On the menu today: Just when you thought this newsletter couldn’t get any more grim, it’s time to take a long, cold, hard look at just what could lead to Vladimir Putin using a tactical nuclear weapon, the devastating effects of such a weapon, and how the U.S. can deter that horrific scenario. The unthinkable isn’t quite so unthinkable anymore.
What You Need to Know about Tactical Nuclear Weapons
On Monday, United Nations secretary general António Guterres warned that, “Raising the alert level of Russian nuclear forces is a bone-chilling development. The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.”
As hyperbolic as that claim may seem, the circumstances that would spur the Russians to use a tactical nuclear weapon are starting to fall into place. As laid out yesterday, the war is going badly for the Russians. Advances are moving slowly, when they’re moving at all, and casualties are mounting. The Russian economy is collapsing. Something’s going to break; it’s just a question of what breaks first.
This newsletter has repeatedly discussed the official Russian military doctrine, “escalate to deescalate” — that is, “If Russia were subjected to a major non-nuclear assault that exceeded its capacity for conventional defense, it would ‘de-escalate’ the conflict by launching a limited — or tactical — nuclear strike.” In other words, Russia’s official strategy when losing a war is to escalate it by using tactical battlefield nukes in order to “deescalate” it on favorable terms.
It isn’t likely that Russia will launch or detonate a tactical nuclear weapon yet. But it also isn’t unimaginable anymore. Apparently, Putin and the Russian military have been thinking about this option for a long time. In 2014, Ukrainian defense minister Valeriy Heletey said that, “The Russian side has threatened on several occasions across unofficial channels that, in the case of continued resistance they are ready to use a tactical nuclear weapon against us.”
The “tactical” in tactical nuclear weapon means that the nuke is launched from a shorter distance away; these aren’t the giant intercontinental ballistic missiles launching out of silos that we’re used to seeing in doomsday movies. They’re usually land-based missiles “with a range of less than 500 km (about 300 miles) and air- and sea-launched weapons with a range of less than 600 km (about 400 miles)” — missiles larger than a man but small enough to be driven around on truck-like launcher vehicles.
There are several ways to detonate a nuclear weapon. All of them are horrific if you’re in the neighborhood, but the effects can be quite different, depending upon whether the nuclear weapon is detonated underground, at ground level, in the air, or at a high altitude.
If you can stand a little military jargon, the NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defensive Operations, published in 1996, offers a clear and vivid picture:
a. Air Bursts. An air burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated in air at an altitude below 30 km but at sufficient height that the fireball does not contact the surface of the earth. After such a burst, blast may cause considerable damage and injury. The altitude of an air burst can be varied to obtain maximum blast effects, maximum thermal effects, desired radiation effects, or a balanced combination of these effects. Burns to exposed skin may be produced over many square kilometers and eye injuries over a still larger area. Initial nuclear radiation will be a significant hazard with smaller weapons, but the fallout hazard can be ignored as there is essentially no local fallout from an air burst. The fission products are generally dispersed over a large area of the globe unless there is local rainfall resulting in localized fallout. In the vicinity of ground zero, there may be a small area of neutron-induced activity which could be hazardous to troops required to pass through the area. Tactically, air bursts are the most likely to be used against ground forces.
b. Surface Burst. A surface burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated on or slightly above the surface of the earth so that the fireball actually touches the land or water surface. Under these conditions, the area affected by blast, thermal radiation, and initial nuclear radiation will be less extensive than for an air burst of similar yield, except in the region of ground zero where destruction is concentrated. In contrast with air bursts, local fallout can be a hazard over a much larger downwind area than that which is affected by blast and thermal radiation.
c. Subsurface Burst. A subsurface burst is an explosion in which the point of the detonation is beneath the surface of land or water. Cratering will generally result from an underground burst, just as for a surface burst. If the burst does not penetrate the surface, the only other hazard will be from ground or water shock. If the burst is shallow enough to penetrate the surface, blast, thermal, and initial nuclear radiation effects will be present, but will be less than for a surface burst of comparable yield. Local fallout will be very heavy if penetration occurs.
d. High Altitude Burst. A high altitude burst is one in which the weapon is exploded at such an altitude (above 30 km) that initial soft x-rays generated by the detonation dissipate energy as heat in a much larger volume of air molecules. There the fireball is much larger and expands much more rapidly. The ionizing radiation from the high altitude burst can travel for hundreds of miles before being absorbed. Significant ionization of the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) can occur. Severe disruption in communications can occur following high altitude bursts. They also lead to generation of an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which can significantly degrade performance of or destroy sophisticated electronic equipment. There are no known biological effects of EMP; however, indirect effects may result from failure of critical medical equipment.
Putin may well want portions of Ukraine devastated but minimally irradiated, or the effects of an electromagnetic-pulse attack over a wide area of Ukraine, effectively destroying all kinds of electronic equipment.
There is one factor that might lessen the odds of Russia’s using a nuke: In the spring, Ukraine’s winds generally blow in an eastern or southeastern direction. In the eastern part of Ukraine, that would blow any radioactive fallout back toward Russian territory.
