Russia’s Military and Political Views Regarding “Limited” Nuclear War

This article is not intended to address the potential for “strategic” nuclear war between Russia and any other party. That is a different subject entirely, and something for further examination elsewhere. What I want to discuss today is the most important ways in which the Russian military and political view of limited nuclear warfare differs greatly from that of its western counterparts.

It seems to be a growing element within western society to forget the lessons learned in the past with regards to military doctrines in general, and nuclear warfare in specific. Granted, those of us who grew up during the cold war with the Soviet Union all remember being intimately familiar with many aspects of warfare and military doctrine. It was part of our cultural identity at the time, and 80s kids used to be able to rattle off the real-world stats of various jet fighters and tanks like little walking Jane’s manuals.

Today, that has changed. The recent generations haven’t really had much to do with a proper nation-state versus nation-state war since the Vietnam War. Iraq, Afghanistan and the like do serve as some examples, but more for the idea of restrained warfare as opposed to actual “all-out” war between so-called “great Powers.”. The world just hasn’t seen much of that since World War Two, and so people have grown up ignorant of the truth of military history, strategy, and technology, especially as they relate to national doctrines.

And that is a problem, because such misunderstanding results in opinions and positions being held wildly that are so far off the mark of reality as to be dangerous.

The most dangerous one I see lately is the misunderstanding of nuclear warfare, technology, and doctrine.

The misconceptions abound, and are almost too many to list effectively. Literally almost every facet of public idea and awareness is wrong, and bears no resemblance to the factual reality of the world.

I’m sure you’ve seen it. And quite a bit of it comes from one fundamental misjudgement, which is the assumption that other nuclear powers such as China and Russia view nuclear warfare and weapons through the same lens as we do in the west. And that is a very dangerous thing, because to hold that belief means you will make decisions based on a falsehood.

Take the old and outdated idea of MAD, or “Mutually Assured Destruction.” Most people assume that this is some accepted worldwide standard, and a doctrinal tenet that nations use to make their decisions. But that has never been true. In fact, the idea of MAD was never even made an official part of any national doctrine, not even in the United States where the idea originated. MAD, for all its popularity as an idea, was never more than that, an idea. It was an intellectual and academic position on the issue of global strategic nuclear war, but in fact it had little or nothing to do with military doctrines or political policies anywhere. Furthermore, such theories have nothing at all to do with the scope of nonstrategic, or “tactical” nuclear warfare, in which such levels of global destruction do not take place.

And besides, MAD never was considered an effective idea by national leadership to begin with.

A Short History Of Mutually Assured Destruction

The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) dates from the 1930s when it was assumed that large bomber fleets would decimate one-another’s cities, fleets against which there was no defense. But, World War Two proved that both active and passive defenses (fighters, AAA fire, barrage balloons, shelters, evacuations, dispersals, etc.) could thwart the endeavor.

So, in the early days of the Cold War, when bombers were the main delivery system, it was clear MAD could still be beaten by active and passive defenses. Only with the emergence of long-range missile technology does the idea MAD come into play, although it was never much more than an academic exercise. The concept got so much traction among the population because it was primarily used by Western politicians as an excuse to scale down civil defense (you don’t need fallout shelters as the enemy won’t attack our cities since we keep his cities hostage). It sounded good and eased fears, but that’s about it.

The thing is, military planners never intended to hold enemy cities hostage as it makes no sense. You destroy the enemy’s nuclear weapons so he can’t hit you, not his cities… cities do not shoot back. You only target enemy cities AFTER his nuclear stockpile has been reduced or destroyed. The real doctrines of nuclear war strategy were counterforce and countervalue, not MAD. In short, a counterforce strike is directed against an adversary’s military capabilities, while a countervalue strike is directed against an adversary’s civilian-centered institutions. These are the real doctrinal ways decisions regarding nuclear warfare would be made.

Now, back in May of 1962, US Secretary of Defense McNamara already told a NATO assembly at Athens that hitting enemy cities is counterproductive. He was, for once, right. The cold truth is that city-busting is not scary to a government and never was.

