Evaluating the US and NATO’s Response to Russia’s Nuclear Threats During Putin’s War on Ukraine
By Lieutenant Colonel Tristan Stewart, Royal Marines
Lieutenant Colonel Stewart's thesis won the FAO Association writing award at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in 2024. The Journal is pleased to bring you this outstanding scholarship. We bring you this version without research notes because of length restrictions. To see the full thesis with all materials, contact editor@faoa.org
Disclaimer: The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the individual student author and do not necessarily represent the views of either the Marine Corps Command and Staff College or any other governmental agency. References to this study should include the foregoing statement. Quotation from, abstraction from, or reproduction of all or any part of this document is permitted provided proper acknowledgement is made.
Chapter 1 - Introduction
“Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.” --President Putin, 21 February 2022 Public Address
In February 2022, the specter of nuclear conflict reemerged to the European continent. This time, however, states armed with arsenals of nuclear weapons are directly or indirectly involved. President Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling during the war on Ukraine brings the threat of nuclear weapons use and the breaking of a long-held taboo into a plausible reality. Putin’s nuclear threats before and during the conflict – including the thinly veiled words spoken in the epigraph to this introduction – target three strategic objectives: deter external direct military intervention in Ukraine; stop foreign aid and materiel support to Ukraine; and coerce Kyiv into capitulation. As a result of these threats, the United States and NATO must carefully manage nuclear escalation while providing extensive military and economic support to Ukraine. Putin uses nuclear threats as shielding tactics to enable his full-scale invasion, and again when facing temporary military culmination and local battlefield defeats, ushering back in an era where nuclear brinkmanship is a tool of strategic leverage. Russia’s actions prompt critical questions of deterrence efficacy and escalation management during the war in Ukraine. Nuclear shielding tactics are unlikely to remain isolated in this war and will be seen in future international crises involving nuclear states. This paper examines Russia’s nuclear threats in the initial months of the war and analyses the effectiveness of the US and NATO’s actions in deterring nuclear escalation.
The US and NATO have, thus far, effectively deterred Russia from nuclear escalation in Ukraine. This paper examines Russia’s nuclear discourse and the subsequent actions taken by the US and NATO to manage the Kremlin’s strategic objectives for its nuclear rhetoric. The analysis is broken into two discrete time periods: first, the build-up and invasion, followed by Putin’s stalled invasion around April 2022. A brief exploration of deterrence theories and Russia’s nuclear doctrine arms the reader with the theoretical foundations to explain nuclear escalation, its utility in conflict, and how it can be managed to achieve desired ends.
Chapter 2 - Deterrence Theories and Escalation Management
“Anyone who thinks they can control escalation through the use of nuclear weapons is literally playing with fire. Escalation is escalation, and nuclear use would be the ultimate escalation.”--US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, 2015 Congressional Testimony
The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated the value of nuclear deterrence theories in managing escalation. Deterrence theories can help analysts understand the motive, intent, and consequences surrounding risk management in a game of nuclear chess. Today, the US and NATO are engaged in a conflict in which Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons. In managing this situation, nuclear strategy – the operationalization of nuclear deterrence theory through doctrine and capabilities – is being employed by the US and NATO.
The nuclear revolution of the Cold War stimulated considerable academic literature and debate on areas of deterrence and escalation control. Many of the deterrence theories that followed are founded in Thomas Schelling’s 1966 seminal work Arms and Influence. Schelling looks at the use of nuclear weapons as a means of “diplomacy of violence” where “the power to hurt confers bargaining power” and the willingness to exploit it is seen as “vicious diplomacy.” His work, as with much of deterrence theories’ literature, is founded on game theory, which focuses on behavioral change and the “art of manipulating costs and benefits.” Schelling provides a taxonomy that remains the academic standard today; coercion is a definition used to encapsulate deterrence and compellence. Deterrence is defined as a passive act “involving a threat to prevent action by fear of consequences;” compellence is active and “intends to make an adversary do [or stop doing] something.” Lawrence Freedman’s book Deterrence provides a 21st-century exploration of deterrence theories, their origins, and evolution. He uses both constructivist and realist frames of reference, developing a theory of norms-based – as opposed to interest-based – deterrence. Norms surrounding nuclear weapons are prolific, having more
significant influence in shaping and ensuring the relative balance in the nuclear landscape than many of the numerous treaties and laws. Maintaining these norms ensured the relative balance between nuclear powers since the Cold War. This provides some context as to why the testing and challenging of these norms by Putin shakes the once-perceived firm foundation of nuclear deterrence amongst Western powers.
A final yet crucial part of understanding nuclear weapon strategies is the issue of escalation management. Escalation in conflict is the “gradual imposition of increased levels of violence.” The transition from competition to conflict brings escalation pressures as sides seek to gain advantage or stem losses. Escalation can be unilateral or reciprocal, depending on the willingness and capability of each side. Escalation management is the active measures taken to contain conflict and prevent uncontrolled violence. Except in the case of absolute war, wars are fought for limited stakes with mutual benefit to each side limiting the costs. In a conflict involving nuclear-armed states, escalation control is critical. Escalation control – the point at which one side has the “ability to dictate the tempo…and lock adversaries into responding to moves” – is a precarious balance and hard to achieve due to the interactive, dynamic nature of war. Too much violence can push your adversary to overreact – over-escalate in response – or incite international condemnation that can be critical to legitimizing your standing; too little violence and you appear weak, opening a window for a counter-attack or achieving little to no benefit while still incurring a cost. An attempt to understand motives and intent “that drive escalation and the mechanisms through which it manifests” arms actors with the ability to calculate the risk associated with escalation manipulation.
