According to what seem to be reliable reports, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is stalled. The Russians are said to have suffered the deaths of 10,000 or more troops and two to three times that many wounded. The Russian losses of tanks and other armored vehicles are apparently huge and continuing. In the past few days, there have been more and more discussions in the media about the possibility of Russia resorting to the use of what are referred to as “tactical nuclear weapons.” I do not get the impression that the people talking about this on television have the slightest notion of what a “tactical nuclear weapon” would be or what conceivable use it would be in the Ukraine war.
I have talked about this on this blog quite recently and I
am going to repeat now things I said then. If you find this tiresome, go
somewhere else and amuse yourself on another blog. This is far and away the
most important thing now happening in the world and I am going to talk about it
again and again and again.
The distinction between strategy and tactics has for
centuries been a part of military discourse. The term “tactics” refers to
maneuvers or decisions or actions taken on a particular battlefield in the
context of a particular battle. How to combine tanks with foot soldiers to
greatest effect is a question of tactics. Whether to combine all of one’s
forces or spread them across the field of battle or perhaps divide them into
several wings to surround the enemy forces is a matter of tactics. So are the
decisions about how most effectively to combine airpower with ground maneuvers.
The Russian decision to divide into several columns the forces advancing from
the north on Kyiv is a matter of tactics.
The weapons referred to as “tactical nuclear weapons” are
fission bombs each of which is rated as the equivalent of perhaps 3000 to 5000
tons of TNT or some similar explosive. This is referred to in shorthand as a 3
KT or 5 KT tactical nuke, a catchy form of speech that sounds hep and
knowledgeable, what was called when I was young “inside dopester.”
Let us think about this for a moment. If Russia were to send
a flight of 50 heavy bombers to attack the capital city of Ukraine and if each
of these bombers were to carry four so-called “blockbuster” bombs, each
containing the equivalent of 1000 pounds of TNT, and if all 50 of these bombers
were to drop their bombs on the capital city, causing enormous amounts of
destruction and death, this would be an attack using a total of 100 tons of
high explosive. If Russia were to send such a flight of bombers every day for a
month, it would at the end of that month have delivered to Kyiv an explosive
power equivalent to one so-called
tactical nuclear weapon rated at 3 KT. In
one month, Russia would have destroyed Kyiv with conventional weapons. Using a
single tactical nuclear weapon, Russia would destroy Kyiv in roughly 3 seconds. To ensure the complete destruction of Kyiv, Russia
might have to double down and use two or three tactical nuclear weapons. Not by any stretch of language can this be
called a “tactical decision.”
The phrase “tactical nuclear weapon” is a contradiction, a
deception, a device employed by people who seek some way of justifying the use
of weapons, which they possess, for which no justified use can be found.
Russia is said to have 4000 nuclear weapons. As I have said
before and will say again and again, if a nation has nuclear weapons and the
people who control those weapons cannot be deterred by rational self-interest,
there is nothing anybody can do to stop them from using those weapons.
Vladimir Putin cannot use nuclear weapons. It is not he who
sits in the bunker or flies the plane or enters the codes into the device that
launches the weapon. He gives orders. If he were to order the use of nuclear
weapons, “tactical” or otherwise, would the generals and the colonels and the
majors and lieutenants obey his orders? I have no idea. If he were to order the
use of nuclear weapons and if the officers who actually control those weapons
were to obey his orders, would the weapons actually fly or would they splutter
and fizzle? I have no idea and I do not know whether American military
commanders know either.
Tomorrow, I will try to say something speculative about what
Biden could do short of launching a nuclear war to try to stop Putin.
28 comments:
How about Putin dropping tactical bouquets of flowers on Kiev?
That burst into myriad rainbows and make everybody ecstatic?
Or even baskets of mushrooms, which Russia must surely possess, absent the clouds?
The speculation I have read is that Russia might explode one of these in a relatively unpopulated area (e.g., the North Sea, itself unpopulated but several millions living around it, so...) as a demonstration of its seriousness. That is, if NATO doesn't back off, doesn't stop supplying Ukraine with munitions, etc., much worse is in store.