What does a government really fear most? Losing control. If the enemy hits your military bases and leaves your cities intact, you’ll have millions of hungry people screaming for food. The lack of food and other resources coupled with reduced numbers of military personnel could make it difficult to retain control and a revolt or a revolution might be the push citizens decide to make, and in the end such a thing leads to complete societal collapse and a descent into some sort of Mad Max vision of the world.

If, on the other hand, the enemy destroys your cities, the survivors will be traumatized and lethargic. There will be fewer mouths to feed and more troops to control the civilian population. The chances of a revolution are slim. Once the apathy subsides, the survivors will have increased faith in their own government and increased hatred for the enemy, World War Two made this very clear. Now, recent political and cultural changes have made it quite apparent that such is no longer truly the case, but it still holds a place in government thinking.

Add to that idea the governmental realization that most people in the cities do not immediately contribute to the war effort (no food production, no natural resources and no heavy industry), and thus the loss of a city is not as big a deal as it might look at first glance, it might very well turn out to be a boon. that is a very cold and calculating way to look at things, but that is what governments are: cold, and calculating. “The People” don’t mean anything to government entities beyond their capacity as troops or as producers. All that matters is national power and position on the global scoreboard.

The conclusion is that in a modern-day scenario, just as it was during the Cold War, MAD is not believable at all, and never was for starters. Not from a strictly military perspective. If anything, hitting each others cities makes it easier for governments to retain control and continue the conflict.

The reality of MAD was simply that it sounded good and made people feel a little better. Like almost everything else your government will tell you in the midst of any crisis. “We have it all under control…”

Real Nuclear War Doesn’t involve MAD

What is even worse than assuming that MAD is the policy of the western nuclear powers is assuming that the same goes for our eastern counterparts. Because the truth couldn’t be further from that mark.

Especially when it comes to that most important, and most ignored, aspect of nuclear warfare: Limited nuclear war. Also called “tactical” or “battlefield” nuclear war, the weapons designed to be a part of the tactical class are actually very low-yield and short range. They are not meant to provide the theoretical retaliatory deterrence of the famous strategic nuclear weapons we always hear about such as the ICBMs and the nuclear missile submarines.

No, the biggest and most important distinction between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons is that tactical ones are actually intended to be used in the field. Limited nuclear war is the real nuclear war that we will see fought, long before that strategic endgame retaliation comes into play.

Russia’s nonstrategic, or “tactical,” nuclear weapons are designed to achieve military success against a technologically superior opponent on the actual field of battle. They are unlikely to be deployed in Ukraine against Ukrainian forces… at least so long as those forces remain the technologically equal forces that they are.

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, even at the height of the USSR’s power, they knew that there was no going toe-to-toe against the combined conventional forces of all of NATO. It was just numerically impossible. To counter that, there were two general ideas at play within the Soviet military doctrine.

One was a defense-in-depth approach, which used the vast stretches of territory between Moscow and NATO lines as a sort of “buffer zone.” NATO forces would have a very long way to advance over that terrain, all of it fortified against that advance the entire way. Ukraine was a large component of that buffer zone, and other than industry that was the region’s primary purpose militarily. 

The second idea in conjunction with that buffer zone was for such an area to be used as a battlefield for the deployment of nuclear weapons against conventional forces. Yes, that means using nuclear warheads against columns of tanks and supply lines and forward operating bases. That is the singular purpose for which those weapons were designed and deployed.

So, when people talk about “NATO steamrolling” over Russian forces, yeah, they would. And they haven’t tried because they are aware of what would be used to stop that advance. The weapons we are talking about today are the ones made specifically for that purpose, to make such a massed conventional attack unlikely as NATO leadership understands that such a thing leads to a guaranteed nuclear escalation.

Another big misconception regards the necessary authority to release nuclear weapons for use, and everyone defaults to some stylized, and distinctly western, idea of coded orders and safeguards and agreements between top authorities and all that… but no one seems to remember that such barriers against the use of tactical nuclear weapons are much, much lower, especially in Russia as opposed to the west. And again, the Russian mindset towards such things is not like the western one. Where we would see useless retaliation as… well, as useless, the same cant be said for the Russian way of thinking on the issue. Just as it is in Asian cultures, appearances and honor and such have a much greater importance. And that is one reason why the Russians have something western nations look at with horror: a way to launch their weapons after they are already all dead.

