- Hubert Walas
Nuclear Strike. Result and consequences.
Russia is losing. Not since yesterday, not for a week, but for at least six months, that is, since the April retreat of Kremlin forces from outside Kyiv. Moscow has been steadily escalating the conflict since then and has signaled the possibility of using an instrument from the highest step of the escalation ladder - that is, using nuclear weapons. Where could such an attack be carried out, and what might such a scenario look like? What consequences could Russia face? Should we prepare for a nuclear apocalypse? Not necessarily, but let’s dive into the nuclear rabbit hole.
In relations between states, everything is fluid. The action of one causes the reaction of the other. If both centers have growing, conflicting interests, this correlation begins to escalate. Some call this mechanism the escalation ladder. This ladder also applies in peacetime, where we can sometimes hear of diplomats being recalled, embargoes imposed, or sanctions introduced. Over time, if diplomatic and economic measures prove insufficient to achieve the political objective previously set by the state leadership, the escalation ladder enters a kinetic phase. We have been dealing with this mechanism ever since Kyiv began to pull itself out from under Moscow's boot. The Orange Revolution, Maidan, Crimea, Donbas - with each successive event, we slowly moved upwards. After a few years of indulgence, without a tough response from the West, the Russians felt strong enough to climb the next rung of the ladder. In 2021, they openly exposed the buildup of their forces near Ukraine's borders and issued an ultimatum to NATO in December, followed by a de facto declaration of kinetic war in February. Up to that point, Russian escalation had generally proved successful each time. Moscow tested the West and got what it wanted at little cost.
The same was true on the 24th of February. Russia also checked the bluff of the West, which declaratively sided with Kyiv. But this time, it was Russia that was checked.
After the start of the armed conflict, we did not reach the top of our ladder but only entered a new threshold of it. According to Hermann Kahn's model of an escalation ladder containing 44 steps, the Russians then only entered its 12th rung. The Kremlin escalated the situation violently - for that is the only way a full-scale military attack can be described, but at least in theory, they initially wanted to seize Ukrainian territories without inflicting excessive human and infrastructure losses, which, after all, they were supposed to take over. It was only as a result of the resistance of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, which by the way, the Russians experienced immediately, that they realized they were not welcome there. As a result, the Russian command further escalated the situation by allowing organised terror to be launched against the civilian population.
In parallel, the Western states also operated on the rungs of the escalation ladder. The Russians verbally threatened the West not to dare to interfere in the conflict. So the cautiousness with which Western states approached the war was closely linked to the degree of conflict of interest a state had with regard to Russia and Ukraine. And so we could see Poland handing over 300 tanks to Ukraine, as the identity of interests between Warsaw and Kyiv was ironclad. And on the other hand, months-long debates over the shipment of military equipment in Paris and Berlin, which for years had tied the European security architecture and their own competitiveness with the Russian Federation.
Perhaps an even better visualization than a single ladder climbed by two parties would be two or even three ladders placed side by side. The Russian ladder is impressive, but as it turned out, the Russians were more skillful in moving along it in the pre-kinetic phase. The armed conflict has exposed how weak its further steps are, effectively leaving Moscow with only a few extra rungs. The second ladder is Ukrainian. Placed next to the Russian one, it is much less substantial and lower, nevertheless, the Ukrainians, mainly with the approval of the Americans, have the opportunity to jump to the third ladder - let's call it the 'Western' one. This one is the most grandiose, with the most rungs, most of which are still unused. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that both the Russian ladder and the western ladder are of equal height. Its final floor is nuclear annihilation.
Therefore, the Kremlin, burning all previous tiers and with very few in front, verbally declares the possibility of escalating the war to the nuclear level. We hear this not only from the mouths of popular Russian warmongers but also from leading Russian politicians. Vladimir Putin declares that "this is not a bluff." Whereas, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergei Lavrov, has warned that although "Russia is trying to avoid a nuclear war with NATO at all costs, still the threat is serious, and we should not underestimate it." This is typical Lavrov hypocrisy. He tries to portray Russia as the responsible actor, even though Russia is the only actor considering the use of nuclear weapons in this conflict.
Facing reality requires us to visualize the worst possible scenario. So let us face the darkness of the nuclear scenario. What would happen if the Russians actually used nuclear weapons?
Let us start by noting that Russia allows the use of nuclear weapons in the event that Russia detects ballistic missiles heading towards Russia or its allies; in response to the use of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction against Russia or attacks on Russian nuclear command and control, and to deter aggression by conventional means that could threaten the 'very existence of the state.' Of course, a threat to Russia's very existence is a concept that can be defined differently. For Vladimir Putin, as for any autocrat, his regime is identical to the Russian state as such, so the threat of its overthrow can be considered an existential threat to Russia itself.