Al Mauroni, the director of the USAF Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies, can envision a scenario in which Putin sees tactical nuclear weapons as the ideal intimidation weapon:
One course of action could be a so-called demonstration strike with a single low-yield nuclear detonation in Ukraine or over the Black Sea to serve as a dramatic warning that resistance to Russia’s military campaign must be ended, backed by the compellent threat of further tactical nuclear attacks. . . . A Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine would not directly target US or NATO forces, although certainly it would be a direct signal to nations supporting Ukraine’s conflict. Consider a scenario in which Russia detonates a low-yield (e.g., less than five kilotons) nuclear weapon as an airburst over a Ukrainian mechanized brigade outside of Kyiv. As a result, the long-term effects of fallout are avoided. Because Ukraine is not a member of NATO, there is no immediate trigger for a NATO retaliatory strike. The US government has no extended deterrence promise with the Ukrainian government. Would this singular event lead toward a strategic nuclear exchange? Would the United States trade New York City for Kyiv, to paraphrase General Charles de Gaulle?
(Standard disclaimer: Mauroni is not speaking on behalf of the U.S. Air Force or Department of Defense or the Pentagon.)
Considering Igor Shushko’s account of what is being heard and discussed within Russia’s FSB spy agency, this is hardly an unthinkable scenario. It sounds like Putin is being told that the West is weak and ready to make concessions in the face of further aggression.
Over in Scientific American, Brown University professor Nina Tannenwald points out that using even the smallest tactical nuke would make the existing destruction of the war seem small, particularly if it’s detonated anywhere near a town or city:
A thermonuclear explosion of any size possesses overwhelming destructive power. Even a “small-yield” nuclear weapon (0.3 kilotons) would produce damage far beyond that of a conventional explosive. . . . It would also cause all the horrors of Hiroshima, albeit on a smaller scale. A tactical nuclear weapon would produce a fireball, shock waves, and deadly radiation that would cause long-term health damage in survivors. Radioactive fallout would contaminate air, soil, water and the food supply (Ukrainians are already familiar with this kind of outcome because of the disastrous meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986).
So, What Do We Do?
Because I’ve written about Ukraine a lot over these past few months, and I’m neither an “it’s none of our business” isolationist nor a “let’s impose a no-fly-zone” interventionist, I suppose it’s possible my view can get foggy to some readers. So, here’s what I think, at least as of this morning:
- We want Ukraine to repel the Russian invaders, or at least maximize the cost to Russia in blood and treasure, to discourage other autocrats and dictators with dreams of territorial acquisitions through military invasions.
- There is really no way to enact a no-fly zone that does not lead to a shooting war between NATO and Russia.
- There is really no way to deploy NATO troops on Ukrainian soil that does not lead to a shooting war between NATO and Russia.
- In case anyone missed this point, we want to avoid the U.S. or our NATO allies getting into a shooting war with Russia!
- Putin is likely to try to take advantage of the fact that we want to avoid a shooting war with Russia, rattling his saber, making threats, and demanding concessions. It is extremely important that the U.S. and NATO allies not make concessions to Putin, because this just encourages Putin and other autocrats to demand more. Never pay the Dane-Geld!
- If we don’t want to send Ukraine those Polish MiG-29s because we think another anti-aircraft system will be just as effective, or because we’re not certain all of those Polish MiG-29s are battle-ready, or because it will take too much time to remove certain sensitive technology we don’t want to risk falling into Russian hands, fine. Let’s send Ukraine the weapons we think will be most useful to them in their present circumstances. But if we don’t want to send Ukraine those Polish MiG-29s because we think it would be too “provocative” or “escalatory,” we’re giving Vladimir Putin a veto over our actions.
- We must not start a fight with Russia, but we must be ready and willing to end a fight with Russia. This means clearly and directly communicating to Vladimir Putin that we have the will, and the means, to end a fight with Russia.
- This means that we must clearly warn Russia that any aggression against a NATO ally would be met with an overwhelming response — conventional forces, cyberattacks, covert action, saboteurs, exposure of compromising information on Putin’s associates, you name it. We should emphasize that our response would not be “carefully measured” or “proportional,” lest that make some Russian military chiefs think they could withstand the blow. We should make it clear that our response would be wildly disproportional and inflict pain on the Russian government in ways it can’t even imagine. Instead of worrying about whether we’re provoking the Kremlin, we need to make the Kremlin fear the consequences of provoking us.
And considering Russia’s fairly low threshold for using tactical battlefield nukes, maybe we should be sending our own signals that we might respond to the use of tactical nuclear weapons with our own nonconventional response. We must make it clear to Putin that the use of nuclear weapons will not “escalate to deescalate,” it will only “escalate to escalate.”
ADDENDUM: It’s small potatoes compared to the problems in the rest of the world . . . but if you’re having a bad week, at least you’re not Baker Mayfield of the Cleveland Browns. One year after getting his team to the AFC Championship game [Correction, the divisional round of the playoffs!], Mayfield may well be traded to the Houston Texans in exchange for DeShaun Watson, who has considerable baggage from allegations of sexual misconduct and who’s likely to be suspended for at least a few games if and when he does return to the field.