PUTIN´S NUCLEAR THREATS CANNOT BE IGNORED / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL

Putin’s nuclear threats cannot be ignored

The Russian leader is trying to intimidate western nations but he is also desperate and cornered

Gideon Rachman

© James Ferguson

We have now reached the point in the Ukraine war that western policymakers have both hoped for and worried about for many months.

Even as they made the decision to supply Ukraine with the missiles that changed the course of the war, US officials were aware of the double-edged nature of their choice. 

As one of them put it back in May: “The better the Ukrainians do, the more dangerous the situation will become.”

That moment of heightened opportunity, and heightened danger, has arrived. 

After a series of Russian defeats, Vladimir Putin has called up more troops and once again threatened to use nuclear weapons.

Many western pundits think Putin is bluffing. 

But policymakers are more cautious. 

This weekend Jake Sullivan, US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, reiterated that the Kremlin’s nuclear warnings are “a matter that we have to take deadly seriously”.

The possibility of nuclear war has always loomed large in the White House’s calculations. 

And that is a good thing, given that miscalculation could lead to Armageddon.

Those who insist that Putin is bluffing argue that going nuclear would be obvious folly. 

A tactical nuclear strike against Ukraine would contaminate the region he claims to be liberating — and quite probably Russia itself. 

It would also invite retaliation from Nato. 

Even more so, if a Nato member was attacked.

But Putin is cornered. He is also immoral and reckless. 

Using a nuclear weapon is clearly not his first choice. 

But it might be his last roll of the dice — if the alternative was humiliation and defeat.

In a desperate situation, Putin might hope that the use of nuclear weapons would be such a profound shock to the west that it would force talks and concessions. 

The theory that using nuclear weapons can force an enemy to back down is part of Russian military doctrine and is known as “escalate to de-escalate”. 

The US has warned Putin that using nuclear weapons would have “catastrophic” consequences for Russia. 

But in Russia — just as in the west — there are many who insist that the other side is bluffing.

Even those western policymakers who take Putin’s nuclear threats very seriously remain determined that Russia must not be allowed to use nuclear blackmail to force an end to western support for Ukraine. 

That leaves policymakers walking a perilous tightrope. 

The aim is to provide enough support for Ukraine to allow Kyiv to defeat Russian forces without tempting the Kremlin to go nuclear.

The difficulty with that policy is that it struggles to answer the question, how exactly do we see this war ending?

There is much talk in the west about the need for a Russian defeat. But by this few mean unconditional surrender. 

Rather, the war will have to end with a negotiated peace, either with Putin’s regime or its successor.

The Russian president’s war aims have already shrunk in a promising manner. 

He started with the objective of toppling Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in Kyiv — but now defines the goal as the “liberation” of Donbas.

The US and its western allies say that Russia must be forced back even further — to at least behind the lines from where it invaded. 

The Ukrainian government, meanwhile, insists that Russia must be expelled from all occupied Ukrainian land. 

That includes the parts of Donbas that Russia already occupied before the February 24 invasion as well as Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.

It is hard to imagine Putin accepting even the less hardline western position, since that would mean he had sacrificed thousands of lives for no gain at all. 

With Ukrainian forces advancing, Kyiv is also in no hurry to get to the negotiating table. 

The heroic status currently enjoyed by Zelenskyy — combined with revulsion towards Russia — also make it difficult for any western government to pressure Kyiv to negotiate now.

Might Putin just fold his tent and leave? 

There are examples of major powers suffering defeat in war, without using their nuclear weapons. 

It happened with the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. 

But in each case the US and the USSR left behind friendly, albeit shortlived, regimes in Saigon and Kabul. 

And neither Washington or Moscow saw those bitter wars as existential.

With the Ukraine war going badly and would-be conscripts resisting the draft, the spectre beginning to haunt Russia is that of 1917, when military defeat led to revolution. 

But the subsequent Bolshevik coup, civil war and Stalinist dictatorship underline that internal turmoil in Russia brings its own dangers.

A happier, non-Russian parallel might be Argentina in 1982, when defeat in the Falklands war discredited the military regime that launched the invasion. 

The junta collapsed and democracy took hold. 

But the Argentine junta was less robust than Putin’s regime and it did not have a nuclear option.

Many in the west are nonetheless hoping for some variant of the Argentine outcome — a defeat for Putin, followed by the emergence of a more palatable and pliant Russian government. 

That would be wonderful, no doubt. 

But hoping for something does not make it more likely. 

And most of the alternative outcomes range between bleak and catastrophic.