Decoding Vladimir Putin’s latest nuclear nonsense
Tom Rogan
As he has been doing for months now, Russian President Vladimir Putin dangled the threat of nuclear escalation on Friday. Speaking after a summit in Kyrgyzstan, Putin said he would consider adopting a first-strike reservation to Russia’s nuclear strategy.
Putin described U.S. contingency plans to launch “a strike with modern high-tech means, which should be delivered to [nuclear command and] control points, deprive the enemy of these control systems, and so on.” He added that while Russia had previously lacked the means to conduct its own strike in this manner, it could now do so via new cruise missile and hypersonic weapon systems. Putin added, “But if a potential adversary believes that it is possible to use the theory of a preemptive strike, but we do not, then this still makes us think about the threats that such ideas pose to us.”
Putin’s words are being presented as an alarming development. They shouldn’t be seen as anything more than a bluff to scare the Europeans into concessions over Ukraine and as an appeal to Russian pride.
There’s not much new here. The U.S. explicitly retains the right to launch a nuclear first strike in exceptional circumstances. Russian nuclear strategy is deliberately ambiguous but is commonly assumed to include an undeclared first-use contingency. Russia also retains plans for the prospective first use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield (a relevant point regarding Ukraine).
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Moreover, Putin’s suggestion that Russia could launch a decapitation strike against the U.S. or NATO nuclear command and control apparatus is farcical.
When it comes to NATO, French and British nuclear forces are capable and well trained, especially in terms of their nuclear ballistic missile fleets. But even were Russia somehow able to eliminate the French and British command and control apparatus, it would face two grave problems. First, Russia would also need to eliminate any U.K. ballistic missile submarines at sea. That’s because U.K. submarine commanders have a “letter of last resort” in their submarine safes. Written by the serving prime minister, these letters provide orders on what action to take if Britain’s command and control apparatus is eliminated. Depending on the content of the last orders, the command and control chain thus reverts singularly to the submarines that actually possess Britain’s nuclear weapons. That makes any successful Russian first strike near impossible unless it can eliminate the submarines at the same time.
Then there’s the U.S. challenge.
Supervised by the U.S. military’s Strategic Command, the U.S. places extraordinary emphasis on survivable nuclear command and control. This includes a formal and well-rehearsed system to enact the presidential order of succession under wartime conditions. It includes a fleet of “doomsday” aircraft that can both facilitate and effect presidential nuclear command and control in the event that Strategic Command’s nuclear control headquarters are destroyed. These aircrews train very regularly.
U.S. nuclear forces center on a land-, air- and sea-based triad that can operate together or in isolation from one another. Of particular importance, this force includes a fleet of 14 ballistic missile submarines that operate in concealment from prospective enemies and with crews who can launch their missiles on very short notice. Each of these submarines has the capacity to launch 20 missiles for a total of independently guided 240 nuclear warheads. Most importantly, the U.S., British, and French naval attack submarine forces are far better at tracking Russia’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine force than vice versa (although Russian submarine forces are improving). The top line, however, is clear. Putin is copying his propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov and grossly exaggerating Russia’s nuclear power.
Why such theatrics?
It’s all about Putin’s desire to send a message pretending that Russia has strategic parity with the U.S. We received a telling example of this dynamic on Friday when Putin was asked about recent meetings between CIA Director Bill Burns and his Russian SVR service counterpart Sergey Naryshkin. Putin declared that the most recent meeting “was not our initiative. It was the initiative of the American side. President Biden suggested this — we agreed, as you can see. On the whole, we did not expect anything [special] from the talks; they went on in a normal working mode.” While it’s true that the U.S. is the one requesting these meetings, Putin’s deliberately disinterested language is designed to present the U.S. as begging for attention. It’s a setup for domestic propagandists to make a play to Russian pride.
That’s a pride Putin needs to bolster. After all, the war in Ukraine is likely to get even worse for Russia in the coming weeks. Evincing his concerns in this regard, Putin won’t admit any difficulties in Ukraine. He told reporters on Friday that “everything is stable there with us — there are no questions there, and there are no problems today.”
This is rhetoric from the school of Comical Ali, Saddam Hussein’s information minister who insisted Iraqi forces were winning even as U.S. forces entered Baghdad. But it’s telling rhetoric nonetheless.
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