On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to test President Donald Trump‘s resolve in increasing pressure on Russia toward ending the war in Ukraine. Trump last week introduced new sanctions on Russian energy giants Rosneft and Lukoil to reduce the revenue those firms generate for the Kremlin’s war effort.
Putin tested Trump by receiving a public briefing from Russia’s top military officer, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, on the supposed imminent Russian encirclement of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, and the test of a new nuclear weapons system, the Burevestnik nuclear-powered and armed cruise missile. The nuclear-powered missile has the potential to remain aloft for extraordinarily long periods.
One key intent was to bolster Russian domestic popular support for the now three-and-a-half-year running war. Russia has now lost approximately 200,000 troops and suffered grave and growing economic damage in return for seizing a relatively sparse area of southern and southeastern Ukraine. The Kremlin is keen to show that hope is on the horizon. Yet, the encirclements mentioned on Sunday are greatly exaggerated. The battlefield lines generally remain stable, with Ukrainian brigade-sized formations retaining stronghold positions.
Putin’s encirclement claims are also designed to broadcast his continued appetite for war to Trump. The Burevestnik missile test, however, is clearly designed to intimidate Trump.
Gerasimov said that the Oct. 21 test had been very successful, with the missile flying 15 hours and covering 8,700 miles. Gerasimov claimed that “The technical characteristics of the Burevestnik generally allow it to be used with guaranteed accuracy against highly protected targets at any distance.” Putin declared himself impressed. It is a “unique product,” he said, “unlike anything else in the world.” Other new Russian nuclear platforms include a space-based nuclear weapons system designed to destroy American satellite constellations.
Still, Trump need not fear this test nor Putin’s associated rhetoric. After all, the United States retains dominance over Russia when it comes to nuclear deterrence-strike concerns.
Put simply, where U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarines and nuclear bomber aircraft are very difficult for Russian forces to detect and intercept, Russian nuclear ballistic missile submarines and nuclear bomber aircraft are relatively easy for U.S. forces to detect and intercept. Indeed, most Russian ballistic missile submarines are monitored by U.S. attack submarines from the moment they leave port to the moment they return home. In war, they and at least some of their bomber counterparts would be destroyed before they had the opportunity to fire their weapons.
This distinction in leveraged threat means that the U.S. could both degrade the potency of any full-scale Russian nuclear strike and simultaneously impose outsize destruction on Russia. In that admittedly utterly terrible scenario, Russia would cease to exist as a nation-state, whereas the U.S. would likely survive with most of its non-coastal cities intact. As with his Soviet predecessors, Putin knows this, and it deters him from foolish action. NATO’s two other nuclear powers, the United Kingdom and France, have also taken their own steps to bolster nuclear deterrence against Russia.
Of course, true deterrence requires the adversary’s understanding that the American president will use the forces available to him if necessary.
Here, Trump’s record is mixed but generally positive. Yes, Trump has too often danced to Putin’s waltz by warning that the war in Ukraine risks nuclear war. But Trump also deserves credit for his robust response to previous incidents of Russian nuclear blackmail.
During his first term, the president abandoned former President Barack Obama’s appeasement response to Russia’s effort to bolster its portfolio of smaller nuclear warheads. This July, the U.S. deployed Air Force nuclear weapons to the U.K. for the first time in many years. Then, in August, Trump publicly announced that he had ordered two nuclear ballistic missile submarines to deploy near Russia in response to social media threats from former Russian president turned social media troll, Dmitry Medvedev.
In specific terms, the Burevestnik missile is far more a symbol than a sword. Like any cruise missile, the Burevestnik is vulnerable to being shot down. It has neither a stealth profile nor a hypersonic delivery system capable of vast speeds to evade detection and responding interceptor forces. Its ability to fly for very long periods complicates air defense preparations. But even then, the longer that the Burevestnik stays aloft, the more data about it can be gathered and the more preparation made to destroy it.
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The truth is that Russia’s core nuclear weapons competency remains that of its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, especially its new Sarmat superheavy missile. But at the intersection point between nuclear deterrence and war, the U.S. retains a clear advantage.
Trump should thus not yield to Putin’s escalating threats of nuclear blackmail. Putin is reacting this way because Trump’s sanctions pressure is weakening his means of maintaining his war effort. Trump, therefore, needs only to keep doing what he has already been doing: increasing pressure toward meaningful peace negotiations while making clear that any Russian nuclear threats confront a superior counterforce.