Putin Approaches the Nuclear Red Line

V ladimir Putin’s reach has exceeded his grasp, and he is panicking. Last night, in a major speech to the Russian people, he partially mobilized the Russian military for the first time since World War II. Additionally, he threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and “the West” in retaliation for a series of what must be called bold-faced lies regarding aggressions against the Russian people. He closed his shocking statements with a warning that he was “not bluffing.”

President Biden has already partially responded to Putin’s bluster, but Putin needs to be told in clear, unmistakable language that if he should choose to follow this path, it would trigger a full response from NATO and the introduction of Western aircraft, ships, and troops into the Ukrainian theater of operations.

Putin’s back is clearly up against the wall. He sold the “special military operation” in Ukraine as an easy win for his nationalist political movement in Russia, claiming that he would reunite the former Russian Empire. Now, seven months and an estimated 70,000–80,000 casualties (more casualties than Russia experienced from a decade in Afghanistan) later, the war has not turned out as he thought it would: Ukrainian forces recently counterattacked, retaking Kharkiv and isolating Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine from their supply lines. To be sure, Ukraine has been able to do this because of aid from the West in the form of intelligence and advanced technology such as the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), but the fighting and dying in Ukraine has been done by the Ukrainians themselves, and their sacrifice can only be responded to by us with awe. Putin, however, can only react to this victory — and the bleeding out of his regular, frontline troops — with panic and desperation.

But panic and desperation can be dangerous, and Putin has had reason to doubt the resolve of the West before. Biden’s disastrous and botched pullout from Afghanistan against the advice of his senior military commanders most certainly encouraged Putin to make his initial move into Ukraine in February. Germany’s decision to put its head voluntarily into the Russian energy noose also contributed, and France’s desire for a negotiated end to the conflict with Russia potentially keeping some, if not all, of its illegal territorial gains may have persuaded Putin to hold fast in Ukraine even as his forces were being decimated in the field.

However, Kharkiv has changed the calculus. Now there is a clear, if difficult, path to a Ukrainian victory that would see it eject Russian forces from its soil, and that is a humiliation that Putin knows that he cannot survive. Russia could survive it. It could bring its forces home, reconsider its strategy, and in a few years avoid becoming a wholly owned subsidiary gas station for China, its historical enemy, by reapproaching Europe with a more conciliatory tone. But Putin and his oligarch supporters cannot politically, or perhaps even physically, survive such a defeat, hence the ultimatum.

The West should respond together in a clear NATO declaration: Any introduction of nuclear weapons, or for that matter any weapons of mass destruction, on the European plain will result in a full response from the alliance. NATO aircraft will not just establish a no-fly zone, but rather instantly come to the aid of Ukrainian forces and go on the offensive against Russia. NATO ships will quickly move to sink any Russian ships in Ukrainian ports or operating in the Black or Baltic Seas. Likewise, it will blockade any ships in Russian ports. Meanwhile, NATO troops, who have been quietly pre-positioned in the east over the past seven months, will enter Ukraine. Lastly, key Russian military positions — including command-and-control nodes, fuel dumps, and ammunition depots that sit on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border — will be eliminated.

Only by being this stark can we hope to deter a panicked man at the end of his rope. It must be made “clearer than truth” — as the great Democrat secretary of state Dean Acheson said at the beginning of the Cold War — to those near and around Putin, that should they choose wholesale war, what follows automatically will be upon their heads.

To be sure, this will result in the loss of lives and the destruction of great cities. This is immeasurably sorrowful and regrettable, but the responsibility will not be on the West. The cause of liberty and the support of free peoples is just and must be pursued. Authoritarianism and autocracies cannot simply use might to remake the world in their own image. If Putin uses nuclear weapons and the West does nothing, China’s actions against Taiwan will surely follow as day follows night.

Ukrainians have borne so much pain with such nobility thus far. They are on the brink of a victory that will be both moral and physical. Should Putin upend that progress now with the use of nuclear weapons simply to save himself, it would do incalculable harm not only to Ukraine but to the great democratic experiment. NATO must be ready to act as a coherent entity in support of Ukraine. It should declare that policy openly now and let the internal forces within Russia then make a decision about Vladimir Putin’s future.