Putin and the Nuclear Threat - Mackubin Owens
Wednesday, May 04, 2022
Even before he launched his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was rattling his nuclear saber. He warned against Western interference with his assault on Ukraine and put Russian nuclear forces on alert. The threats have only increased as his offensive has bogged down. US officials have expressed serious concerns. Speaking recently at Georgia Tech, CIA Director William Burns raised the possibility that Putin would employ tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons in response to setbacks.
But although any such threat must be taken seriously, the likelihood of Putin using nuclear weapons seems low. To understand why, it helps to understand the nature and character of nuclear weapons and the evolution of nuclear weapons technology since their only use in wartime in 1945.
A nuclear weapon produces a violent release of energy arising from either the fission or fusion of certain atoms, e.g. enriched Uranium, Plutonium, and Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, A conventional high explosive weapon generates blast and some heat. A nuclear weapon generates vastly more blast and heat as well as radiation.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIt is customary to classify nuclear weapons as “strategic,” i.e. capable of striking assets in the enemy’s homeland; “theater,” capable of striking strategically important targets within a theater of operations; and “tactical,” intended to attack enemy units or weapons in relatively close proximity to one’s own forces. Strategic weapons have generally featured a higher “yield” of explosive power.
In the early years of the Cold War, the main means of delivery was a gravity bomb dropped by an aircraft. Next came ballistic missiles, both land- and sea-based. These were of intercontinental range, meaning that the United States could attack targets in the Soviet Union and vice versa. The United States ultimately deployed a nuclear “triad” consisting of strategic bombers, e.g. the B-52, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The Soviet arsenal followed a similar pattern. At the theater and tactical level, delivery systems included aircraft, cannon artillery, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Today, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles have been added to the mix.
With the end of the Cold War, the central importance of nuclear weapons to US security policy declined precipitously. Of course, there were concerns about potential rogue actors such as North Korea and Iran. Indeed, one of the justifications for launching the Second Gulf War was to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring a nuclear capability.
As a result, thinking about nuclear strategy and force structure atrophied. For instance, the 2010 Obama Nuclear Posture review (NPR) stated that, although Russia remains a nuclear peer, “Russia and the United States are no longer adversaries, and prospects for military confrontation have declined dramatically.” The Trump NPR attempted to reinvigorate US nuclear weapons policy and strategy, especially in light of the re-emergence of great power confrontation and Russia’s nuclear modernization. President Biden has not yet issued his own NPR.
What does this all mean for Russia in Ukraine? According to the Arms Control Association (ACA), currently deployed US and Russian warheads are about equal in number: 1,458 warheads on 527 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and bombers for Russia; and 1,389 warheads on 665 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and bombers for the United States. Both sides have more warheads in storage. No other country possesses anything near these numbers.
A major development in the evolution of nuclear strategy has been the vast improvements in accuracy. For instance, satellite-linked guidance systems make it possible to deliver a warhead much closer to a target than in the past. This means that even strategic nuclear weapons now feature reduced yields because of the cubic relationship between accuracy and effect. Doubling the accuracy of a weapon is equivalent to increasing the yield eightfold. In practice, this means that a more accurately delivered weapon requires a much smaller yield to achieve the same effect on the target, producing the necessary overpressures to destroy even hardened targets while simultaneously reducing collateral damage. Ironically, this theoretically removes an obstacle to the use of nuclear weapons, which has led some observers to express concern that increased accuracy means that nuclear weapons have become more “usable.”
So would Russia consider using tactical nuclear weapons within Ukraine to break the current stalemate? On the one hand, the Russians have apparently developed very low-yield nuclear warheads that can be delivered by air or short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). Of most concern is the Iskander-M (NATO designation SS-26 Stone), which has already been employed extensively to deliver non-nuclear explosives.
On the other hand, Russia possesses non-nuclear warheads that produce blast effects and overpressures similar to those of a small nuclear weapon, e.g. thermobaric weapons. The Russians no doubt also have munitions such as the US Massive Ordnance Air-burst Bomb (MOAB), which was used against an ISIS tunnel complex in Afghanistan in 2017. The latter contains some 18,000 pounds of an ammonium nitrate/powdered aluminum gelled slurry detonated by a high explosive booster.
Russia also has a non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warhead capable of knocking out communications and modern electronics in a broad area. Such a specialized Iskander radio frequency warhead delivered by an Iskander-M would affect electronics and communications within a radius of some 10 kilometers from the detonation point.
So far the United States and its NATO allies have been successful in providing aid to Ukraine without being drawn into a direct conflict with Russia. The main danger regarding a nuclear confrontation between Russia and NATO is miscalculation. But as one commentator noted, “Putin has nothing to lose by threatening to use nuclear weapons. But he has everything to lose by actually using them.” The reality is that technological advances have caused the effects of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons to converge, making it less likely that Russia will cross the nuclear Rubicon in Ukraine.
Mackubin Owens is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He previously served as editor of Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs (2008-2020). From 2015 until March of 2018, he was Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. From 1987 until 2014, he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
He is also a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, where as an infantry platoon and company commander in 1968-1969, he was wounded twice and awarded the Silver Star medal. He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a Colonel in 1994.
Owens is the author of the FPRI monograph Abraham Lincoln: Leadership and Democratic Statesmanship in Wartime (2009) and US Civil-Military Relations after 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain (Continuum Press, January 2011) and coauthor of US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Rise of an Incidental Superpower (Georgetown University Press, spring 2015). He is also completing a book on the theory and practice of US civil-military relations for Lynne-Rienner. He was co-editor of the textbook, Strategy and Force Planning, for which he also wrote several chapters, including “The Political Economy of National Security,” “Thinking About Strategy,” and “The Logic of Strategy and Force Planning.”
Owens’s articles on national security issues and American politics have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, International Security, Orbis, Joint Force Quarterly, The Public Interest, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Examiner, Defence Analysis, US Naval Institute Proceedings, Marine Corps Gazette, Comparative Strategy, National Review, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor; The Los Angeles Times, the Jerusalem Post, The Washington Times, and The New York Post. And, he formerly wrote for the Providence Journal.
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