Not being a nuclear game theorist myself, I don't know what would be an appropriate response: perhaps a similar demonstration in the Artic Sea near but outside the 200 mile limit of Russia? If nothing of this sort is appropriate, is there any appropriate response? Just ignore it, while still supplying Ukraine? Is this a situation in which it is better to live on one's knees than to die on one's feet (h/t La Pasionara) because of the risk of nuclear annihilation?
Perhaps you could address this.
Thank you
Artic s/b Arctic
I agree with Prof. Wolff, especially his point that the term "tactical nuclear weapon" is a semantic trick used to try to belittle the effect of a nuclear attack. This false labelling is also dangerous because it is an attempt to reduce the moral pressure on decision-makers.
U.S. Intelligence, for once, seems to have performed well in anticipating Russia's moves in Ukraine. It's possible that if Putin decides to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, Biden may know about it ahead of time. Then will come the warnings designed to dissuade Putin and others from following through on his decision.
In the meantime, Biden is already saying explicitly that Putin is considering the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. My guess is that before a nuclear weapon is employed there the Russian military will use chemical weapons.
Christine Amanpour’s interview of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov is unnerving, given his evasions and fabrications. His assertion that Russia would use nuclear weapons if it concluded it was facing an existential threat to its security. What would constitute an “existential threat” is left unclarified. Amanpour’s exasperation with Peskov’s lies and evasions is understandable. Very disturbing interview.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/03/22/amanpour-kremlin-spokesperson-dmitry-peskov.cnn
Let me indulge my penchant for stating the obvious. In the hierarchy of catastrophe, from the top down, we have
1. Termination of all life on Earth, by runaway greenhouse effect or any other cause.
2. Mass extinction, including homo sap.
3. Human extinction.
4. Collapse of civilization.
5. Billions of deaths.
6. Millions of deaths.
7. Thousands of deaths.
...
999999. My inconvenience. :)
Whatever one calls nukes of few-kiloton yields, by themselves they produce at most #6. In order to go higher, escalation must occur on a significant scale. Among many tragedies left out of my hierarchy is loss of (relative) freedom for hundreds of millions. Opinions may differ on where to place it, but perhaps WW2 demonstrated that it belongs at least above #6.
I have no special insight on how to deter Putzik from using a nuke, or how to respond without escalation. But I believe those are the necessary questions, not that we must knuckle under whenever he rattles his sabers.
I have not seen any serious argument that Putzik will feel secure and stop if he wins in Ukraine. Rather, it seems to be expected that he would move on to other ex-SSRs or Warsaw Pact members, and perhaps further. To me, that means he must lose in Ukraine and be seen by the world and by the Russian people to have lost. Face-saving makes another unprovoked aggression highly likely.
Barney,
I appreciate the point you are making, with these qualifications. First, I suspect many of the people who comment on this blog, and many citizens of the United States and Europe, would not agree that the loss of relative freedom for millions of people does not belong above #6. Many would maintain that it belongs below #6, and perhaps below #5. We may disagree with such people, but they have a vote and are entitled to be heard.
Second, there is a not insignificant probability that escalation in the event one side or another used tactical nuclear weapons to the use of strategic nuclear weapons would occur. If such a catastrophe did occur, it would not just annihilate human life (#s 2 and 3), but would destroy almost all life, including plant life, leaving, perhaps, insects, lichens and bacteria. That would equate to #1, and would occur much more quickly. In addition, the lethal effects of the radioactivity would last for centuries.
Regarding inconvenience, I would place my inconvenience at 999998, above yours, as would most everybody else, who would place their inconvenience above mine and yours.
Correction:
Misuse of double negative.
"do not agree that the loss of relative freedom belongs above #6"
1. A quibble perhaps but tactical nukes can be dialed down to a fraction of a KT. This presents obvious problems.
2. As far as the list goes, life on earth will end in a billion or so years when the sun does its thing. Otherwise, not so much. There are bacteria hanging around thermal vents deep in the ocean. Some plants thrive in a fire ecology and the seeds of common plants can remain viable for years or decades. We are here because a few small mammals survived the K - T event.
3. As it's not unreasonable to assume that a failure to deal with global warming could lead to billions of human deaths from factors that also include nuclear war, this may not be the best time to kick that can down the road. There is simply no room for personalist authoritarian regimes and messianic delusions at Russian scale.