The Perimeter system, also known as “DeadHand,” is a Cold War–era automatic or nuclear weapons control system that was constructed by the Soviet Union. But, the system remains in use today in the post-Soviet Russian Federation, and we are not aware of whether or not it has been modified. An example of fail-deadly deterrence, it can initiate the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by sending a pre-entered highest-authority order from the General Staff of the Armed Forces to command posts and individual silos if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity, and pressure sensors even with the commanding elements fully destroyed. 

Think about that one. A “pre-entered highest authority order.” meaning there goes that need to get the second in command to agree to anything. He already agreed beforehand, so…

By most accounts, the system is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated only during times of crisis; however, as of 2009, it was said to remain fully functional and able to serve its purpose when needed.  Accounts differ on whether the system, once activated by the country’s leadership, will launch missiles fully automatically or if there is still a human approval process involved, with newer sources suggesting the latter. The key point to remember is that the system exists as a fully automated system to launch nuclear weapons in the event that there are no Russians left to give such an order. Modifying such a system to be overridden by a single button, or even worse as an alarm that must be regularly shut off… well, such a mod would be easy to put in place.

Anyway, “Perimeter” is an alternative system for all units armed with nuclear weapons. It is meant to be a backup launch-order system, in case the key components of the chain-of-command system and the link to the Strategic Missile Forces are destroyed by a decapitation first strike.

To ensure its functionality the system was designed to be mostly automatic, with the ability to decide an adequate retaliatory strike on its own with no (or minimal) human involvement in the event of an all-out attack.

According to Vladimir Yarynich, a developer of the system, this system also served as a buffer against hasty decisions based on unverified information by the country’s leadership. Upon receiving warnings about a nuclear attack, the leader could activate the system, and then wait for further developments, assured by the fact that even the destruction of all key personnel with the authority to command the response to the attack could still not prevent a retaliatory strike.

Now, take a moment to think about the mentality involved to create such a system. It literally serves no purpose in saving the Russains, or winning any war, or any of that. It literally assumes that all is lost, the Russains have already been defeated by a nuclear strike… so really, it is just a big “fuck you” to the enemies of Russia, and indeed to the entire world. They just wanted to be able to say, “If we can’t win then no one wins!”

And these are the leaders that we think wouldn’t use nuclear weapons on the battlefield for moral reasons? And that isn’t to say their reasons are immoral, it is more than that. It is saying that their entire concept of morality is as foreign to us as ours is to them. And that is the biggest reason why trying to apply our reasoning and thought processes onto the Russian leadership is a huge mistake. They simply do not think like we do, and so to understand what they will do, we have to see things as they see them.

They don’t see nuclear weapons use the way we do. Especially when it comes to how Vladimir Putin sees them.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s nonstrategic nuclear arsenal has come to play an increasingly important role in both its defensive and offensive plans. The definition of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Russian parlance covers weapons with a range of less than 5,500 km. Tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) are a subcategory of nonstrategic nuclear weapons that are limited in range, typically to 500 km.

Think about that. A 500 kilometer range is extremely short, and couldn’t possibly have any value except on a battlefield.

Most such weapons are in the low kiloton (kt) range. For example, the nuclear capable SSC-8 carries a 10kt warhead. Notably, some Russian missiles which fall into the category of strategic weapons, such as the Layner submarine-launched ballistic missile, are also capable of carrying low-yield warheads suggesting sub-strategic missions. Though it has been suggested that unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is willing to resort to nuclear first use and has lower nuclear thresholds, this is not quite right. 

The truth is that the Soviets always incorporated the early use of battlefield nuclear weapons into their planning for a war in Europe, as we discussed above, to use against an overwhelming conventional force in the field before such a force could reach Russia. That is precisely what they were designed to be used for. So these days, modern Russian thinking differs from its Soviet predecessor mostly in that it considers the possibility of limited nuclear use as part of efforts to inflict “unacceptable damage” upon an opponent within the context of a coercive strategy, to quote their doctrine exactly. 

This is dissimilar to the Soviets who, though they held out the possibility of avoiding strategic exchanges between the Soviet Union and the US, assumed that even tactical nuclear use in Europe would assume catastrophic proportions. For Russia today, nonstrategic nuclear weapons are a controllable part of a framework for achieving both battlefield results and war termination.