If the Russian Federation decided to use nuclear weapons, it would almost certainly be of a non-strategic nature, otherwise known as tactical. Without going into the various definitions, it can be assumed that it would be a less powerful and shorter-range payload. The most powerful conventional payload used to date was 11 tonnes of TNT. In contrast, a tactical nuclear payload can have a power fraction of a kiloton, up to 50 kilotons, and a range of several hundred kilometers. In comparison, a strategic weapon can be aimed at a target thousands of kilometers away, with a payload ranging from 100 kilotons to even tens of megatons. The payload of the Soviet Tsar Bomba exceeded 50 megatons.
Here, however, a caveat must be applied. As Finnish nuclear weapons researcher Janne Korhonen points out in his Twitter thread, nuclear weapons, even tactical ones, are essentially useless except in two situations: first, to kill a lot of people, and second, to threaten to kill a lot of people. It is not a wunderwaffe with which Putin could magically wipe out the Ukrainian army.
From a military point of view, nuclear weapons are simply a source of powerful explosions. If it can be delivered where it will hurt, then, of course, it will be useful. But it is not easy. Unless it is a stationary target, it has the ability to move since the decision to attack has been made.
A charge of 1 to 100 kilotons could destroy a supply centre, a bridge, or a railway station or would eliminate a battalion, that is 800 men and about 30-40 armored vehicles, from the battlefield. As Korhonen notes, these are obviously heavy losses, but we should notice that they are far from mass annihilation. Similar losses can be inflicted by an artillery salvo of conventional weapons. The graphic on the left shows the number of artillery shells needed to annihilate soldiers remaining in the open, equal to that caused by the use of a tactical nuclear weapon with a charge power of 1 kiloton. Also, the graphic is from 1977. Since then, artillery technology has advanced considerably.
In terms of the location of an attack, the first step of a Russian demonstration of the use of nuclear weapons could be a detonation on the uninhabited territory or, for example, in the Black Sea. If this did not produce the desired political results, the Russians, moving significantly up the escalation ladder, could attack a military facility. An attack on a human settlement or city as a target for a nuclear strike is less likely, but given Russian crimes during this war, this option cannot be ruled out either.
In summary, a single use of tactical nuclear weapons would not change much on the battlefield. To have a significant effect, the Russians would have to detonate dozens of such charges inside Ukraine. However, whatever the attack, it would be met with a Western response. So what, given these correlations, might the West's response look like?
In his article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jeffrey Edmonds, an expert in CNA Russia Studies, notes that after a Russian attack, there would undoubtedly be massive chaos. Emotions would boil on both sides of the barricade, with one side demanding symmetrical NATO retaliation while the other would call for extinguishing the threat at all costs by making concessions. Edmonds thinks NATO and the US have essentially four scenarios for responding to a Russian nuclear attack.
The first is an in-kind or symmetrical response, in which NATO also responds with non-strategic nuclear weapons. It can be assumed that a Russian attack would be launched on Ukrainian territory. In theory, NATO could also respond with a nuclear attack on a Russian base in the occupied territories, but such a path dangerously leads towards making Ukraine a nuclear desert. In contrast, the use of nuclear weapons against Russia, on its territory is an automatic declaration of war by NATO and the United States against the Russian Federation. Given the nuclear potential of the Russian Federation and the easy path to mutual annihilation, it is unlikely that the US leadership would opt for this step. Moreover, as the author notes, such retaliation would further legitimize the use of nuclear weapons in a wartime environment.
Therefore, a second alternative scenario could be 'conventional response and escalation.' In this scenario, depending on the specifics of the Russian first strike, NATO's response could be symmetrical, e.g., in terms of the target, but asymmetrical in terms of the payload. So after a Russian attack with tactical nuclear weapons on a Ukrainian base, NATO responds by destroying the Russian base with a conventional payload. In other words, NATO destroys Russian military capabilities to the same extent that Moscow destroyed Ukrainian capabilities using nuclear weapons. Of course, from NATO's point of view, such a move is also escalatory and exposes the alliance to a possible Russian response on the territory of member states, including the US - using submarines. Although a conventional response on NATO's behalf is also an escalatory step, it is below that of a symmetric response. Nevertheless, the North Atlantic Alliance, in this option, retains control over the nuclear escalation and, with its move, does not leave Moscow's action unpunished. Such a response also delegitimizes nuclear weapons as a means of achieving the objective.
