... asymmetrically, a strategy that has often proven successful in the past
Over the past few years, public attention in Russia and abroad has focused on an unprecedented debate within Russian expert and political circles regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the context of the armed conflict in Ukraine. In 2024, this debate centered on amendments to Russia’s official Military Doctrine on nuclear deterrence, which were promulgated in November of that year. The issue gained even greater ...
55 years ago, the Soviet Union ratified the NPT
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), ratified by our country on November 24, 1969, is often referred to as the cornerstone or the foundation of the modern system of international relations. In many respects, this description holds true. A vivid illustration of this ...
... Kiev actively lobbied for it. On the Russian side, warnings about a possible response were also transparent and clear, including conventional missile and nuclear options. Changing the nuclear doctrine towards expanding the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons has also been discussed for a long time.
The new stage has not changed the situation on the battlefield, but has opened the way for a transition to new stages of escalation with a minimum of incentives to reduce it.
The basic scenario ...
... potential adversaries unaware of actual red lines, thus preventing them from making reckless moves that could lead to a nuclear war. This approach is fully shared, for example, by the United States, which does not specify the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons, reserving the right to decide what constitutes the exceptional circumstances under which it would use nuclear weapons based on a broader situation.
Russia does not reject ambiguity in nuclear deterrence either. For example, the doctrine ...
... be fully extended to deter non-nuclear threats to Belarus from, for instance, NATO members. This “umbrella” has been reinforced by the stationing of Russian nuclear arms in Belarus and joint exercises to practice the deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons. These changes are clearly warranted, given the situation on the ground (and in the air). At the same time, cooperation within the Union State in non-strategic nuclear weapons is closely linked to the escalation of military confrontation ...
....
In this regard, lowering the threshold for the use of atomic weapons and expanding the number of situations in which Moscow allows this step is long overdue. Just as the wording of the previous version of the doctrine, which stated that the use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear conflict was only possible in the event of a threat to Russia’s very existence as a state, was no longer in line with global realities. Now this threshold has been lowered, and the use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear ...
... major war as a real possibility gradually shifted from the tabloids to respectable analysis. While such a topic had been considered inappropriate, ignoring it became increasingly difficult as the signs of general disorder multiplied.
Many agreed that nuclear weapons prevent a world war, i.e., a direct clash between the great powers. The prospect of total destruction, or at of least unacceptable damage, still restrains them from the sort of behavior seen in the first half of the 20th century. But history ...
The presence of colossal stockpiles of nuclear weapons in two or three great military powers reduces the likelihood of a general war in its traditional sense
The presence of colossal stockpiles of nuclear weapons in two or three great military powers reduces the likelihood of a general war ...
... unnoticed for another decade. Everything changed on March 23, 1983, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to develop a missile defense system with space-based components (“Star Wars”), which aimed to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete”. This proposal translated into a massive scientific and technical effort as well as testing of a wide range of weapons and command-control-information systems.
So long as the results of the program were unclear,...
... dangerous due to the involvement of non-nuclear-weapon states in the preparation and planning of US nuclear operations. The essence of “extended deterrence” is changing: “nuclear umbrellas” are being replaced by supporting the possible use of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear forces. This trend is particularly evident in the interaction between Washington and Seoul, which established the Nuclear Consultative Group and approved (on the margins of the NATO summit) the Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence ...