To put that in more clear language, the Russian leadership and military sees the use of tactical nuclear weapons as an acceptable battlefield strategy to win an otherwise conventional war. And they see such “limited” nuclear war as being quite winnable and tolerable.

The Earlier Warnings Were Right After All

In 2014, Russia made changes to its military doctrine stating: “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, and also in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation involving the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is under threat.”

This was an upward departure from Russia’s 2000 doctrine which stated that nuclear weapons could be used “in situations critical for the national security of the Russian Federation”. That older doctrinal stance basically gave them the legal right to use nuclear weapons against any threat to “national security.” And who do we know who gets to decide what that is? 

The raising of the nuclear threshold was further underscored in Russia’s 2020 publication on ‘The Basic Principles of the State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence’, which specified that Russia would resort to nuclear weapons if it or its allies were attacked with WMD, if it detected a launch of ballistic missiles against its own or allied territory, if its nuclear C2 structures were attacked, or if the state’s very existence was threatened by the use of conventional weapons by an opponent.

It would seem as if they had made it more difficult to justify use… However, analysts have questioned two points. The first is whether Russia’s definition of WMD includes capabilities that figures like Sergei Shoigu have described as approaching WMD levels of destruction (which has included precision strike capabilities and, more recently, cyber attacks on a certain scale).

The second bone of contention has been the wording of the fourth clause of the 2020 policy document. The state and society are not differentiated, meaning that a threat to the state’s control over Russia potentially meets the nuclear criterion even if Russian society is not under a directly catastrophic attack. There is also a semantic question; does the clause refer to the use of conventional weapons on a scale that could destroy the Russian state’s effective functionality (the massed NATO ‘aerospace attack’ on which the Russians have long fixated) or does it refer to the use of conventional weapons at any scale in a political context where Russian leaders believe the existence of the state is imperilled?

And, perhaps most importantly, who decides what the definition of the “Russian State” is? Many would suggest that Vladimir Putin currently sees himself as the embodiment of the state, and so…

This ambiguity may well be by design given that other publications like Russia’s 2017 naval doctrine refer to the role of nuclear weapons as a tool to be used at all phases of conflict. Let that sink in for a moment.  This does not necessarily mean that nuclear strikes will occur at every stage of a conflict but rather that ambiguity regarding possible use can create the conditions for conventional escalation and that the calibrated use of nonstrategic nuclear weapons can end a losing conflict on acceptable terms. Sounds quite a bit like what we are approaching in Ukraine, if the west continues to pile on the pressure. 

That said, it is likely that Russia would only use nuclear weapons in extremis should, for example, its forces face a decisive defeat at the hands of NATO or its control over what it deems its own territory be jeopardised. Notably, this can include freshly seized territory that has been de jure incorporated into Russia. The annexed regions of the Ukrainian Donbass are now, under Russian law, an integral part of Russia, no different that Moscow itself. For another example, we might consider the past nuclear threats issued by President Vladimir Putin over the seizure of Crimea, which prompted concerns that Russia would resort to nuclear weapons to dissuade Western involvement. And dissuade such involvement it did.

What That Means Today

Okay, with the possibilities addressed, we can look at the most likely positions. For most situations, it appears to be a matter of policy that nuclear weapons are reserved for what Russia would term regional or global wars. Regional wars are defined as an attack by a state or coalition of states seeking a major political goal. Global wars would be fought between Russia and a coalition of states seeking to end Russia’s sovereignty. The smallest category of wars is a local war, which is fought with one or several smaller states for limited political aims. Right now, the Ukraine conflict could be seen as categorized to be a local war, not a regional one, but that boundary is being muddied by the increasing involvement of regional and global actors. A “coalition of states seeking a major political goal” could easily be deemed to include the European NATO nations at this point, acting as they are in defense of a nation outside their alliance. 

The desire by all parties (except Ukraine, of course) to keep this conflict as a local one is paramount, as there are no scenarios in which TNW could or would be used in a local conflict, as they are ‘for general warfighting as a last-ditch effort in cases where the military is losing a war and the state is under threat’. They are thus unlikely to be used in Ukraine, except in the unlikely scenario that Russian forces are routed to the point that Ukraine can possibly retake the newly annexed territories, or Crimea.