The author called the third scenario 'staying the course’. In this option, NATO and the Americans do not respond to Russia directly, but maintain the supply of arms to Ukraine. The core of this response is the belief that the nuclear attack was merely an act of desperation and an attempt to force action on the West and the Ukrainians, while it does not change the overall trend of the war, which remains negative for Russia. The author does not mention this in his text, but in this scenario, one can imagine the US authorizing the supply of ATACMS missiles to Ukraine and giving the green light to missile targets 300km inside Russia. So it would be the Ukrainians who would hold their possibility of a conventional response. However, a third response carries the risk of very serious losses for the Ukrainians, exposed to further attacks with non-strategic nuclear weapons. Moreover, this option also legitimizes the use of nuclear weapons on the modern battlefield. Therefore, scenario 3, in the author's opinion, also tends to escalate towards a Russia-NATO war, only it would be a deferred scenario. The Alliance, in the long term, could not allow the nuclear annihilation of Ukraine and ignore the use of tactical nuclear weapons against a Western-allied state with impunity.
The fourth and final scenario is ‘push for settlement'. In this situation, following Moscow's use of nuclear weapons, Western leaders, in an effort to ensure that the war does not escalate beyond Ukraine, offer the Kremlin a way out of the conflict "with a face."
In this situation, the crux of the dispute would be the terms of a potential truce. If the Russians were to maintain their demands for the retention of south-eastern Ukraine, Kyiv would most likely reject such a possibility.
The pursuit of a settlement, although a seemingly peaceful option, entails a host of problems. In the event of Kyiv's refusal, in this scenario, the allies to force Ukraine to negotiate would have to blackmail Kyiv with a suspension of support. Moreover, the West would show Russia that nuclear blackmail is effective. Such an attitude would set an extremely dangerous precedent resulting in a 180-degree change in the existing policy towards Ukraine. The low cost of using nuclear weapons would reverberate throughout the international community and would result in Russia blackmailing the Baltic States, Finland, Poland, or Ukraine again in the near future. As well as other autocratic states against weaker, unruly neighbors or those who do not have nuclear weapons. It is a spiral leading straight into threats and even nuclear wars.
Finally, the author shares his opinion in which he advocates the rejection of two extremes - option number one and option number four. NATO and the US cannot leave a Russian attack unanswered, while it should be tailored as best as possible to the dynamics at hand. Options number two and three carry a lot of risk and uncertainty, but when climbing the nuclear escalation ladder, there is no escaping them.
These 4 scenarios only describe the kinetic response. However, as Elliot A Cohen additionally points out, we would certainly have had a nuclear option on the economic front as well, which is still unapplied. We are talking about the definitive confiscation, located in the West, previously Russian, of $300 billion. Or the biggest hitherto unused economic weapon - the imposition of unlimited secondary sanctions on anyone doing business with Russia.
Moreover, Cohen soberly notes that the nuclear game is also crucial for China. Once the nuclear taboo is broken, a whole range of Asian countries including South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, or Indonesia, will feel an acute need for nuclear warheads. For many of them, technologically, this is no problem.
This is why Beijing is starting to speak out more and more. Chinese policymakers at a meeting with European officials were said to have stated that "the use of nuclear weapons by Russia would be seen by Beijing as completely unacceptable."
What is more, nuclear weapons in the event of a Russian attack could be deployed in a number of places where Russia does not want them - to Finland, Poland, or even the Baltic States under a nuclear sharing programme. Already, the very fact that Moscow hints at the use of nuclear weapons has prompted Warsaw to make an official inquiry to Washington on this issue.
Russia is losing this war badly, and the nuclear threats are the best evidence of this. However, they cannot be ignored, as the stakes are too high. Nonetheless, they must be approached with calmness and a pre-established plan of action for the eventuality of their use. One has to reckon with the fact that, in practice, 3 out of 4 scenarios lead to NATO entering the war. This is a difficult prospect, but it should be clearly declared, for it is in itself an instrument of deterrence vis-à-vis Moscow. And Washington is doing it. Admittedly not through the mouth of its president, but it smuggles this message in with the help of its generals, among others. "Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a Nato – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea."
Beijing is also emerging from the semi-darkness with a clear declaration. These signals are important not only for Vladimir Putin, for whom, in a moment of trial, the fight for life may obscure the sobriety of thought, but perhaps above all for the rest of the influential people capable of removing him from power. All this makes a Russian nuclear attack, although the closest in decades, still a fundamentally unlikely event.
