As Ukraine\u2019s armed forces routinely shell Russia\u2019s southwestern regions and send armed drones as far as Moscow itself, the worry grows within the Russian policy elite that the very basis of their country\u2019s great power pretensions \u2014 its ability to threaten the world with nuclear weapons \u2014 has been eroded to the point where adversaries feel they can simply ignore it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fear of a nuclear escalation must be restored, otherwise humanity is doomed,\u201d Sergei Karaganov, president emeritus of Russia\u2019s Foreign and Defense Policy Council, wrote in the Profil weekly. Before the war in Ukraine started, Karaganov was considered one of the Kremlin\u2019s intelligent voices; he\u2019s not the first among once-respected Russian political thinkers to slide toward the hysterical edge since the invasion began. Back in September 2022, Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of the journal Russia in Global Politics, and Dmitri Trenin, former director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, were already complaining that the West appeared to have lost its fear of Russia\u2019s nuclear deterrent and discussing how to bring it back \u2014 that is, how to drive home to Americans that the U.S., too, could be the target of a Russian nuclear strike.<\/p>\n
Karaganov\u2019s op-ed goes even further. He argues that if the West ignores Russia\u2019s increasingly dire warnings \u2014 such as, for example, a public call on all Russians and \u201cpeople of goodwill\u201d to leave certain areas in Western countries \u2014 Russia should actually \u201cstrike a group of targets in a number of countries\u201d: <\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a horrible moral choice: We use God\u2019s weapons and doom ourselves to heavy spiritual damage. But if we don\u2019t do it, Russia could perish, and moreover, the entire human civilization likely will end.”<\/p>\n
The game being played here is, of course, a time-tested good cop\/bad cop one. Vladimir Putin, who used his state-of-the-nation address in 2018 to threaten the U.S. with Russia\u2019s new hypersonic weapons, now has taken on the good-cop part. At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum least week, when the moderator pressed him for his views on using nuclear weapons, Putin tried to wave off the questions. \u201cWhat is he trying to get me, or force me, to say? To scare the whole world? But why would we want to scare the world?\u201d <\/p>\n
The serious message of Putin\u2019s remarks at the forum was that nuclear weapons were meant to counteract existential threats, and Russia isn\u2019t facing one at the moment. He also revealed, however, that he\u2019d deployed \u201cthe first nuclear charges\u201d to Belarus, with more to come. Perhaps the mixed signals, too, are designed to revive Cold War-era fears. <\/p>\n
Before the February 2022 invasion and as it began, the function of these fears in Russian military planning was to limit Western military aid to Ukraine so that Russia could maintain its battlefield advantages. Before U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the supply of Javelin antitank systems to Ukraine, the Kremlin signaled it would perceive such a move as escalatory \u2014 but then, after Russia invaded and the Javelins were used to keep Russian armor out of Kyiv and Ukraine\u2019s northern regions, that supposed red line was quickly forgotten. The next one was crossed when the U.S. supplied HIMARS missile launchers to balance out Russia\u2019s advantage in medium-range artillery; yet another one dissipated after NATO countries delivered tanks and other armored vehicles. The last major Russian weapon advantages that still remain are in long-range firepower \u2014 Russian missiles can reach any part of Ukraine \u2014 and in manned aircraft: Ka-52 helicopters, in particular, have proved a formidable obstacle to the current Ukrainian counteroffensive, while Russian warplanes have done severe damage with guided bombs and missiles.<\/p>\n
The Russian response to previous weapon supply escalations has been consistently underwhelming: Russia simply adapted to losing one trump card after another. This has emboldened the U.K. to arm Ukraine with longer-range Storm Shadow missiles, which Russia struggles to shoot down, and a coalition of eight European countries plus the U.S. to start active preparations, including pilot training, for the handover of F-16 fighter aircraft.<\/p>\n