The fact that Russia is willing to contemplate nuclear first use is not Russia’s primary departure from Soviet practice. The Soviets never had a meaningful ‘no first use’ policy and the current Russian threshold for nuclear use is still probably quite high. What is genuinely new about Russian doctrine is that it includes options for limited and flexible nuclear use. While the Soviet Union expected to begin an existential conflict with the large-scale use of TNW and to escalate to full-scale strategic use should its homeland be attacked, its leaders broadly dismissed the notion of limited nuclear war. Soviet thinkers were willing to conceive of a geographically limited but militarily unlimited nuclear war encompassing Europe but not the US or Soviet homelands but scoffed at the idea that nuclear weapons could be used in small numbers for tasks like signalling resolve. But that is decidedly not the position of the current Russian leadership.

Figures such as General MA Milshtein and Major General Simonain wrote of the Schlessinger doctrine – which aimed to give the US president politically usable limited nuclear options – as being at best unrealistic. At worst, it was considered a cover for preparations to mount a full-scale pre-emptive attack, the only type of nuclear war the Soviets could really contemplate. By contrast, contemporary Russian nuclear planning involves selective strikes against targets in adversary homelands, coupled with the use of TNW against fielded forces, as a means of terminating a war on favourable terms. Ironically, then, Russia’s thinking on nuclear warfare has evolved into something not dissimilar to Schlessinger’s.

And when you look at the situation as it sits in Ukraine today, without some balance of power shift, such as a withdrawal of US support for Ukraine, we are coming perilously close to meeting that threshold of having to “terminate a war on favorable terms.”

But even now, at the writing of this article, such a withdrawal of support is exactly the move being made by the new United States administration. It would seem that it could p[ossibly be restored should Ukraine agree to give up its mineral resources to the United States, but time will tell. One clear message sent with that action is that someone is going to get those resources… and it won’t be Ukraine. But I digress, that is a subject for a different article.

The Balance of Power

Several factors have intertwined to make Russia’s doctrine at least partially credible. The first is that certain Russian capabilities can target specific non-nuclear members of NATO but not others. It is notable, for example, that Russian nuclear sabre rattling since at least the Zapad 2009 exercise has involved simulated Iskander short-range ballistic missile strikes on Warsaw. The Iskander can strike Poland or Germany from Kaliningrad or Belarus but cannot hit the UK or France, much less the US. This is useful for the conduct of limited strikes as it solves the discrimination problem, ensuring that a nuclear-armed member of NATO does not misperceive a launch as an attack on its own homeland. If an early warning system such as the US space-based infrared satellite system detects an infrared signature consistent with a short-range ballistic missile launch, there is less likelihood of a misunderstanding. The use of nuclear-capable cruise missiles is also useful in this regard as smaller missiles that are limited in range and yield can be distinguished from strategic nuclear weapons.

The second factor is the increased accuracy of Russian missiles. For example, the Iskander has an accuracy error radius of 10 m. Historically, due to missile inaccuracy, destroying hardened targets required the use of high-yield warheads at altitudes that caused significant fallout. This meant that one could not selectively target military facilities because the fallout would likely kill many civilians and trigger full-scale exchanges. More accurate missiles can generate sufficient pressure per square inch to destroy military targets such as hardened command posts or hardened air shelters with low-yield warheads even if detonated at relatively high altitudes. This in turn lowers the fallout from a nuclear strike to negligible levels and raises the possibility of ‘clean’ nuclear use against military rather than civilian assets. In this context, limited nuclear use as a means of coercion may appear less outlandish.

Simply put, the accuracy to avoid excess civilian casualties actually makes the use of such weapons more likely because there is less risk of triggering a full-scale escalation than there was in previous decades.