4. Life isn't fair and the universe doesn't care. The James Webb Telescope has been tuned in and those galaxies in the pic have at least a few civilizations with their own telescopes looking back at us and wondering if we exist.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220319.html
Certainly the relative value of freedom and life is a value judgment, and if I were deciding for myself I'm not sure how I'd choose. But if it's a question of how many people's freedom should be sacrificed to save one life I might say no more than 10, somebody else who values freedom less highly might say 100, but would anybody say 1000?
Ukrainians seem to have decided that it's worth taking heavy casualties to preserve freedom. If I had any confidence that Putzik would stop with Ukraine I would have to decide how many non-Ukrainian lives I think it's worth risking to preserve Ukrainian freedom. But since I expect Putzik not to stop if he wins Ukraine that question is, to me, moot.
Let me just state it baldly: I'm willing to see millions of people die to preserve freedom for hundreds of millions. I would be quite upset if trying to preserve freedom for hundreds of millions caused human extinction. But I do not accept that the first, or first few, nukes would ensure human extinction.
The risk of an accidental nuclear detonation escalating to total nuclear war has been present since the 1950s. I would be amazed if either the US or Russian military establishment has failed to think through how to abort an escalating conflict. I hope we never find out if all the war games have taught them anything.
Re. "Let me just state it baldly..." -
I think I share that judgment to a (very vague and poorly defined) extent, and admire your willingness to express it at the obvious risk of being strongly condemned. But out of interest, how would you respond in the way of argument to someone who strongly disagreed? Or do you think one could do no better than acknowledge a sort of stalemate of competing intuitions at that point?
Someone with some flavor of deontological/Kantian intuitions would probably object that your approach is to be condemned for treating people's lives as means to an end, and for lacking the rigor to do so beyond an arbitrary cutoff point. As for the end itself, the freedom of large numbers, the fact that we have to qualify it as "relative" freedom gives me pause, too.
It also occurs to me that the "millions of people" in these utilitarian-style judgments are something of a bloodless abstraction; that is, if you attach "names and faces" to them, the estimation seems to become a lot more dubious. It may be ultimately acceptable if "millions of people" (abstractly speaking, or considered as sheer strangers) die for a greater good, but what if the millions included a few of our closest loved ones? (And clearly it wouldn't take much reflection to suspect ourselves of obscuring our vision with arbitrary, personal favoritism at that point - but it's not as though we could simply rid ourselves of that attitude!)
All the same, I'm not willing to throw out utilitarianism entirely; I think it's an important piece of the moral narrative. But it's hard to say with any adequacy what the moral narrative really is - maybe there's no right answer. (Sidgwick confessed somewhere that he felt ignorant of the "A, B, C's" of morality.)
Those of my generation and Barney Wolff’s (a bit older) will recall the movie Fail Safe which came out in the 60’s, when the fear of a nuclear war was always on our minds every day. In the movie, Henry Fonda played the President of the U.S. Somehow a plane in the Strategic Air Command gets the message that the Soviet Union has launched a nuclear attack. The message is an error, but once received by the pilot, it cannot be retracted (supposedly, this was the military protocol, in order to prevent a pilot from being deceived that the message was an error). The plane succeeds in evading the Soviet’s air defenses and drops a nuclear bomb on, I believe, Moscow. Fonda has been in constant contact with the premier of the Soviet Union, explaining its been an error on the part of the U.S. In order to avoid a total nuclear war, Fonda orders that a nuclear bomb be dropped on New York City. At the time the movie was released, this scenario was thought to be a real possibility. I was a teenager, and I remember people debating whether what Fonda ordered was the correct decision. Some argued that since the U.S. error had occurred, and was not intentional, the correct response was to take advantage of the error and launch a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union. I disagreed with that proposal, and thought that Fonda did the right thing. What do others commenting on this blog think?
They should have dropped it on Dallas, not New York.
s. wallerstein,
I can’t say that I disagree. When I was in the Army Reserve and had to do my basic training and subsequent MOS training, some of the most anti-Semitic enlistees were from Texas. Sorry if I offend any readers from Texas. I am sure there are many good Texans, but I assume they are all Democrats.
Barney,
After Putin is satisfied that he has won the war in Ukraine, which, all things being equal appears eventually to occur in Russia’s favor, he announces to the West, “Now I intend to invade Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. I expect NATO not to put up any resistance, otherwise we will use tactical nuclear weapons on the Baltic states. I mean this, and my generals, who are standing next to me, as you can see, agree with me. I will stop with their annexation. Russia will not make any other demands, because, frankly, we cannot control any more countries. If you call our bluff, we will use nuclear weapons. We are not bluffing.”
