Could Putin’s “Escalate to Win” Nuclear Threat Strategy Work?

The threats from Russia are taken as serious given Moscow’s adoption of a strategy often referred to as “escalate to win.”

Self-propelled howitzers during the Victory Day military parade in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, on May 9, 2022. (Bai Xueqi/Xinhua via Getty Images)

The war against Ukraine initiated by Russian aggression 13 months ago has been accompanied by multiple threats from the Russian leadership, including President Putin, to initiate the use of nuclear weapons against the United States, NATO or Ukraine itself, threats that are linked to NATO support to Ukraine of military hardware.

The threats from Russia are taken as serious given Moscow’s adoption of a strategy often referred to as “escalate to win” where Russia decides to use limited nuclear weapons, probably of the theater or tactical type, in the Ukraine region to counter a losing conventional fight and achieve some kind of “victory” usually not clearly delineated. Thus, NATO has decided to split the difference: arm Ukraine with weapons but not involve NATO forces.

Russia, China & Ukraine

But there is a larger strategy at play and it involves both Russia and China.

First, irrespective of the outcome of the war against Ukraine, Moscow’s current gambit is to eventually secure the US withdrawal of theater nuclear weapons from a number of NATO nations where American fighter planes are armed with what are a couple of hundred nuclear gravity bombs.

Second, Putin’s ruse is to claim the moral high-ground by declaring that all Russian theater nuclear weapons are on Russian soil, unlike similar US nuclear weapons, not withstanding the fact that at a minimum Russian theater nuclear forces outnumber those of the United States by at least 10 to 1 or as much as 25 to 1.

Third, having a monopoly of theater nuclear forces in the European theater is Moscow’s objective, which would seriously tear apart of the fabric of the US extended deterrent or nuclear umbrella over our non-nuclear NATO allies. For its part, the US has never adopted a no-first use pledge but which some in Europe might believe was US policy by default if the US withdrew our theater nuclear forces from Europe. Even though it has also been long-standing US extended deterrent policy that our central strategic nuclear forces are a critical part of extended deterrence not only in the European theater but also in the Middle East and Western Pacific.

Fourth, Putin knows that Russian regional nuclear weapons can reach much of Europe, while US regional or theater nuclear forces if only stationed in the continental United States could not of course reach any part of Europe or western Russia. Such US forces would simply be a non-factor in any crisis or conflict having to do with the European-Russian border. Exactly Putin’s goal.

Fifth, this strategy is not exactly new. The Soviet Union previously and now Russia has centered its foreign policy strategy around one critical objective—destroy NATO and de-link the United States from Europe. This was the point of the Soviet era deployment of SS-20 missiles in Europe (and Asia) that the US responded to along with key NATO allies Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Italy when President Reagan deployed the Pershing and Ground-Launched Cruise missiles culminating in the surprise adoption by the USSR of Reagan’s arms proposal to zero out all such intermediate range forces in the INF Treaty of 1987.

Even though the Russians violated the INF treaty by deploying prohibited INF range missiles, it was not until the Trump administration that the US called Mocow on this and withdrew from the INF agreement. After all, you cannot have a bilateral treaty when there is only one party abiding by the agreement.

Sixth, Putin has also added a new twist to his campaign of nuclear blackmail. Citing the Ukraine coalition forces use of depleted uranium shells, Moscow has attempted to make the “aluminum” part of artillery shells somehow equivalent to using nuclear weapons. Putin has thus begun preparing a site in Belarus for the implicit “retaliatory” future deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, in violation of numerous agreements to which Moscow is party.

The President of Belarus, Mr. Lukashenko, now claims he was unfairly pressured in 1991 to get rid of the Soviet era nuclear weapons located on Belarus soil when the Soviet Union collapsed. And that this somehow makes it consistent with sound strategic policy and law that Belarus can possibly host Moscow’s nuclear weapons planned for deployment later this summer.

Seventh, it is true that Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan all gave up their nuclear weapons at the break-up of the USSR, in return for a security guarantee from the West that their territorial integrity would be respected, a pledge Russia itself also adopted, including a formal agreement with Great Britain and the United States to protect Ukraine’s independence and security. Some analysts have suggested that the folly of giving up such weapons in 1991 [and by Libya and Iraq) is now clear, but without realizing that if the good guys we support—Ukraine---have a right to deploy nuclear weapons, the same argument can be made that the bad guys---whom we may be at war with including Iran, for example,—also can make a claim to have a right to deploy nuclear weapons as well because of potential aggression.

Apparently, China received a pledge from Putin at the summit of the two leaders that Russia would not deploy nuclear weapons outside of Russian territory, a pledge that Putin apparently would break if Moscow deployed nuclear weapons in Belarus. On the surface, it appears Putin broke his pledge but something more important is taking place that may explain Russia’s behavior.

China may have understood the pledge was good window dressing. But more importantly, China is worried the South Korean or ROK government is continuing to seek a stronger extended nuclear deterrent pledge from the United States, especially given the growing North Korean nuclear arsenal, both short range and longer range missiles and different types of nuclear weapons. The President of ROK while also pledging fealty to the NPT or Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that prohibits the ROK from developing its own nuclear weapons, has called for the US to redeploy American nuclear forces on the peninsula to counter the expanding North Korean nuclear threat, although it would not include nuclear weapons built by the ROK.

