Tactical nuclear... Russia's favorite weapon is ringing the bells of World War

Translation Introduction:

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not hesitate to threaten and threaten to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, especially at the beginning of his invasion of the country.

The United States has yet to actually respond to any of those threats, but when should the United States decide to respond?

What would this response look like?

About this debate in the American intelligence and security community, writer and editor Eric Schlosser prepared an analysis published by the American magazine "The Atlantic".

Translation text:

The 12th Main Department of the Russian Defense Ministry is responsible for operating dozens of centralized nuclear weapons storage facilities.

These facilities, known as "Object S" sites located throughout the Russian Federation, contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs, as well as a wide variety of nuclear explosives.

Over the past three months, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war on Ukraine.

According to Pavel Budwig, project manager for the Russian Nuclear Forces and former research fellow at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, land- and submarine-based long-range ballistic missiles are the only Russian nuclear weapons available for immediate use.

But if Putin decides to attack Ukraine with "tactical" nuclear weapons of shorter range, this will require withdrawing them from one of the "S element" sites - such as the "Belgorod-22" site, which is about 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border - and then transferring them to a military base.

It would take hours for the weapons to be ready for military use, to mount warheads on cruise or ballistic missiles, and to load hydrogen bombs onto aircraft.

The movement of these weapons will likely be immediately noticed by the United States via satellite surveillance, hidden cameras on roads inside Russia, and its local operatives equipped with endoscopes.

US President Joe Biden has made clear that any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be "completely unacceptable" and "disastrous," but his administration has remained vague in talking publicly about what those consequences are.

Over the past month, I've spoken with several national security experts and former government officials about the possibilities of Russia's use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, potential targets, and the appropriate U.S. response, and although they differ on some issues, I've heard the same point from them over and over again, which is that the risk of war Nuclear power is greater today than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.

And the decisions that would need to be taken after a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine would be unprecedented.

Scenarios of a Russian nuclear strike

There are several possible scenarios for Russia to use nuclear weapons soon:

Any response from the Biden administration will depend not only on how Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine, but more importantly on the expected impact of the US response on the nature of Russian behavior in the future, and whether it will induce Putin to back down or insist more on his position.

Cold War discussions of nuclear strategy focused on ways to anticipate and manage the potential escalation of a nuclear military conflict.

In the early 1960s, Hermann Kahn, a prominent strategist at the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute, devised a conception of the problem known as the "escalation ladder."

The "Cannes" version included 44 degrees on the ladder, "absence of hostilities" occupied the lowest rungs of the ladder, and "nuclear annihilation" occupied the highest rungs of the ladder.

For example, a president might choose to escalate from Level 26, a “show attack on an enemy’s interior” (which may be remote or limited area)*, to Level 39, which is “slow-paced urban warfare” (i.e., mutual nuclear targeting). from both parties to the cities of the other country)*.

The goal of each new step up the ladder is varied. The goal may be simply to send a message to the enemy, or to pressure, control, or destroy the opponent.

In the end, the goal of climbing the ladder is to return to the bottom again one day (by defuse the crisis, either by returning to negotiation or the surrender of one of the parties)*.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin (European)

The "Escalation Spiral" is a newer and more complex depiction of potential conflict between nuclear states and was devised by Christopher Yao, who served as chief scientist in the US Air Force's Global Strike Command from 2010-2015.

In addition to the vertical aspects presented by the "escalation ladder", the vortex combines with it a horizontal movement between the various fields of contemporary warfare, such as space, cyber, conventional and nuclear warfare.

Therefore, the spiral of conflict looks like a hurricane, and the worst-case scenario occupies the widest part of the spiral, which is the "absolute highest levels of permanent social destruction."

In October 1962, "Sam Nunn" was 24 years old and a recent graduate of Emory University School of Law, and had just landed a job on the Congressional Armed Services Committee.

When one of Nunn's colleagues backed out from a foreign tour of NATO bases, Nunn took his colleague's place, left the United States for the first time, and ended up at Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Nan remembers seeing NATO fighter planes parked near the runways, each with a hydrogen bomb on board, ready to fly toward the Soviet Union.

Pilots sat on chairs beside their planes, day and night, trying to get some sleep while they waited for orders to take off at any moment.

Their planes were fueled enough for one mission one way, that they planned to parachute into any location there one way or the other, after dropping the bomb in their possession.

