It’s the question leaders across the globe are asking after the failure of Russia’s genocidal assault on Ukraine.
NOTE: Originally published on Medium, October 4, 2022. It should be noted that Russia later alleged that Ukraine was preparing to use a dirty bomb. A Russian false-flag nuclear strike it claims was a Ukrainian dirty bomb strike now appears to be the most likely first step in any nuclear escalation.
Ukraine’s liberation of Lyman in northern Donetsk and its sudden progress on the Kherson front along the Dnieper stand in stark contrast to Russia’s sham referendums and annexation of some fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
Putin has vowed to defend these new territories with every means at Russia’s disposal, ostensibly including nuclear weapons.
Welp folks, the postwar order that shaped international politics since 1945 is truly dead and done.
It’s a brave new world — and woe unto us all, because the morons who run most countries across the globe don’t understand what’s happening and haven’t a clue how to respond.
Unfortunately, like most powerful leaders caught in this sort of trap Putin has no incentive whatsoever to back down now.
On the contrary, the grim logic of his position dictates escalation without end, even to the point of dragging the whole world into a nuclear war.
And why not?
In word and deed the Biden Administration and the rest of NATO’s leaders have made it abundantly clear that they will not commit to fighting World War 3 over Ukraine under any circumstances.
Behind the continued reluctance to give Ukraine modern weapons in sufficient quantities to totally defeat the weakened Russian army — even air defenses, which don’t remotely threaten Russia — lies this simple hard truth.
Unless attacked directly, NATO is extremely unlikely to ever intervene to protect Ukraine, even if nuclear weapons are used.
Behind their proclamations of support most world leaders would prefer that Ukraine and Russia make any sort of peace and put the issue to bed until it’s some other elected official’s problem — preferably someone from another political party.
Putin knows this all too well and exploits it at every turn.
This sad situation was unilaterally and inexplicably created by the Biden Administration when it ruled out direct intervention under any circumstances back in February.
Despite all its rhetoric, the administration is still hoping for the fighting to simply die down and the battle lines freeze in place.
After months of watching Ukraine’s backers manage to not provide it with all the weapons it has been begging for, Putin has every reason to believe that the Biden Administration and NATO will ultimately fold if he makes it clear enough that he’s prepared to wage the third world war they so desperately fear.
And what is the best way to signal that intent?
Set off one or more nukes in or around Ukraine.
What most experts refuse to admit in public is that nuclear weapons are not tools of war in the usual sense, and there is no real taboo against their use anyone in power anywhere gives a damn about.
They’re the ultimate political signaling devices, the alpha and omega of warning shots.
The United States did not immolate Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they contained military targets it could not destroy otherwise.
US bombers were already dropping incendiaries on Japanese cities, triggering firestorms and other horrors as awful as anything an atomic bomb could generate.
But in 1945 the Western Allies found themselves looking across central Europe at the triumphant Red Army, which had absorbed the bulk of Nazi Germany’s combat potential for four long years and marched into the ruins of Berlin.
The latent capability to destroy Moscow in a single epic kaboom was the exact deterrent required to give the shattered colonial powers some space to recover under America’s wing, funded by the US-led Marshall Plan.
Japan did not need to be nuked or invaded, it was cut off by a blockade, its industry — not to mention people — doomed to starve in a matter of months by the time Hiroshima was obliterated.
Leading officers in the US Navy were particularly appalled by Truman’s choice, knowing full well that the planned invasion of Japan the A-bombs were meant to prevent was completely unnecessary.
Unless, of course, you’re worried the Soviet Union might get to Tokyo first.
Ultimately, Japan’s surrender came less because of the threat of its cities being wiped out and more because its regime feared Soviet occupation more than American.
Japan’s armies in Manchuria, a vital resource base it has taken and colonized decades before, were shattered by a powerful Soviet offensive in 1945 that might soon have led to landings in Japan proper.
So Japan’s leaders agreed to a conditional surrender, passing under US occupation with the Emperor’s role intact and becoming a long-term loyal ally that still hosts US military forces today.
If this doesn’t sound like the history of the end of the way you were taught, that’s likely because the history of the conflict was re-written as a founding myth for the American-led postwar order.
The field of International Relations, my main study area as an undergrad at Berkeley, intentionally reified this order as a kind of scientific fact, rendering itself blind to the inevitable failure of their cozy world system that we’re all stuck living through today.
As Vladimir Putin faces a humiliating battlefield defeat in Ukraine, his primary aim is to temporarily freeze the conflict until Russia’s military problems can be worked out through mobilization.
Flooding the front lines with cannon fodder won’t let Russian forces go back on the offensive, but it will force Ukraine to bleed every step of the way to its 2014 frontiers.
If my time as a cavalry scout in the US Army taught me one thing, it’s that the world of a soldier becomes very small once the shells start falling.