The US Department of Defense apparently opposes any deployment of US nuclear forces to the ROK territory. This is interestingly the opposite of China policy. In 1981, as former US Air Force Secretary Tom Reed revealed in his book, The Nuclear Express, that China’s leadership secretly and deliberately adopted a policy of transferring nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and Libya. An intact nuclear warhead may also have been transferred to Pakistan as part of such a deal. The A. Q. Khan network in Pakistan, what has been termed “Nukes R Us” facilitated the transfer of such weaponry, with the full support of the Pakistani government, which is allied with China against India.

China got what it wanted which was nuclear weapons in North Korea. Pakistan got help with ballistic missiles. China also hoped the North’s nuclear capability would split the ROK-USA-Japan alliance as conflicts would emerge among the three nations of the Pacific on how to deal with the North Korean threat. Unable to reach agreement of how best to counter the DPRK threats, China hoped the US would take the advice of Doug Bandow and others and withdraw our forces from the ROK in order not to involve the US in a possible war on the Korean peninsula. The argument being that a conflict could involve North Korean long-range rockets incinerating with nuclear weapons some portion of American cities such as Los Angeles or Seattle.

The result China hoped for has not materialized. In fact, the opposite has occurred. The ROK-Japan-US alliance is stronger. Australia has also become stronger especially with the agreement to deploy nuclear-powered attack submarines from the United States. Although Australia might sign the UN resolution to make nuclear weapons illegal and thus undermine the US extended deterrent just as it is being strengthened.

The worrisome Chinese buildup is both nuclear and conventional. China too has massively increased its naval shipbuilding and its advanced aviation. Most breathtaking as Admiral Charles Richard, who just retired from heading Strategic Command, explained, is China’s building of more than 400 land based ICBMs at least 360 of which are new. General Anthony Cotton, the new commander of Strategic Command explained in Congressional testimony that China is actually seeking nuclear superiority over the United States in some nuclear areas, and has surpassed the US already in the number of ICBM launchers in their nuclear force.

China, too, has regional or intermediate range missiles by the thousands. It may soon (2030-35) have 1500+ long range strategic nuclear weapons, compared to the minimum of 400-500 which is what they are reported to have today.

The Chinese Navy is larger than the US Navy and because of modernization and budget requirements, the US Navy and US Air Force is getting smaller first before the recently added funding for modernization bears the fruit of an expanded force structure toward the end of this decade. In even the best case, given currently projected defense budgets and plans, a second military window of vulnerability is opening between the US on the one hand and China on the other.

What then should the United States do? Well, when assessing both Russian expansion and modernization of their nuclear forces, some like James Acton are worried the Russian expansion and by implication the Chinese expansion are nuclear “gifts” that US hawks will use as the rationale to push for the expansion of US nuclear forces.

Other analysts such as Darrell Kimball of the Arms Control Association, has cleverly called for a nuclear freeze, originally a Soviet era 1979-80’s idea from Moscow soundly rejected by the US and the Reagan administration. A freeze on warheads even today would give Russia and China as much of an advantage of 8500 to 3400 warheads over the United States.

Talk about Christmas coming early!

Ironically, if adopted by Washington, a freeze would actually be an American gift bonanza to Moscow and China. First, Russia has completed the modernization of its nuclear forces to the 90+% level according to the Kremlin; (2) China would expand its forces while a freeze were being negotiated making the strategic balance worse; and (3 disarmament advocates would do everything to stop US modernization as the US is now just beginning to bend metal and build submarines, bombers and ICBMs, all of which as nuclear platforms get initially deployed later in this decade.

As the disarmament community argued in 1981, a hoped for freeze deal would of course have to pause or freeze the US nuclear modernization effort, and not “further” upset the strategic balance. And of course, in 1981, the US was just beginning the nuclear modernization effort of “peace through strength” even as the USSR was toward the completion of another nuclear modernization effort.

Without a monopoly of regional nuclear weapons in Europe and the Western Pacific, Putin and Xi may not be confident they can achieve their objectives including destroying Ukraine independence and engulfing Taiwan into the PRC, even if needed to do so by force.

Senators Roger Wicker and Jim Risch, the ranking members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, respectively, recently made the important point that removing nuclear weapons from Ukraine was part of an explicit guarantee of Ukraine security. Providing weapons to Ukraine does not violate that agreement, in fact it reinforces it and thus the US is now treating Putin’s nuclear threats as bluff. But within limits.

The US and NATO also know that if NATO forces directly engage Russia, as opposed to military weaponry used by Ukraine, then all sorts of red lines get broken and a nuclear conflict becomes a big possibility. However, as Senators Jim Risch and Roger Wicker also explained in a seminar at the Hudson Institute, yielding to nuclear blackmail re arming Ukraine will simply invite more blackmail. And while we are providing assistance there has to be a strategy to win and the means available to do so. Here the US nuclear deterrent must be second to none. To deter Putin from using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine region or beyond and China from using nuclear weapons in the Western Pacific as well.

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