A US Air Force commander in Europe told Nunn at the time that if war broke out, the pilots under his command would have to take off from the ground in a matter of minutes, as Ramstein Air Base would become one of the first NATO targets to be destroyed by a Soviet nuclear attack.

The commander kept his walkie-talkie with him at all times to issue the take-off command.

The Cuban missile crisis made an indelible impression on Nunn, and during his twenty-four years as a US senator, he worked tirelessly to reduce the threat of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism.

As Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he advocated close cooperation with Moscow on nuclear issues, and in order to complement those efforts, he later co-founded a non-profit organization called the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Today, however, all this effort is in jeopardy because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the attendant serious rhetoric about the use of nuclear power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and "Sam Nunn", former US senator and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (Reuters)

Before the attack on Ukraine, the five countries allowed to possess nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty - the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France - reached an agreement that the use of such weapons could only be justified if it was a defensive measure in response to a nuclear or other large-scale conventional attack. the range.

In January 2022, these five countries issued a joint statement confirming the words of former US President Ronald Reagan: "Nuclear war should never be fought, and it can never be won."

One month later, Russia broke with the norms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that had been in place for more than half a century.

Russia invaded a country that gave up its nuclear weapons, threatened nuclear attacks against anyone who tried to help that country, and committed acts classified as nuclear terrorism by bombing the nuclear reactor buildings in Chernobyl and Zaporizhia.

Nunn supports the Biden administration's strategy of "deliberate ambiguity" about the nature of its response if Russia uses nuclear weapons.

He does hope, however, that there will be some form of back-channel diplomacy in which someone as respected as Robert Gates, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), tells the Russians quite frankly how severe the United States will respond if they cross the nuclear threshold. .

US response scenarios

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev both wanted to avoid an all-out nuclear war, yet came close to launching one due to misunderstandings, communication, and mistakes.

Back-channel diplomacy played a pivotal role in ending this crisis safely.

Nunn now emphasizes three essential things to avoid a nuclear catastrophe: rational leaders, accurate information, and not committing major follies, and says that "all three things are currently doubtful."

Nunn explained that if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States should not respond with a nuclear attack, but rather a kind of horizontal escalation, and do everything possible to avoid the exchange of nuclear strikes between Russia and the United States.

For example: If Russia hits Ukraine with a nuclear cruise missile launched from a ship, NAN calls for that ship to sink immediately.

The number of Ukrainian casualties is supposed to determine the severity of the US response, and any escalation must be carried out using only conventional weapons.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet could be sunk in the US military response, and a no-fly zone could be imposed on Ukraine, even if anti-aircraft units were to be destroyed on Russian soil.

Since the beginning of the invasion, Russian nuclear threats have aimed to impede the United States and its NATO allies from providing military supplies to Ukraine, and these threats are backed by Russia's military capabilities. NATO in Poland.

"The longer this war goes on, the more pressure will be put on Russia to attack the supply lines from NATO countries to Ukraine," says Nunn.

A Russian attack, intentionally or unintentionally, on any of the NATO countries could mark the beginning of World War III.

In the summer of 2016, members of President Barack Obama's national security team staged a covert war simulation in which Russia invades a NATO country in the Baltic region and then uses a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon against NATO forces to end the conflict on favorable terms.

As described by Fred Kaplan in his book The Bomb, two groups of Obama administration officials came to wildly conflicting conclusions about what the United States should do.

The US National Security Council Directors’ Committee—which includes Cabinet staff and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—has decided that the United States had no choice but to retaliate with nuclear weapons, since any further response of any kind would show a lack of assertiveness, damage Washington’s reputation and impair NATO Alliance.

However, choosing a suitable target for a nuclear strike proved difficult, not to mention that striking the Russian invasion forces would result in innocent casualties in that NATO country.

As for striking targets inside Russia, it could lead to an escalation of the conflict into an all-out nuclear war.

In the end, the US National Security Council Directors' Committee recommended a nuclear attack on Belarus, a country that played little to no role in invading Russia, a NATO member (in the military simulation) that unfortunately has a Russian ally.

Members of the US National Security Council staff ran the same war simulation, and they came up with a different US response.

Colin Kahl, who served as an advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden, said that responding with a nuclear weapon would be a grave mistake, and a sacrifice of moral ground.

Kal considered that the most effective thing was to respond with a conventional attack and turn world public opinion against Russia because it violated the nuclear embargo.

This was agreed by others, including Avril Haines, who is currently the director of national intelligence in the Biden administration, and Cale is currently undersecretary for political affairs at the Department of Defense.

