at the Washinton Post. His Sunday television program “GPS” is seen by millions of viewers around the world.

See “Update (February 14, 2022): The “Children Editors” at the Washington Post and the New York Times,” The Trenchant Observer, February 14, 2022.

Zacharia warns of the extremely dangerous escalation by Vladimir Putin in the war in Ukraine and the confrontation between the West and Russia.

We are in the first stages of a nuclear showdown between the West and Russia which may turn out to be every bit as grave, and every bit as much of a nail-biter, as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Perhaps the Children Editors don’t display Zacharia’s article prominently because they cannot even imagine the danger we are in and which Zakaria so ably describes.

The nuclear confrontation that has always been implicit in the confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine has now become palpable, a reality which it will be increasingly difficult to avoid.

The choice facing the U.S. and the West is, as it has always been, whether to capitulate to Putin’s nuclear threats or to try to manage the confrontation.

Andrea Rizzi of El País reports that Russian nuclear doctrine establishes the circumstances in which nuclear weapons may be used, as follows:

Revised Google translation from Spanish

Although only Putin has the answer, it is useful to point out what the president's executive order, entitled "Basic principles of the State policy of the Russian Federation on nuclear deterrence", of June 2020, provides. Article 19 of the document establishes four conditions that allow the use of nuclear weapons:

a) Arrival of reliable data on the launch of ballistic missiles against the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies.

b) Use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction by an adversary against the Russian Federation and/or its allies.

c) Attack by an adversary against critical military or government facilities of the Russian Federation and whose disruption would undermine the capacity for nuclear response action.

d) Aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the State is threatened.

Only (d) could be invoked in the case of Ukraine.

However, it would be a stretch to argue that Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces in the Donbas, the Kherson region, the Crimea, or even targets in Russia proper from which missiles were being launched at Ukrainian cities “threatened…the very existence of the State”

Russia would also have to categorize Ukrainian actions taken in self-defense (under international law) as “aggression”, though it appears that with Putin’s inverted legal thinking the Russian leader would have no trouble in doing so.

Putin, while quite prepared to violate the most fundamental norms of the U.N. Charter and international law, is paradoxically attentive to following the form of the law. This we see in his holding sham referendums in Ukraine asking to be annexed by Russia.

It’s not clear how Putin would square this circle, but he is “creative” and might try to do so. On the positive side, Putin’s formalism might delay or at least give advance warning before he uses even a tactical nuclear weapon.

A triggering event could be the encirclement of the over 20,000 Russian soldiers on the West side of the Dnipo river in the Kherson region, where they are cur off from supply lines and escape routes.

Another triggering event could be the further collapse of Russian forces in the Dunbas region, or even on the Kherson front.

The United States and NATO need to prepare their response to the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon by Russia in Ukraine.

In the meantime, they should continue the delivery of arms and training to Ukraine, and active consideration of supplying longer-range HIMARS artillery shells, battle tanks, and fighter aircraft to Kyiv. To shrink back now under Putin’s nuclear threats would probably only encourage him to make further threats.

If he invaded Estonia under the cover of nuclear threats, the situation would be no different.

The suggestions set forth above are made by someone on the outside, based on publicly available information.

Obviously, only U.S. and NATO decision makers with all of the intelligence information at their disposal can make such fateful decisions.

Now would be a good time to bring in a “Nuclear Decisions Advisory Group”, as we have suggested.