Even if you’re a Russian who adamantly hates Putin and his war, when a Ukrainian assault team comes at your position you’re gonna fight back to protect the people around you.
That’s what industrial war is: leaders forcing their soldiers to do battle like insects trapped in a jar by some cruel child.
In Ukraine’s case, of course, its defenders truly have no choice: Putin has made it abundantly clear that his Orcs have come to destroy the very idea of Ukraine, insane as that might be.
Guess he can’t get over the niggling historical fact that Ukraine is more responsible for creating Russia than the other way around.
More than a thousand years ago Norse Vikings settled down as chieftains among the Slavic tribes at many points along the great rivers of the European steppe. Kyiv was the earliest city-state to gain prominence, Moscow only came much later, St. Petersburg long after that.
But countries invent the history that suits their ruling class, and America is no different, otherwise no one would celebrate it, given that its foundations are made of the crushed bones of countless indigenous people and African slaves.
Putin cares a lot about his vision of history because he has now publicly staked his entire regime on it. Barring a military coup, sooner or later he will have to make good on his nuclear threats in some way to prove they aren’t a bluff.
It is important to understand, when discussing nuclear weapons, that a lot of the jargon used by experts is more or less bunk, language designed to make it hard for lay people to comprehend.
To cite just one example, there is in fact no real difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. There are only tactical or strategic targets.
A nuke is a nuke is a nuke, just some are bigger or smaller than others or delivered by a missile or bomb that has a greater or lesser chance of being intercepted.
Back in the Cold War massive multi-megaton city-busters were deployed, but for the most part over the past fifty years accuracy of most missiles has improved to the point most nuclear warheads are on the smaller side. Small, of course, being a very relative term here, given that most of what are referred to as “tactical” nuclear weapons are more powerful than the bombs that took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As Alex Wellerstein’s fantastic nukemap simulator shows so well, any nuclear blast has several impacts, scaling with size.
First is the thermal flash, which ignites stuff far from the actual epicenter of the blast and can blind anyone looking at the burst from too close. Second is the physical blast, caused by pressure waves speeding out from the kaboom — then back in, because explosions are weird.
A smaller nuclear blast can be safe to observe from a surprisingly close distance — the third major impact, the radiation people associate with nuclear explosions, comes from two sources: the initial explosion, and anything that comes into contact with the fireball or gets sucked into the cloud that rises above the blast site.
An airburst will in fact produce nearly no fallout at all, because only the bomb casing and molecules in the atmosphere are irradiated and dispersed downwind. But when a nuclear weapon is set off close enough to the ground that the fireball pulls in large amounts of dirt and rubble, then you’ve got a real problem.
All that deadly ash comes out of the atmosphere downwind, often latching onto water droplets before coming down as black rain, and if the bomb is big enough particles will make it into the stratosphere and travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers.
I go into these grim facts in detail because contrary to common belief, there are many ways to use a nuclear weapon that don’t automatically trigger Armageddon.
Unless, of course, someone makes a huge mistake. Something on the level of, oh, I dunno, invading a country under false pretenses. (I’m not just looking at you on this one, V. Putin.)
It is because nuclear weapons use can have so many targeted impacts that you had better be sure Putin is absolutely prepared to use nuclear weapons to secure what he’ll call a victory in Ukraine. What’s his trigger point? Still unclear.
He’ll likely hold off as long as he possibly can, as with mobilization, or go for a well-timed display at a moment of opportunity. Putin is not in fact suicidal — he’s not planning to start a global nuclear war.
In fact, the main reason he’d ever countenance going nuclear is that he is very clearly convinced that NATO won’t. His only hesitation now stems from his uncertainty about the reaction in China and India, countries that are basically Russia’s sole economic lifeline at the moment.
Putin has already effectively admitted his defeat in Ukraine, which is what makes this moment so incredibly fraught. The choice to mobilize and push through the sham votes for annexation came after a trip to meet with other Eurasian leaders that did not go well for him at all. They’re tired of the ripple effects of this war.
So Putin must now cast the war as a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, implying that if Ukraine doesn’t stop fighting soon then all hell will break loose. He’s likely now trapped by his own rhetoric, because in certain matters, a world leader simply cannot bluff, and nuclear weapons are one, because a single bluff means all future threats lose credibility.
This guarantees that some future attempt to signal a real fear of regime failure and imminent intent to escalate in a suicidal way won’t be correctly perceived before a grand nuclear exchange nobody really wants actually happens.
So if Putin feels the rest of the world thinks he’s bluffing, the best case scenario is a limited nuclear use that restores the balance of terror. Now that his invasion is on the ropes, Putin’s best-case endgame is now clear.
He needs to paralyze Ukraine’s counterattacks in order to hold the lines about where they are. Then he’s got to limit new military support entering Ukraine through whatever means he can to prevent it from building too much of an edge on the battlefield.
If his forces can cling on for about two more months, reinforcements with some basic training will be in the fight.
