War in Ukraine: how the West would react if Vladimir Putin detonates a nuclear device on the ground

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his veiled threats to use nuclear weapons have legislators and other policymakers thinking the unthinkable: How should the West respond to Russia’s explosion of a nuclear bomb on the battlefield?

The default American response, say some architects of the post-Cold War nuclear order, is: with discipline and control. That could imply increase sanctions and isolation on Russian President Vladimir Putinthought Rose GottemoellerDeputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019.

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But no one can count on quiet minds to prevail at a time like this, and real life doesn’t always go as planned.

World leaders would be furious, confronted, fearful. Confusion and communication problems could abound. Hackers could add to the existing chaos. There would be great pressure to apply a tough response: the kind of response that can be made with nuclear missiles capable of moving at supersonic speeds.

Although military and civilian officials and experts have calculated nuclear tensions between Russia and the United States before, simulated exercises could end with nuclear missiles crossing continents and oceans, hitting capitals in Europe and North America, killing millions in just hourswarned Olga Olikerdirector for Europe and Central Asia of the organization International Crisis Group.

“And, pretty soon, you have a global thermonuclear warOliver added.

It’s a situation officials hope to avoid, even if Russia strikes Ukraine with a nuclear bomb.

Gottemoeller, a top nuclear negotiator for the United States under Barack Obama, said the sketches the president Joe Biden provided so far on its nuclear policy follow the same lines as previous governments: to use atomic weapons only in “extreme circumstances”.

“And a single demonstration nuclear use by Russia or — horrible as it would be — a nuclear use in Ukraine would not reach that level.” of demanding a nuclear response from the United States, said Gottemoeller, who is now lecturing at Stanford University.

for the former senator Sam Nuna Democrat who with nearly a quarter century in Congress helped shape global nuclear policy, the option of the West using nuclear weapons must remain possible.

“That’s what the doctrine of mutually assured destruction has been about for a long, long time.said Nunn, who is now a strategic adviser to the atomic security organization Nuclear Threat Initiative, which he co-founded.

“If President Putin uses nuclear weapons or any other country uses them first, not in response to a nuclear attack, not in response to an existential threat to his own country… that leader will have to assume that he is putting the world at high risk of a nuclear war and a nuclear duelNunn added.

For leaders of the United States and other countries, discussions about how to respond to a limited nuclear attack are no longer hypothetical. In the first hours and days of the Russian invasion, Putin alluded to Russia’s nuclear arsenal. He warned Western countries not to interfere in the conflict, saying he was going to place his nuclear forces on high alert.

Any country that interfered with the Russian invasion would face consequences “such as they have not seen, in their entire history,” Putin declared.

How to respond to any Russian use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons was one of the issues discussed by Biden and other Western leaders when they met in Europe in late March. Three NATO members—the United States, Britain, and France—have nuclear weapons.

A pervasive concern is that by defining some nuclear weapons as tactical weapons usable in battles, Russia could break the nearly eight-decade global taboo of using a nuclear weapon against another country. Even comparatively small tactical nuclear weapons approach the power of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima during World War II.

Gottemoeller and Nunn praise Biden’s restraint in the face of Putin’s implied nuclear threats at the start of the war. Biden took no public steps to raise the US nuclear alert status. In addition, Washington postponed a routine test of the Minuteman II missile last month to avoid escalating tensions.

But in the short and long term, the world seems more in danger of a nuclear conflict as a result of Putin’s bumbling invasion of Ukraine and his nuclear threats, according to negotiators and arms control experts.

The weaknesses that the Russian invasion exposed in his conventional military could leave Putin feeling even more motivated in the future to threaten nuclear as his best weapon against US and NATO might.

Although Gottemoeller argues that Ukraine’s 1994 abandonment of its Soviet nuclear arsenal opened the door for three decades of international integration and growth, he said some governments could learn a different lesson from a nuclear Russia’s invasion of a denuclearized Ukraine: that they need nuclear weapons as a matter of survival.

Jeffrey Lewis, a gun control expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute, said the nuclear danger is increasing.

“And we can see which path would cause even greater risk. And certainly direct conflict with Russia by forces in NATO countries is a path to nuclear war.Lewis said.

Gottemoeller said she was encouraged by Putin’s public complaints last month about the criticism he has received. That indicated that she feels vulnerable to global condemnation for his invasion of Ukraine and worse if he breaks the taboo on a nuclear attack, she said.

Detonating a nuclear bomb in a country that Putin seeks to dominate, a country neighboring his own, would not be rational, Nunn pointed out, But he added that Putin’s announcement that he was going to place his nuclear arsenal on high alert was also unreasonable.

As a young assistant in Congress during the Cuban missile crisis, Nunn witnessed American officials and pilots in Europe awaiting orders to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. The danger is no longer as great as in that crisis in 1962, when the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba raised the threat of nuclear war with the United States, he recalled.

But the current risk of an intentional nuclear escalation is high enough to make a ceasefire in Ukraine crucial, Nunn stressed, the modern threat of cyberattacks increasing the risk of a launch by mistake. And it’s not clear how vulnerable the United States, and especially Russian systems, are to such hacks, he added.

Putin “He has been very reckless in his threats with nuclear weapons,” Nunn stressed. “And I think that has made it all the more dangerous, even a mistake.”

Source: Elcomercio

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