A nuclear weapon imparts four effects upon its target area: thermal radiation; blast; nuclear radiation; and a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. Detonating a nuclear weapon at higher altitudes results in greater effects over a wide area, but lower fallout from radioactive debris. A surface detonation will lead to greater fallout as dust and debris are sucked into the blast where they combine with radioactive material before returning to the ground. The altitude at which a nuclear weapon is detonated is also inversely correlated with the pressure per square inch that it creates near its detonation point. For example, an air burst 100 kt weapon would create a fireball with a radius of around 1,110 m – a person 8 km from the blast would receive negligible injuries. If the same yield weapon was detonated on the ground its radius would be about 6.5 km, but it may spread nuclear particles much further leading to further complications. Both the blast wave and overpressure will cause damage to people, buildings and vehicles in much the same way as conventional explosives, although with much greater force. The thermal radiation created by the fireball can reach temperatures of 8,000 °C and last for seconds, as opposed to milliseconds. The most lasting and unpredictable damage done by a nuclear device is a function of its fallout not the blast.

Again for simplicity, this means that such use of nuclear weapons would cause less lasting damage than previous generations of weapons, meaning it is much less “unthinkable” to use them.

The Military Value of Battlefield Nuclear Weapons

The value of nuclear weapons as a battlefield asset has been questioned, with some experts concluding that a key lesson of the Cold War was their lack of utility. For example, US Army studies concluded that a 1 kt warhead would need to detonate within 90 m of a tank to inflict serious damage. This conclusion has been reinforced by academic studies on the potential use of TNW in the context of an Indo-Pakistani war, which suggest a 5 kt Pakistani weapon used against an Indian armoured regiment could knock out 13 tanks. Some have argued that optimising detonation altitudes to maximise prompt radiation rather than overpressure yields better results, though this is disputed and would increase fallout levels and civilian casualties – thus defeating the logic of limited use.

Other analysts, including some Soviet ones, concluded that tanks provide effective protection against light and penetrating radiation. However, there are certain potential theatres where multiple low-yield weapons could be used with minimal civilian casualties and maximum military effect.

Using NUKEMAP, an online tool that has been used in a lot of peer-reviewed research, we estimate that the airburst detonation of single 10 kt weapons in both the Suwalki gap and parts of the north of Norway yields civilian casualties only in the hundreds. Both areas are narrow – necessitating the concentration of NATO forces and thus maximising nuclear weapons effects.

Second, TNW have much wider areas of effect against artillery, infantry and soft-skinned logistical vehicles, which is why targeting these assets in order to isolate the tanks of the Soviet first echelon was their role in US doctrine. Now, when it comes to the modern reshaping of battlefields with more infantry and less tank regiments, such tactics are even more effective.

Finally, longer-range nonstrategic nuclear weapons have excellent utility against airbases and command posts across Europe which, as mentioned, can now be contemplated without the escalatory effect of large-scale civilian casualties.

The Russian Military Becoming A More Nuclear-Centric Force

This article broadly outlines the current Russian perspective of tactical nuclear weapons and how it has been formed. However, it is difficult to assess how the Ukraine war will shape the Russian armed forces, even assuming there is some Russian victory rather than a full-scale outbreak of world war. 

One possibility is that if Russia cannot fully reconstitute the conventional military power that it is expending in Ukraine quick enough to address the coming conflicts around the world, it will become increasingly reliant on its nonstrategic nuclear arsenal and could lower its nuclear threshold. This was recently proven true when President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons, a move that followed then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russian territory with American-supplied longer-range missiles.

The new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. The U.S. is a nuclear power that is supporting conventional attacks on Russia, so…

This has implications for NATO deterrence and force design. At the level of deterrence, it may be relevant to consider the integration of nuclear deterrence with warfighting, rather than maintaining that nuclear use fundamentally changes the nature of a conflict. Especially if an opponent feels that military ends can be achieved with nuclear means. If this eventuality were to occur, it could reshape many current force design assumptions.

A nuclear-centric Russian force structure would also have significant implications for European force design. To use one example, the debate regarding the growing utility of light infantry and artillery against tanks is effectively inverted in a nuclear context where tanks are one of the few survivable tools on a nuclear battlefield. If Russia’s armed forces devolve back into a nuclear-centric force, this will significantly reshape many present assumptions.

The Bigger Picture

Finally, there is one key piece of information that is almost always left out of these types of discussions. An elephant in the room so uncomfortable and clearly disastrous that people are determined to remain willfully ignorant of its existence rather than have to come to terms with the inevitable truth. And that elephant can be described with one simple sentence.