The total population of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is 6,078,000. Is their freedom worth calling Putin’s bluff and risking a nuclear war which would result in the annihilation of most human and other life?
The notion that we would be moral in sacrificing Ukraine to save the Baltics depends heavily on the notion that Putzik would be telling the truth if he said "Give me the Baltics and I'll be content forever after." Perhaps. But perhaps not. Even if Putzik actually believes he needs buffer states to feel safe from invasion, there are more states involved than Ukraine and the Baltics. Really though, with missiles and stealth bombers, the width of the buffer zone expands to the whole world.
It's a classic of blackmailing that if you pay the blackmailer once in hopes that will be it, you often find that not to be so. We do have precedent, from the 1930s.
I don't understand how we can deal with threats to millions or hundreds of millions other than by, to the extent possible, distancing ourselves from the horror. I trust y'all will remember Stalin's famous quote on the issue. But what is the alternative?
Would having Putzik as dictator of the whole world stop the killing? Postpone, at best. What happens when he dies? Or do you expect a succession of cloned Putziks?
Barney,
Is this the Stalin quote you are referring to: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
This is all armchair theorizing, but I suspect that these kinds of scenarios are actually analyzed and contemplated at the Pentagon. I am offering the question about Putin demanding the annexation of the Baltic states with the following consideration in mind. At the end of WWII, the eastern European countries were in a state of devastation by the Nazis and the advance of the Soviet army. They were in no position to resist Soviet installation of puppet governments, which it did in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania. Russia could not repeat such takeovers in any of these countries today. It would be impossible for Russia to govern any of these countries, even if NATO would not come to their defense. Each of these countries would resist such Russian efforts as valiantly as Ukraine is, with enormous loss of life among the Russian soldiers. I am confident that Putin knows this. Control of the Baltic states is different. Russia could probably accomplish this. Therefore the demand for annexing the Baltic states, combined with a threat to use nuclear weapons if NATO resists, with a concomitant pledge not to make any additional demands on annexing other NATO members, would make sense, since Russia could not possibly control the other members even if a nuclear threat were acceded to. Even bullies have their logistic limitations.
I said I was taking a break, but am breaking silence for the moment.
Barney W. wrote:
I have not seen any serious argument that Putzik will feel secure and stop if he wins in Ukraine. Rather, it seems to be expected that he would move on to other ex-SSRs or Warsaw Pact members, and perhaps further.
Expected by whom? No one can be certain of any of Putin's intentions right now.
That said, there is certainly "a serious argument" that Putin would not attack a NATO member state. That "serious argument" is the fact that they are NATO members and covered by the alliance's collective security guarantee (Article 5).
If Putin is thought to still be acting "rationally" in some sense, or to retain at least a shred of "rationality" -- note that rationality here does not of course equal morality or legality -- then he will probably not take steps likely to involve the increased possibility of nuclear war, which an attack on a NATO member state would do.
On the one hand, people say "well, Putin attacked Ukraine partly because it's not in NATO," and then some of these same people go on to say "if he 'wins' [whatever that word exactly means in this context] in Ukraine, he'll go on to attack other former Warsaw Pact members [which are now NATO members]."
These two statements are arguably somewhat inconsistent. On the one hand, it was the absence of the NATO collective security guarantee that partly allowed or prompted the invasion of Ukraine, according to the first statement. But according to the second statement, the NATO security guarantee doesn't matter as a deterrent b/c Putin will go on to attack other countries, including ones that are in NATO.
This makes rather little sense. Here's what seems a better argument, at least as things stand now. Either Putin is not "deterrable" by the fact of NATO membership, in which case one might perhaps plausibly have expected him to have already launched a full-scale air attack on the Baltics or Poland, thereby triggering WW 3, or the fact of NATO membership is a "deterrent" at least to some degree, in which case he wd not have attacked a NATO member state. What we see so far, of course, is the latter.