Chapter 3 - Russian Nuclear Doctrine
“Precision of thought and language can matter greatly in compellence, while a degree of vagueness occasionally can be useful for deterrence.” --Tami Biddle, Coercion Theory: A Basic Introduction for Practitioners
Understanding Russia’s nuclear doctrine and escalation control mechanisms generates debate among Western analysts and often returns to questions of first use and escalate to de-escalate. This discussion was deemed important in open-source discussions after February 2022, and while they were purely academic, they were strategically critical at the classified national level. Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of strategic and tactical nuclear warheads combined with the US, owning 90% of the world’s total warheads. In line with the 2022 New START declaration, Russia has 1549 strategic warheads aligned to 540 strategic delivery systems, with a further 1000 to 2000 tactical warheads not limited by the treaty. As the world’s second nuclear state, Russia has a long history of nuclear doctrine that evolved after WWII during the collapse of the Soviet Union and continuing to today’s multipolar landscape. This doctrine differs from the West’s in a number of ways, but most pertinent to this study is how Russia’s nuclear thinking justifies the use of nuclear threats early in a conflict as a means of coercion alongside its conventional military activity.
Russia’s nuclear weapons played an increasingly central role in its security strategy following the end of the Cold War. The explanation for Russia’s growing dependence on nuclear weapons was focused on a requirement to mitigate for a weakened conventional military following the Soviet Union’s collapse, economic constraints, and the exposition of military vulnerabilities during the Chechen and Georgian wars of the 1990s. The Kremlin’s nuclear-use policy underwent four iterations following the end of the Cold War. First, in 1993, the mention of no first use, inherited from the Soviet doctrine was removed, suggesting Russia could react with a nuclear strike to conventional aggression. In 2000, updated military doctrine detailed nuclear weapons use in response to “other weapons of mass destruction and certain types of conventional attacks on its territory,” leaving considerable ambiguity as to what would constitute these attacks. In 2010, further updated doctrine expanded to justify weapons use that included countering attacks against Russia’s allies and threats to “the very existence of the [Russian] state.” This change extended Russia’s nuclear umbrella and continued a language of vagueness that, if harnessed effectively, could slow adversary decision-making through inserting increased elements of the Clausewitzian notions of chance and uncertainty into the nature of war.
In June 2020, Russia released its latest doctrine, On Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence, providing details of four scenarios that could justify nuclear weapons use:
- Arrival of reliable data on a launch of ballistic missiles attacking the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies.
- Use of nuclear weapons or other types of weapons of mass destruction by an adversary against the Russian Federation and/or its allies.
- Attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions.
- Aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.
While this extant doctrine states Russia’s “policy on nuclear deterrence is defensive by nature,” no first-use remains absent, and there remains ambiguity over using nuclear weapons in retaliation to a conventional threat to control escalation. While interpreting this doctrine, it is critical to understand what Putin views as challenges to the existence of the Russian state; whether Putin sees a separation of the Russian state and his regime is particularly pertinent. Analysts broadly agree on this latest doctrine linking “first-use of nuclear weapons to [Russian] sovereignty.” Geographically, then, where would Putin draw the physical and cognitive line as to actions challenging the Russian state, and what does he see as sovereign Russian territory? Looking to the focus of this paper, where do Crimea, the Kerch Bridge, and the Donbas lie in Russia’s perception of sovereignty? A clear understanding of red lines – in Western doctrine – is crucial to effective escalation management. Putin purposefully adds uncertainty and ambiguity, disarming his adversaries and providing himself freedom of movement/thought as the situation requires.
Russian military writing does not discuss escalation management as a means to winning or de-escalation. Rather Russian text examines forcing off-ramps and negotiations on terms that are favorable to the state. Escalation is founded on “deterrence through fear-inducement as well as on deterrence based on utilization of force.” Within the Russian conflict archetypes – from peacetime through to nuclear conflict, military writing details three phases for countering an emerging threat: “demonstration, damage infliction, and retaliation.” Throughout these periods, emphasis is placed on the application of violence resulting in adequate damage, deterrent damage, or unacceptable damage, all of which form concepts of Russian warfighting in relation to deterrence and is specific language that can be heard in speeches and commentary by Russian officials. Within Russia’s defined damage infliction phase, deterrence through fear-inducing nuclear threats is seen as legitimate. These actions should be viewed as a step on Russia’s escalatory ladder inextricably linked to, but not inevitably leading to, weapons use. By using nuclear threats this way – in a phase of conflict or level of escalation lower than Western doctrine or theories of deterrence would dictate – Russia creates the impression that “the country is far looser with its thinking on nuclear use” than it likely is. The use of tactical (non-strategic) nuclear weapons also forms part of the damage infliction phase in Russia’s theoretical model of war. The impact of these tactical nuclear warheads often raises debate, and their use is most often complimentary to conventional attacks.