the current escalation of tensions, politicians and military experts in Russia and the West have renewed their focus on this concept. A number of publications by Russian military specialists (in active service) justify
“the limited nature of a first nuclear strike, which is designed not to harden, but rather to sober up an aggressor, to force it to halt its attack and move to negotiations. In the absence of the desired reaction, provision is made for increasing the mass of nuclear weapons brought to bear, both in quantitative terms as well as their energy emission (that is, destructive power). Therefore … a nuclear first strike by the Russian Federation could have a limited character.”33
However, in his address to the Federation Council on March 1, 2018, Putin said: “Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, weapons of small, medium, or any yield at all, will be considered as a nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences.”34 Implicitly, this may mean that a limited nuclear war is not envisioned in Russian doctrine and planning either, but this important issue might benefit from an unequivocal official clarification.
The United States has included the concept of a limited nuclear war in its nuclear doctrine for many years in the form of “tailored nuclear options.” But in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, this topic took on a central role and became the main innovation of Trump’s nuclear strategy. The review states:
“Recent Russian statements on this evolving nuclear weapons doctrine appear to lower the threshold for Moscow’s first use of nuclear weapons. Russia demonstrates its perception of the advantage these systems provide through numerous exercises and statements. Correcting this mistaken Russian perception is a strategic imperative. To address these types of challenges and preserve deterrence stability, the United States will enhance the flexibility and range of its tailored deterrence options.”35
For limited nuclear strikes, the plan is to equip part of the Trident-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with low-yield warheads, as well as to develop long-range standoff (LRSO) air-launched missiles, guided bombs with variable yields (such as the B61-12) for tactical and strategic bombers, and new sea-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.36
No matter how much the deterrence doctrine is used to justify such capabilities and proposals, they actually reduce the nuclear threshold and increase the likelihood of any armed clash between the superpowers escalating into a nuclear conflict with a subsequent exchange of mass nuclear strikes.
Another controversial response to the question of what to do in the event that deterrence fails is the concept of damage limitation in a nuclear war. The recent U.S. Nuclear Posture Review says: “The goal of limiting damage if deterrence fails in a regional contingency calls for robust adaptive planning to defeat and defend against attacks, including missile defense and capabilities to locate, track, and target mobile systems of regional adversaries.”37
Although this passage refers to regional adversaries, Russia sees itself as a target of these plans (likewise, it feels threatened by U.S. missile defenses and long-range high-precision conventional weapons). In a nuclear war, the desire to limit damage to one side by offensive operations looks like a threat of disarming strike to the opposite side, especially when it comes to destroying Russia’s highly survivable forces, which in the form of mobile ICBMs are associated mainly with the concept of “deep second strike”—the basis of the philosophy of strategic stability.
Another dangerous area in which the degradation of nuclear deterrence is happening is the development of a variety of long-range (over 500 kilometers) strike systems capable of delivering conventional warheads to targets that could previously only be destroyed with nuclear weapons. This has been made possible by new command-and-control information systems (including in space) and the miniaturization of electronics, which can significantly improve the accuracy of the guidance systems (allowing down to several meters of circular error probability).38
Existing non-nuclear cruise missiles have a relatively limited range (less than 2,000 kilometers), subsonic speeds, and a long flight time to targets (about two hours). Yet the next generation of high-precision hypersonic or ballistic conventional weapons under development will make it possible to deliver these kinds of strikes at intercontinental ranges (over 5,500 kilometers) with a relatively short flight time (up to 60 minutes).39
Non-nuclear long-range conventional systems are designed for and used by the superpowers primarily in regional wars (Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria). However, they impinge on the strategic balance through the concept of “conventional deterrence,” which has long been proclaimed in official U.S. documents,40 and since 2014, in the Russian military doctrine, which states that: “The use of high-precision weapons is envisaged by the Russian Federation within the framework of performing strategic deterrence use-of-force measures.”41 Initially, this concept was conceived as the preferred alternative to a reliance on nuclear weapons and a way of raising the nuclear threshold. But, in fact, the opposite has turned out to be true: it results in lowering of the threshold.
The issue of whether the accuracy of these capabilities will be sufficient to destroy hardened targets (ICBM silos and underground command posts) and whether they will be able to destroy ground-mobile missiles remains highly uncertain. However, there is no doubt that non-hardened strategic nuclear facilities are vulnerable even to existing subsonic non-nuclear cruise missiles. These include missile and air defense radars, light mobile ICBM shelters, submarines in port, bombers at base, forward nuclear warhead depots, and spacecraft control stations. These objects could be hit even in the event of a regional conflict between Russia and NATO.
In addition, many current and future weapons of this kind, as well as their launchers, are dual-purpose, and their character until the moment of detonation will be indistinguishable from a nuclear strike. This applies to heavy and medium bombers, tactical strike aircraft with missiles and bombs, ships, and attack submarines with missiles capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads: the Kalibr and Tomahawk sea-based cruise missiles,42 air-launched cruise missiles of the Kh101/102 type or the AGM-158, and Iskander-type ground-launched tactical ballistic and cruise missiles. Such systems and associated operational plans could also trigger the rapid, uncontrolled escalation of a conventional local conflict or even a military incident into nuclear war.
Neither Russia nor the United States—nor their allies—want war, and they have no real political motives to unleash it. But it should be remembered that in many wars, both sides believed that they were only defending themselves, fighting off real or probable aggression, even if it was they themselves that carried out offensive operations. That is how World War I began in 1914. That conflict shaped the follow-on terrible history of the twentieth century, and its consequences are still playing out across the world, including in Russia. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 demonstrated clearly that a nuclear war could begin because of a loss of control over events, not as the result of planned aggression. Similar, though less dangerous, cases occurred during the Berlin crisis of 1961 and during three Middle East wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973, among a number of other similar situations.
Since the events of 2014 in Ukraine, intense military confrontation between Russia and NATO has been renewed in Eastern Europe, the Baltic and Black Seas, and the Arctic. Regular large-scale military exercises (including with