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[continuation]
This gets back to the question of the 1930s and why it's a misleading historical analogy here. First, there were no nuclear weapons in the '30s. Their existence today must affect all decisionmakers' calculations in some way, unless you assume that they have actually lost their minds in a clinical sense. Second, Hitler was bent on a program of territorial expansion to the east and general European conquest. Even if you assume that Putin is motivated by an ideological desire to restore the old Czarist empire's boundaries, the conditions under which he would have to try to achieve that goal are different from those that existed in the '30s. Moreover, it is still debatable what Putin's motives are. There is some evidence for the ideology suggestion, but also evidence in the other direction, namely that he sees "control" (in some sense) of Ukraine, however misguidedly, as crucial to Russia's security. I think it's probably a mixture of the two motives, plus some others. But since Putin has not announced what his "war aims" are, beyond vague references to the "demilitarization" and "de-Nazification" [sic] of Ukraine, the debate continues.
All Putin has really achieved so far is to kill and displace a lot of innocent people, ruin a lot of innocent lives, reduce some Ukrainian cities to rubble, reportedly get thousands of his own soldiers killed, create a humanitarian crisis, unite NATO and Europe against him, and get harsh economic sanctions imposed. Since his venture into Ukraine has been pretty much a disaster so far for him, if he "wins" in Ukraine, whatever that means exactly, why would he go on to replicate this disaster, except now on a much larger scale by attacking a NATO country?
That's not to say it's impossible, but right now it seems unlikely. Especially since there is no evidence, at least none I'm aware of, that any NATO members, and certainly not the U.S., are putting any pressure on Zelensky to make concessions he doesn't want to make. Even if there is a diplomatic settlement that gives Putin some of what he wants, that will not amount to a "victory" sufficient to propel him to attack some NATO country.
Of course, if Putin has completely lost his mind in a clinical sense, then the above considerations become somewhat inapplicable. But so far the evidence suggests that while aspects of his personal behavior are strange, he is not insane in a clinical sense.
Final note: A week or two ago (I forget the exact date), the noted British author Max Hastings, who has written a lot about WW2, appeared on the radio program 'On Point'. While clearly not "soft" on Putin in any sense, when the conversation turned to this, he resisted a direct equation of Putin to Hitler. If Max Hastings is unwilling to make such a direct equation, that's a pretty good piece of evidence that, based on what has happened so far, such a direct equation is unwarranted. If Putin launches a conventional or other kind of attack tomorrow on the Baltics or Poland or Romania, takes over the Kaliningrad corridor (whatever the correct name of it is), etc., then it wd be a different question.
We naturally turn to history and historical analogies to try to understand current events, but such turning to history can often result in the ignoring of key features of a situation. It's better, I think, to try to understand what's occurring on its own terms, to the extent that is possible. Sometimes analogies are helpful, but sometimes not. When Obama was considering whether to do the 2009 Afghan "surge," perhaps some reference to Vietnam might have actually helped him reach the correct decision -- which I now think wd have been not to do the "surge". At the time, though, there was reason to think that Vietnam might be a misleading analogy -- Afghanistan was v. different in various ways etc. So sometimes an analogy might turn out to be helpful even if one resists it at the time. Trouble is, it's very hard to know this at the time, namely when an analogy will help and when it will mislead. Which tends to counsel being cautious in their use, even if in end one of them turns out to be applicable.
" Even bullies have their logistic limitations."
Which are usually discovered the hard way. Rather then engaging in an endless, one sided negotiating process, it might be more productive to use language that a dictator with messianic delusions might better understand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qynydbBpqy4
There is no agreement with someone like Putin that will survive his future calculation that he can evade it.
It seems that Poland has suggested a peace keeping force for Ukraine. Should Russia use nukes or chemical weapons, stationing one in the west in a manner that neutralizes Belarus and includes Odessa would be justified.
I see that Ukraine has finally gotten the means to sink Russian ships and has just sunk an Alligator class landing ship in the best possible way.
As we go back and forth there is currently a meet up in Brussels of what is in effect the Fascist International. Until recently when it became inconvenient, some of these folks were Putin fanboys. Pushing the Baltic nations out of the troika would tear NATO apart and end the European Project among other horrible results.
Re: Putin's mental state. Such states are always going to be a moving target. Hitler in 1932 vs. 1944, Stalin in 1915 vs. 1950, Lindsey Graham in ... What we know about Putin is that he has heavily bought into some crackpot fascist notions of nationalism, Russian destiny, etc. Derangement is often a process not a toggle switch.
