"Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal -- weapons whose range is less than about 300 miles -- has already come to play an increasingly important role in its defensive plans. Vladimir Putin's government has considered the possibility of the limited use of nuclear weapons as part of efforts to inflict "unacceptable damage" on an opponent. This is a lower standard than the one used during the Cold War, when the Soviets assumed that even tactical nuclear use in Europe would assume catastrophic proportions.
In 2020, Russia published "The Basic Principles of the State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence," which specified that the country would resort to nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios: if it or its allies were attacked with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), if it detected a launch of ballistic missiles against its own or allied territory, if its nuclear command and control structures were attacked, or if the state's very existence was threatened by the use of conventional weapons.
The wording of that last clause -- which refers to the Russian state, not the nation or society -- has raised concern, since it suggests that a threat to the state's leadership would meet the nuclear criterion even if the country is not under catastrophic attack. It is also unclear whether Russia's definition of WMD includes large-scale precision strikes and cyberattacks, which defense minister Sergei Shoigu has described as approaching WMD levels of destruction.
This ambiguity may well be by design, given that other Russian military documents refer to nuclear weapons as a tool to be used in all phases of conflict.
It is still likely that Russia would only use nuclear weapons if its forces face a decisive defeat at the hands of NATO or if its control over what it deems its own territory is jeopardized. But this might include freshly joined territory that has been incorporated into Russia.
The fact that Russia is willing to contemplate nuclear first use isn't the most important departure from Soviet practice, however. What is genuinely new about Russian doctrine is that it includes options for limited and flexible nuclear use. During the Cold War, Soviet leaders broadly dismissed the notion of limited nuclear war, scoffing at the idea that nuclear weapons could be used in small numbers simply to signal resolve.
There are several reasons to consider Russia's aggressive nuclear doctrine at least partially credible. The first is that certain Russian weapons can target specific nonnuclear members of NATO. The Iskander short-range ballistic missile can strike Lithuania, Poland or Germany from Kaliningrad or Belarus, but it cannot hit the U.K. or France, much less the U.S. This is useful for the conduct of limited strikes, ensuring that nuclear-armed members of NATO will not misconstrue a Russian launch as an attack on their own homelands.
The second factor is the increased accuracy of Russian missiles. Historically, destroying hardened targets required the use of high-yield warheads at altitudes that caused significant fallout. This made it difficult to selectively target military facilities for attack, because the fallout would likely kill many civilians and trigger a full-scale nuclear exchange.
Today's more accurate missiles -- the Iskander is accurate to a radius of just over 30 feet -- can be used to destroy military targets such as hardened command posts with low-yield warheads at relatively high altitudes. This lowers the fallout risk from a nuclear strike to negligible levels, making limited nuclear use as a means of coercion appear less outlandish.
Some experts have questioned the value of nuclear weapons as a battlefield asset, concluding that a key lesson of the Cold War was their lack of utility. U.S. Army studies concluded, for example, that a one-kiloton warhead would need to detonate within 300 feet of a tank to inflict serious damage. Other analysts, including some Soviet ones, concluded that tanks provide effective protection against radiation.
Even if tactical nuclear weapons have limited value against tanks, however, they are much more effective against artillery, infantry and "soft-skinned" logistical vehicles. Longer-range nonstrategic nuclear weapons could be used against air bases and command posts across Europe, without the escalatory effect of large-scale civilian casualties. And there are certain potential theaters where low-yield nuclear weapons could be used with minimal civilian casualties and maximum military effect.
Using NUKEMAP, an online tool that has been used in peer-reviewed research, we estimated the effects of a Russian nuclear attack on the Suwalki Gap -- a strategically crucial region on the Polish-Lithuanian border where NATO forces would likely be concentrated in a war with Russia. The area is narrow enough that Russia could detonate a single 10 kiloton weapon, causing enormous damage to NATO troops while limiting civilian casualties to the hundreds.
Russia's nuclear doctrine thus has important implications for NATO strategy. If an opponent feels that military ends can be achieved with nuclear means, it might become necessary for NATO to integrate nuclear deterrence into warfighting.
A nuclear-centric Russian military would also have significant implications for NATO's force structure. For instance, the growing utility of light infantry and artillery against tanks is effectively inverted in a nuclear context, where tanks are one of the few assets that can survive a tactical nuclear weapon.
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Dr. Kaushal is a research fellow and Mr. Cranny-Evans is a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank.” [1]
1. REVIEW --- Russia's Aggressive New Nuclear Strategy --- Breaking with Soviet-era policy, the country has lowered its threshold for using nuclear weapons and built new missiles to carry out limited strikes.
Kaushal, Sidharth; Cranny-Evans, Sam.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 23 July 2022: C.3.
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