By winter his energy war will plunge half the globe into a stagflation recession, hitting Europe hardest of all. A shock to the Biden Administration right before the Midterm elections probably help guarantee the next two years are so full of House investigations Biden can’t get anything done well into 2023 if ever.
That’s why it is very telling that in response to Putin’s overt nuclear blackmail all the Biden Administration has done is plead with Putin not to and warn of unspecified severe consequences if he does. So basically, more or less what it did before Russian troops bum rushed Kyiv — a failure of deterrence, leadership, and basic diplomatic competence that has revealed the hard limits of American power.
If it weren’t an election season where the incumbent party is basically insisting you can’t criticize it because its challenger is fundamentally anti-democratic, this epic fail would be a scandal of the highest order.
Because no one is holding the Biden Administration accountable for utterly failing to stop Putin, seven months into the awful war the world is right where it was back in March: staring down a real threat of nuclear escalation as Putin’s armies reset for the next stage of the futile grind.
Only this time, Putin can’t just shuffle his forces and pretend failing to take Kyiv was the plan all along. He’s out of immediately available resources and his army is retreating from territory he claims is legally part of Russia.
This begs the question: if he won’t go nuclear now, when will he ever? When Ukraine retakes Donetsk? Crimea? At that point, why bother?
Sooner or later Putin is going to demonstrate his true red line, while leaving plenty of room to escalate further if required.
As I see it, Putin’s nuclear options look like this, in order of likelihood and destructiveness:
Detonate one or more warheads without inflicting casualties, over the Black Sea or perhaps over a Ukrainian city
Hit a single key Ukrainian military site with a small warhead
Strike multiple Ukrainian military sites or units on the battlefield in Donbas or Kherson with small warheads
Take out an entire city, perhaps Kryviy Rih, to terrorize the national population and try to force Kyiv to surrender
Attempt full on nuclear regime change, destroying government facilities in Kyiv and elsewhere
Most nuclear weapons presently in use, even big ones, can only take out ground targets within a kilometer or so of the blast point. With a 1000km+ front line, this makes using them on the battlefield a fairly futile prospect.
An air or training base well behind the lines, however, might represent an attractive target for a demonstration blast. However the radioactive contamination to areas Russia might want to take over is a possible deterrent to that approach.
Destroying a city at any scale seems the least likely because of the outsize international impact this would have. It would be incredibly difficult for China or India to not sever most ties given the international outrage any backer of Russia would then face.
Putin doesn’t care about what people in most of the world think of him, but he does care about selling his oil and gas abroad and is working hard to convince countries on the fence about the war to accept the Russian point of view.
Detonating a warhead over a city, high enough in the sky to be widely seen but not inflict damage, is perhaps the most likely course of nuclear action Putin could take.
It would demonstrate power, resolve, and also, paradoxically, a degree of restraint.
Given that Putin’s recent speech referenced Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he might already be tempted to draw another contrast between America and Russia while simultaneously inflicting the shock he hopes for on Ukraine’s backers.
If Russia sets off a small nuke high above Kyiv or even several other cities, that would trigger global condemnation, to be sure, but also immense relief that the strike was so limited.
Leaving Putin further room to escalate, while demonstrating resolve and control.
And what’s NATO going to do by way of reply?
Just forcing the question could rip apart the alliance.
Some commentators are suggesting that NATO or America would use conventional weapons to target whatever Russian unit launched a nuclear attack, but this represents an open act of war that could easily incur a nuclear response.
In addition, it would be impossible for Russia to know whether the incoming missiles were nuclear tipped until it was too late. A revenge strike looks the same as a preemptive nuclear attack on radar.
If the incoming hit is misinterpreted as something more than that, Putin could fire off a huge chunk of own strategic nukes before they could potentially be wiped out.
After going nuclear, NATO or the USA launching military strikes on Russian units might be exactly what Putin needs to avoid a palace coup.
A better option would be to simply reply in kind, setting off a nuke off the coast of Crimea, while dramatically boosting weapons deliveries to Ukraine. That ensures Putin gains nothing, yet doesn’t suffer damage that would compel further escalation.
A message for a message, in short.
This might just weaken Putin enough to trigger Russia’s elites to move against him.
But so much could go wrong it’s not even funny.
It is not hyperbolic to say that this is the single most dangerous moment in world history since 1945. Putin is committed to his course, and must either win or lose.
All the Biden Administration’s efforts to steer the crisis towards an imagined soft landing have been in vain. Months have been wasted, and here we are: Putin on the edge, mushroom clouds dancing through our nightmares.
Small wonder the American media is hardly paying attention — the powers that be, the vaunted foreign policy experts in D.C., they’re out of ideas.
A new world is being born, and by the gods is it gonna be painful.
Will the bombs fall only in Ukraine? Or will the powerful make one of those series of tragic mistakes so common through history?
For the foreseeable future, the world can only wonder.