This isn’t about Ukraine.

If this was just a planned, local war by Russia to make a quick territorial grab like in 2014 with Crimea, well, we all wouldn’t be having these talks about nuclear weapons doctrine and use. The truth is that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was just the opening gambit of a larger cooperative effort by the leaders of the BRICS alliance to do… exactly what they clearly stated they were going to do just three weeks before the invasion began.

Yes, Russia and China together, clearly and publicly made a joint statement that they were about to begin a campaign to “end western hegemony,” to “restructure the international rules-based order” into a multipolar one, and eliminate “U.S. Dollar dominance as a world reserve currency.”

Now, I don’t know what kind of history or diplomacy you studied in school, but from what I remember, those are fightin’ words.

It is no coincidence that the invasion of Ukraine was begun just a few days afterward, nor is it just happenstance that Iran got all its proxy groups fired up to cause war in the Middle East just a short time after joining the BRICS alliance. And soon, it won’t be an unrelated occurrence when China drops the hammer of Taiwan for a little forced “reunification.”

But that article was written years ago, and you can find it here. For those who prefer a video… Today, we are just here to dispel the myths and misconceptions surrounding the potential for Russian nuclear weapons use should things not go too well on the Eastern Front.

Where Things Really Stand

The truth rarely paints a desirable picture. And nowhere else is that the case as it is with the idea of a nuclear power deciding to go on a run of territorial expansion. Much of the talk out there centers around moral ideas and classic “good versus evil” rhetoric, which is comforting for most people to contemplate. People like to believe that the “good guys” always win, and that “crime doesn’t pay,” and all that other rot. Well, those things are all well and good when debating things in your freshman ethics class, but out in the real world there is that way things should be and the way things actually are, and you ignore the latter to your peril.

Pretending that Russia isn’t a threat, or that they would never use nuclear weapons, or that they are too stupid to understand what they are doing, well, such opinions are themselves the height of stupidity. All of the people who are currently working to reshape and/or destroy the world as we know it right now, well, they are winning. Trump? Winning. Putin? Also winning. Elon Musk? Yeah, he is winning.

Something people fail to grasp is that morality is meaningless when it comes to whether or not a person or group wins or loses at something. All that matters is whether they succeed at it or not. Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine morally abhorrent? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean jack when it comes to the military and political realities of the situation. Making “Putin bad” memes and vandalizing Tesla Cybertrucks doesn’t help, nor does it change anything. In fact, making your political and voting decisions based on such things is the biggest mistake that you can make.

The answer is to educate yourself, not just on military capabilities and doctrines, but on history and basic human nature when it comes to these things. When it comes to the international playing field, the strong take from the weak. That sucks, but that has been the norm for the vast tens of thousands of years of human history when it comes to civilization. In fact, warfare and the conquering of each other, well, that is what human history is. After World War Two, we tried to change that. We tried to impose an artificial system of peace and rules-based order upon all nations, but such a thing doesn’t scratch that expansionist itch that lies in the heart of every ambitious ruler.

Simply put, trying to conquer the world is what we do. And the only typing that actually stops military expansion is opposing military force.

But we live in the time of vast nuclear proliferation now. Not only are there “great powers” with such weapons, but there are an increasing number of “lesser” powers who are now seeking to enter that arena. Especially given the display being put on in Ukraine right now. The entire world is seeing the truth of what happens when you give up your nuclear weapons in return for security under the force of law… a force that isn’t quite as strong or as immutable as many would have us believe.

Nations are watching. And, the biggest picture of what a Russian win in Ukraine means is that it proves to the world that western “rules-based” security guarantees are toothless, and it proves that one can try and conquer their neighbors again.

That is what a multi-polar world looks like, and that is the real plan behind all of this. That is the world that powers such as Russia and China want to see rise again, as it always was in the past. And, perhaps, the United States might join them.

This fight is literally the opening to the next global struggle for dominance, to determine who gets to sit in that throne for the following decades. And that fight will be no-holds-barred because it has to be. The world is coming into a period of climate instability and resource scarcity, and this fight is a fight for the survival of nations.

Nuclear weapons can, and will, be used.