Russia's nuclear saber-rattling

Ever since the Russian-Ukraine war, the understrength conventional power capability of Russia against the US-led NATO bolstering Ukraine often comes up with nuclear saber-rattling. More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing the world community on November 21, argued that Russia launched ballistic missile strikes against Dnipro City in response to the recent Ukraine ATACMS (supersonic tactical ballistic missile) and Storm Shadow (air-launched cruise missile) provided by the US and the UK against the military objects in Russia. Putin warned the US-led NATO countries that Russia may strike the military facilities of the Western countries that supported Ukraine to use their missiles directly against Russia. Russia terms this as one of its "red lines" the West is crossing, risking a large-scale military escalation to a nuclear level. Russia has already threatened to use nuclear weapons after Ukraine is largely supported by the US-led NATO members. It has stationed its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus for deterrence and nuclear signaling purposes against the Western countries in Europe.

Why does Russia often come up with nuclear saber-rattling? What does it want to achieve? Are the US-led NATO members deterred? How much is the Russia-Ukraine war boiling for a nuclear use engulfing the entire Europe? Is the world considering nuclear risk reduction and the possible end of this war when Europe is turning into one of the world's nuclear flash points?

Scholars contend that in the nuclear war, there are no victors. This goes back to the Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev 1985 statement on nuclear war: "A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought." Based on the conceptual logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), this remains valid in a nuclear environment where each side will end up destroying each other. This primarily reflects from the 1958 seminal work of Albert James Wohlstetter on the "Delicate Balance of Terror" where he argued that the presence of thermonuclear weapons between the US and the Soviet Union had produced a "presumed automatic balance" of power which in turn makes nuclear war "extremely unlikely".

From an academic point of view, the Russian threat of using nuclear weapons over the US-led NATO's military support for Ukraine could be: one, to let the Western countries become serious while getting on board for resolving the Russia-Ukraine war to the best Russian terms; two, to give deterrence signaling to the Western countries so that they stop supplying sophisticated defensive and offensive missile capability that undermine the Russian conventional force capability in its war against Ukraine; and three, to prevent the US from making Ukraine part of NATO. Although Russia appears to be succeeding on these strategic imperatives, the Russian nuclear saber-rattling is mostly considered as mere rhetoric in Europe and in some sections of the US. However, leading scholars such as John J Mearshiermer, from a realist security paradigm, consider that Pentagon must be taking Putin's nuclear threats seriously. A nuclear threat from the state leadership becomes credible especially when it has the capability and the political will to use nuclear weapons in the worst-case scenario.

This reminds us of "Guarding the Guardians" by Peter D Feaver that discusses the conceptual framework on the always/never dichotomy that nuclear weapons should always be used when they are absolutely needed and should never be used when they are not required. For Russia, nuclear saber-rattling may fall in such a conceptualised category of deterrence. Despite the understrength conventional force capability of Russia compared with the US-NATO allies, the credible Russia nuclear forces both at the tactical and strategic level remain one of the fundamental deterrents preventing the US-led NATO allies from crossing the red lines that may not be acceptable to the Russian security leadership.