‘Will Russia use nuclear weapons in Ukraine?’
The issue of whether Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine is one of an increasingly pressing relevance. It is easy to forget that – after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – Ukraine was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world and held a third of former Soviet nuclear weapons and technology. Yet, whilst many political commentators and media outlets have liberally brandished the possibility of nuclear war in Eastern Europe, the overall likelihood that Putin would utilise weapons of this sort, is close to none.
Realist accounts of the international system have underscored the accepted wisdom that nuclear weapons act only as a deterrent – rather than a practical weapon – due to the principle of Mutually-Assured Destruction (enforced by institutions including NATO). However, when considering the actions of Vladimir Putin, media commentators and political pundits have been quick to argue that such rules don’t apply to leaders who don’t act rationally. That is, that Putin’s invasion into Ukraine indicates such a reckless and irrational mentality, that traditional deterrents for nuclear warfare are absent for him.
Regarding the Russian leadership’s rationality, it is vital to account for two elements: the context of Russian military action in the region, and the quality of Russian intelligence. First then, when we consider the series of relatively successful military operations in Eastern Europe – particularly in the Eastern Donbas and Crimean regions – it may come as little surprise that Ukraine was the natural next step for Putin. Russia received little more than a slap on the wrist (standard sanctions and being kicked from the G8) for the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Western powers – largely satisfied with the Maidan movement in the same year – were reluctant to initiate anything close to the response following the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Furthermore, given the attempts by powers in Europe to forgive and forget – such as Germany’s NordStream 1 and 2 pipelines – and the link between arms transfers and Trump’s first impeachment, it was very logical for Putin to assume that the West would not make a significant obstruction to a further campaign into Ukraine.
This is bolstered when we consider Russian intelligence. Much like the 2003 Iraq War, the strategy behind invasion was built from inaccurate intelligence – but which, if it would have been correct, made rational sense. Specifically, the FSB in 2018 were fatally inaccurate in their estimations about the Russian support within Ukraine, the extent of foreign willingness to support Ukraine, as well as their own military preparedness. Intelligence believed – despite even the Eastern Donbas regions mostly supporting independence from Moscow – that split presidential elections in Ukraine indicated at least a lack of strong resistance if Russia were to invade (such as pro-Russian Yanukovich gaining 49% of the vote in 2010).
Whilst many would easily critique this as being obviously false, it was in fact much harder to see. For example, whilst Zelensky’s election in 2019 grew a broad-church of support, his popularity indeed waned in the intervening years. Seeing Zelensky as a Chamberlain, it is convincing that Putin’s further military action would likely be met with weakness from the Ukrainian leadership. In much the same way, whilst it is difficult to forget the infamous claims of US intelligence services of Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, what is often overlooked is that if these claims were indeed accurate, then a preventative war against a hostile rising (nuclear) power made absolute sense under a realist system.
Given the context of previous operations in the region – and had Russian intelligence been more accurate – then we see that Putin’s invasion seems to be a perfectly rational calculation, given his aims.