And why not do so? For although Russia has regularly issued nuclear threats, it has never directly linked them with the supply of specific weapons systems or with any developments on the ground in Ukraine \u2014 or even on Russia\u2019s internationally recognized territory, which Ukraine recently has felt free to attack.Putin keeps playing the victim, complaining that the West deceived him in 2015 by mediating the unworkable Mink agreements. In a meeting with a delegation of peacemaking African leaders last week, he spun a new tale of duplicity, saying that Ukrainians had agreed in March 2022 to a peace deal that would have cemented Ukraine\u2019s military neutrality \u2014 but went back on it at the bidding of their Western puppeteers as soon as Moscow pulled back its troops from Kyiv in a pure act of goodwill. Had these tales been true, however, they would only have reflected poorly on his judgment. They spell out grievances but lay down no specific red lines.<\/p>\n
In the eyes of some Western analysts, that detracts from the credibility of Russian nuclear warnings. \u201cMy research suggests threats are most credible when repeated and when they are linked to specific conditions (such as on-the-ground behaviors in the Russo-Ukrainian war),\u201d wrote Lauren Sukin of the London School of Economics and Political Science, whose analysis is in part based on her extensive study of North Korea\u2019s nuclear saber rattling. \u201cConversely, one-off threats or threats about linked issues (such as NATO membership or broader policies) should be less critical.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, to be taken seriously, a red line has to be as specific as possible. There is, however, a downside to being specific for the Kremlin. If it said clearly that sending a certain weapons system to Ukraine would invite a nuclear response, the school of analytical thought in the West that maintains Russia would never actually use a nuke might prevail. Then Putin\u2019s bluff would be called and he would need to make the \u201chorrible moral choice\u201d described in Karaganov\u2019s op-ed \u2014 a situation he\u2019s done his best to avoid by keeping his nuclear hints conveniently vague.<\/p>\n
This is where the likes of Karaganov \u2014 or, for purely domestic consumption, the rabid commentators on state television who regularly threaten to turn Washington into a heap of nuclear ashes \u2014 come in handy. These polished, multilingual speakers and writers were always used to send messages to the West, and with normal, diplomatic lines of communication nearly severed, they are one of the few remaining channels for a harsher message than Putin\u2019s.That message is still vague when it comes to red lines \u2014 it\u2019s not clear what action by the West would force Russia to use \u201cGod\u2019s weapons.\u201d It does hint at a specific target, though. \u201cOnly if there\u2019s a madman in the White House who hates his own country will America decide to strike in \u2018defense\u2019 of the Europeans, inviting a response and sacrificing, say, Boston for, say, Poznan,\u201d Karaganov wrote, adding that while the world might be horrified by a limited Russian nuclear strike, the reaction would gradually settle down with the West put firmly in its place.<\/p>\n
Karaganov\u2019s reasoning is easy to turn around: Only a Russia-hating madman in the Kremlin would nuke a neighboring country, a NATO member to boot. But then that\u2019s the hint behind the talk of God and heavy but acceptable \u201cspiritual damage\u201d: we might just be crazy enough to do this! Unfortunately for Putin, he hasn\u2019t acted crazy enough, at least not since the day he launched the invasion. Since that irrational move, he\u2019s blathered and dawdled, feinted and bought his own propaganda \u2014 in short, he\u2019s appeared more eager to shift the blame than to double down on the image of an evil, uncompromising predator or a fanatical mystic. If he\u2019d managed to play either role convincingly, he may not have needed to lay down any clear red lines. As it is, the banality of evil has done him a bad turn. Fear isn\u2019t a natural resource, and he hasn\u2019t been convincingly scary. Using messengers such as Karaganov to spout messianic rhetoric will not erase this failure. <\/p>\n
Both Ukraine and the West likely are right to take Russia\u2019s nuclear doctrine at face value: No nukes will fly until Russia faces an existential threat, such as a massive invasion of its internationally recognized territory. No matter what the Kremlin and its various messengers may say, Ukraine\u2019s efforts to liberate its own territory do not represent such a threat, not even to Putin.<\/p>\n
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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.<\/p>\n
Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion\u2019s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984\u201d and Franz Kafka\u2019s \u201cThe Trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
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