In 2019, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency conducted extensive war simulations about the optimal U.S. response if Russia invaded Ukraine and used nuclear weapons there.

This Pentagon agency is the only agency tasked exclusively with countering and deterring weapons of mass destruction.

Although the results of that war simulation are still classified, one of the participants told me that "none of the scenarios had a happy ending."

These scenarios for the use of nuclear power are strikingly similar to the scenarios currently being considered.

In the words of the aforementioned participant, when it comes to nuclear war, the core message of the 1983 movie War Games comes true: "The only winning move is not to play."

How do you win a losing war?

None of the national security experts I interviewed believed that the United States should use a nuclear weapon in response to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine.

Rose Gottemoeller, who worked as the chief US negotiator in the New Start arms control treaty with Russia and later worked as Deputy Secretary-General of NATO, believes that any nuclear attack on Ukraine would be condemned globally, especially by African and South American countries, which are The two nuclear-weapon-free continents.

It also believes that China, despite its tacit support for the invasion of Ukraine, will strongly oppose Putin's use of nuclear weapons, and may support sanctions against Russia in the United Nations Security Council.

China has long supported "negative nuclear assurances", and in 2016 it unconditionally pledged "not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or in nuclear-weapon-free zones".

If the United States detects the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons from Russian storage sites, Gottemoeller believes the Biden administration will have to issue a stern warning to Moscow through the back channels, and then announce that those weapons have moved.

Over the years, Gottemoeller has known many of the top leaders who monitor Moscow's nuclear arsenal, and she says they might disobey an order to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

If they obey, Gottemoller's preferred option would be a "strong diplomatic response" to a nuclear strike, not a nuclear or conventional military response, coupled with some form of hybrid warfare.

The United States could launch a devastating cyber attack on the Russian command and control systems associated with a nuclear attack, opening the door to the possibility of a continuation of military attacks.

Scott Sagan, co-director of the Center on Security and International Cooperation at Stanford University, believes that the risk of Russia using a nuclear weapon has decreased last month, as the fighting has shifted to southern Ukraine.

Putin is unlikely to radioactively contaminate an area he hopes to seize.

A warning strike, such as detonating a nuclear weapon over the Black Sea without causing damage, would be futile from Sagan's point of view, indicating confusion rather than resolve, a conclusion the United States reached half a century ago about the usefulness of a display strike. NATO to deter the Red Army.

Sagan concedes that if Russia were to lose major battles in the Donbass, or if the Ukrainian counterattack seemed on the verge of a major victory, Putin might actually order the use of nuclear weapons to extract surrender or a ceasefire from his enemy.

Sagan disagrees with the popular image of military conflict as taking a turn, as the perception of an “escalation ladder” seems too stable, as it involves the freedom to decide “up or down,” as Sagan believes that nuclear escalation is more like a moving ladder. As soon as it starts moving, it has its own driving force, and it is difficult to stop it or (enjoy the freedom to descend and ascend as in the first scenario)*.

Sagan sees that what worries him most is the emergence of any sign of Putin taking even initial steps towards the use of nuclear force, and then warns: "We should not underestimate the risk of an unintended nuclear explosion, once the weapons are out of their stores and spread over the widespread among the Russian forces.

I recently had lunch with William Perry, the former Secretary of Defense, at his home in Palo Alto, California.

Berry, 94, is one of the last of the most prominent and effective military strategists to date to witness first-hand the devastation of World War II.

Berry served in the United States Army occupying Japan, and nothing he had read about the Tokyo bombing prepared him for what he witnessed there.

In the city of Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, the devastation seemed worse, as Berry mentioned in his memoirs that there was not a single building standing on the ground, and he famously said: “The beautiful tropical nature there has turned into vast areas of mud, lead, mold and worms.”

What did Berry see?

Berry later earned graduate degrees in mathematics and became a pioneer in Silicon Valley, specializing in satellite surveillance and the use of digital technology in electronic warfare.

In the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, Berry traveled to Washington, D.C. at the request of the CIA, and sifted through satellite images from Cuba for evidence of Soviet nuclear weapons.

As Under Secretary of Defense in the Carter administration, Berry played a key role in developing stealth technology, and then, as Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, led efforts to search for nuclear weapons and fissile material at various sites across the former Soviet Union.

After leaving the Pentagon, Berry was known for his pro-peace positions, joining Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

Berry gave a speech at Stanford University recently in which he outlined the dangers of what happened in Ukraine.

