Douglas London, Addressing Putin’s Nuclear Threat: Thinking Like the Cold War KGB Officer That He Was, Just Security, October 18, 2022:
From the article:
As a Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who spent much of my career pursuing and countering Russian intelligence officers of Putin’s era, and those who would follow, I don’t expect his next steps will be guided by Clausewitz’s strategic military teachings, Sun Tzu’s enlightened pragmatism, or Machiavelli’s guidance for princes. Putin will pay little heed to the limited, practical, battlefield utility of nuclear or chemical weapons, or overly concern himself that prevailing winds might bring the fallout’s enduring harm to his own people. Putin’s logic is simple: It’s all about him, his court’s blind, obsequious obedience, and reasserting control. There are no rules, only consequences, that shape his calculus. In Putin’s mind, the rules of the post-World War II order were designed by an elitist West to restrain and humiliate his country (never mind that his country helped shape and long participated in that order and those rules), negating any obligation he has to respect them, or the words and treaties of his predecessors.
Putin will not look to his own military for counsel. There is no love lost between the Russian leader and his armed forces. A Cold War-era KGB officer, he was indoctrinated with profound mistrust in them. His micromanagement of Russia’s military campaign, disinterest in its catastrophic losses, and reliance instead on the Federal Security Service, or FSB, for his war in Chechnya and initial strategy in Ukraine, reflect this attitude.
Later:
Indeed, if Putin is like others of his generation and profession — and his behavior suggests that he is — he will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons if he believes doing so is the only means to preserve his power as dissent increases within his own ranks and military options dwindle. For Putin, that translates into curbing Western support for Ukraine and demonstrating strength, control, and invincibility at home.
After various arguments, the conclusion:
So the United States and its allies will need to begin working now – and apparently already are – to signal publicly and privately to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons, whether tactical or not, in Ukraine or beyond, would be devastating to him personally. Words alone do little with Putin, so the United States and NATO would necessarily need to begin taking observable actions accompanied by diplomacy, messaging, and covert influence efforts that demonstrate preparations to conventionally destroy Putin’s forces in Ukraine if he resorted to nuclear first use. The challenge would be in doing so without instead validating his narrative of inevitable existential battle with the West, justifying his first use of nuclear weapons, and triggering a wider war between Russia and NATO that escalates into what had been, since the 1990’s at least, the unthinkable.
And that’s the unavoidable danger in high-stakes brinksmanship: a willingness to have one’s bluff called and gambling who blinks first. But to mitigate against Putin’s initiation of such a spiral and ultimately prevent Russian nuclear use, the US and its NATO allies must be prepared to climb that escalatory conventional ladder and respond, leaving no ambiguity with Putin of the consequences. [...] But keeping the engagement localized, not extending even to Crimea, might reduce Putin’s obligation to escalate still further.
The unfortunate reality is that Putin can’t be stopped without significant costs, but allowing him to normalize the use of weapons of mass destruction would start the inevitable clock to a direct and possibly catastrophic US-Russian conflict. It is a strategy that could require yet further investment of American blood and treasure today in requiring Putin to face consequences designed to prevent a full-scale war and potential nuclear escalation, but costs that are necessary to preserve international peace and security in the long term.
H/t Tyler Cowen.
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