The solution was found in the moderator of the meeting: Professor Sergei Karaganov, who for more than a year has been fiercely insisting on the need to launch a preventive nuclear strike on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Against this backdrop, Putin, despite issuing appalling threats to the West, should have looked reasonable and moderate.
Karaganov himself did not disappoint. He both demanded that Putin put a nuclear pistol to the head of the West and insisted that Putin, like God, bring down a “rain of fire” on modern Sodom and Gomorrah. The Russian leader could only pointedly
brush aside such extremism: he repeated that he did not want to engage in nuclear rhetoric and did not even want to think about using nuclear weapons.
However, in the end, Putin began to discuss the prospects of exchanging strikes with the US in the event of a limited nuclear war on the European continent. He argued that after the Europeans are obliterated (obviously in this nuclear war), the US may decide against using its strategic nuclear forces against Russia.
In other words, Putin tried to intimidate the Europeans with the prospect of the entire continent’s being wiped out during a limited nuclear war (incidentally, he finally admitted that Moscow has a much larger number of tactical nuclear weapons than the US). At the same time, he hinted that the US would not risk using its strategic nuclear weapons and, therefore, Russia would not suffer in a limited nuclear war.
It is obvious, however, that the strategy of rhetorical deterrence is reaching the end of the road, and Putin’s threats frighten the West less and less. And this in itself poses a danger.
The Kremlin is faced with a choice: either forget about nuclear blackmail forever (which essentially deprives Moscow of its main foreign policy argument) or follow the insane recommendations of Karaganov and go for nuclear escalation.
Putin said in St Petersburg that he is following Russia’s nuclear doctrine and, in his view, there is no need to use nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, he considered it necessary to add that the doctrine is a “living instrument” and did not rule out making changes to it. He also said that there is no need to resume nuclear testing at this point. The key word here is “at this point.” Basically, Putin laid out the first stages of nuclear escalation, which can be set in motion if necessary.
First, there would be a pointed change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, possibly including a clause on a preventive nuclear strike during a local conflict (Nikolai Patrushev, when he was secretary of Russia’s Security Council,
proposed this back in 2009). This would be followed by an announcement that, according to Russian information, the US intends to conduct nuclear tests, and that Russia should also carry them out as a preventive measure. Such an escalation would inevitably lead to a direct nuclear showdown.
Unfortunately, to prevent such a scenario there are no other ways than NATO, and mainly the US, bringing back traditional, “hard” nuclear deterrence. And this is already underway. For example, recently Pranay Vaddi, the senior director for arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation at the US National Security Council, explicitly
indicated that the US does not rule out seriously building up its nuclear arsenal, as China and Russia are “forcing the US and our close allies and partners to prepare for a world where nuclear competition occurs without numerical constraints.”
And on June 16, the UK newspaper
The Telegraph published an interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in which he said the bloc must show its nuclear arsenal to the world while calling for transparency to be used as a deterrent. Clearly in reference to the Russian nuclear exercises,Stoltenberg reported that there were live consultations between members on taking missiles out of storage and placing them on standby: “I will not go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues.”
So, a nuclear arms race is once again becoming a reality. Given the Kremlin’s nuclear threats, this is still not the worst-case scenario.