The peace that had been instilled in Europe for nearly eight decades was uprooted on February 24, he says, "and if the Russian invasion succeeds, we should expect more invasion attempts."

Putin is blackmailing and threatening to use nuclear weapons for attack, not defense, and Berry says, "I am afraid that if we succumb to this outrageous threat, we will face it again."

Berry has met Putin on a number of occasions, when the latter served as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and Berry believes that Putin would use tactical weapons in Ukraine if it seemed useful to him.

Although the Russian Federation's stated policy is to use nuclear weapons only in the face of an existential threat, public declarations from Moscow must be taken with some skepticism, as the Soviet Union flatly denied having any missile bases in Cuba, while it was actually building them.

He vowed publicly for years not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, while secretly adopting war plans that would begin with large-scale nuclear attacks on NATO bases and European cities, and the Kremlin denied any intention of invading Ukraine until it did.

Tactical nuclear redefines nuclear war

During the Cold War, the United States installed thousands of low-yield nuclear weapons in NATO countries and planned to use them in battle in the event of an invasion by the Soviet Union.

In September 1991, President "George Bush" Sr. issued orders unilaterally to withdraw from service and destroy all US tactical weapons stationed on the ground.

Bush's orders sent a message that the Cold War was over, and that the United States no longer considered tactical weapons useful in battle.

The collateral damage it would cause, the unexpected patterns of lethal radiation fallout, seemed unnecessary and potentially counterproductive.

The United States has worked to develop precision conventional weapons that can destroy any important target without violating the nuclear embargo.

Yet Russia has never phased out its tactical nuclear weapons, and as its conventional military forces dwindle, it has developed low-impact, ultra-low-impact nuclear weapons with relatively milder repercussions.

More than 100 "peaceful nuclear explosions" conducted by the Soviet Union, with the aim of gaining knowledge about the use of nuclear explosions in ordinary tasks such as excavation work, facilitated the design of high-impact tactical weapons.

There have already been two nuclear explosions in Ukraine, as part of the "Soviet Union Program No. 7 - Peaceful Explosions for the Benefit of the National Economy".

In 1972, a nuclear explosion took place allegedly to close a gas well flowing in a mine in the city of Krasnograd, about 97 km from Kharkiv, and that explosion had a power of a quarter of the explosive power of the atomic bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima.

And in 1979, another nuclear explosion, allegedly to get rid of methane, took place in a coal mine near the village of "Yonokomonarsk" in the Donbass region, with an explosive power of 1/45 of the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

Neither the miners nor the 8,000 residents of the village were informed of this nuclear explosion.

The miners that day were given leave for "civil defense training" and then returned to their usual work at the mine.

If the United States obtains intelligence that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon, Berry believes that this information should be released immediately to the public.

If Russia does use a weapon, the United States should call for international condemnation, fuss about the matter as much as possible and launch military action, with or without NATO allies.

And that action of retaliation must be strong, focused, and conventional, but not nuclear.

It should also be limited to Ukraine only, and preferably if it were limited to targets related to the nuclear attack.

Berry said: "You have to go up the escalation ladder a little bit, as much as it preserves you the ability to get away with your action, provided that you still have a strong and appropriate influence."

But if Putin responds with another nuclear weapon, "you have to roll up your sleeves the second time."

For years, Berry has warned of the growing nuclear threat.

Unfortunately, the invasion of Ukraine confirmed his predictions, knowing that the odds of all-out nuclear war were much higher during the Cuban missile crisis, but he also knows that the probability of using a nuclear weapon is now higher (given the ease with which a tactical nuclear weapon is used today)*.

Berry does not expect Russia to destroy a Ukrainian air base with a tactical weapon, but he wouldn't be surprised if it did.

He also hopes that the United States will not use nuclear deterrence and be a victim of nuclear blackmail, which would encourage other countries to acquire nuclear weapons and threaten their neighbors.

Putin can decide if, when and where a nuclear attack will take place in Ukraine;

However, he cannot control what will happen next. The consequences of that choice, and the chain of events that will unfold later, are unknown to all.

The Biden administration has assembled a "tiger team" of national security officials to conduct a warlike simulation of what would be done if Russia used a nuclear weapon.

And one thing is crystal clear to us, after all my discussions with experts in the field: We have to be prepared to make difficult decisions, with uncertain outcomes, and decisions that no one should have ever made.

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This article was translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily represent the Meydan website.

Translation: Hadeer Abdel Azim.