A factual pt on the OP.
RPW says tactical nuclear weapons are rated at 3000 to 5000 tons of TNT.
However, they can come in smaller sizes.
From Wiki:
"The W54 (also known as the Mark 54 or B54) was a tactical nuclear warhead developed by the United States in the late 1950s. The weapon is notable for being the smallest nuclear weapon in both size and yield to have entered US service. It was a compact implosion device containing plutonium-239 as its fissile material[1] and in its various versions and mods had a yield of 10 to 1,000 tons of TNT (42 to 4,184 gigajoules)."
This is not to say they aren't horrible weapons -- they definitely are -- but they can come in smaller sizes than the OP suggests. I don't know much about the details of the "tactical" nuclear weapons today. I believe the US still has about 200 of them stationed in Europe.
Btw, back in 2015 there was concern and chatter about official Russian statements suggesting a lowering of their threshold for nuclear use, though it involved the same word, "existential," that they're using today.
e.g.:
https://howlatpluto.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-us-russia-war-chatter.html
The 200 US "tactical" nuclear weapons referred to above are "gravity" bombs, which the US has been "modernizing" at great expense. See Barry Blechman and Russell Rumbaugh, “Bombs Away: The Case for Phasing Out U.S. Tactical Nukes in Europe,” Foreign Affairs, July/Aug. 2014:163-174.
Of course, given the current situation, the argument may not quite any longer hold, though I suspect these gravity bombs are just basically useless white elephants. But I'm not a weapons expert.
One other thought: Why is the discussion one way? Instead of just the "would throwing the Baltics away" be a good thing, perhaps we should be noting that Lukashenko is corrupt and unpopular and wouldn't it be a shame if
Russia lost its only friendly neighbor to the west? Historically, pretending its raining when being spit on hasn't worked out well.
LFC,
Thank you for popping in. I understand. You just can't resist talking to us, especially about a compelling subject.
This is my last comment for a while.
AA wrote upthread:
The total population of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is 6,078,000. Is their freedom worth calling Putin’s bluff and risking a nuclear war which would result in the annihilation of most human and other life?
It's not only a question of the Baltic states' freedom. It's a question of the existence of the NATO alliance.
If Putin says: "I'm invading the Baltic countries. If NATO resists me, I'm using 'tactical' nuclear weapons," NATO then has a choice: it either calls Putin's bluff, or the NATO alliance ceases to exist. Article 5 is not optional. Afaik, there is no codicil that says: "except in case the aggressor threatens to use nuclear weapons." I shd look up the exact wording, but it's a collective security guarantee. That means if one NATO member is attacked, the others must come to its defense.
So the choice before NATO would be: either call Putin's bluff or end the NATO alliance. Period.
Of course, I think the situation, while not impossible, is unlikely to occur. One reason it's unlikely to occur is that, Barney Wolff's constant harping on the 1930s notwithstanding, this is not the 1930s. The 1930s were unique. Every situation is by definition unique. That means that, as I keep saying though I will never convince Barney Wolff of this, historical analogies, though they can occasionally be helpful, should have a big red-lettered sign "Handle with Care" attached to them.
Ok. I'm done for a while here.
Oh I'm so sorry. In noting the 1930s as precedent, I intended to point out that Appeasement failed, partially. If its primary goal was to trade ceding various territories to Hitler in return for "peace in our time" it failed. If its goal was to give the UK time to rev up its armament industry, it succeeded. Other than in continually grabbing territory until stopped, I do not equate Putzik to Hitler. At least so far, Putzik has not mouthed antisemitic drivel. He has copied Hitler in asserting the superiority of his ethnic group over others, but that's a club with a lot of members.
NATO has been deterred, correctly in my view, from providing direct combat personnel, establishing a no-fly zone, and certainly from attacking Russian territory. The downside of that is to create doubt in Putzik's mind that NATO would respond strongly to an attack on any NATO member. That's certainly what the treaty says, and I think it more likely than not that it would happen in practice. But Putzik may not believe it, and certainly the Oval Loser did his best to cast doubt on NATO effectiveness.
Sure, dialing down the yield of a nuke may make a decision to use it more likely. But, bluntly, so what? We're not talking about a rational decision here. Any actual use of a nuke means that Putzik has certainly lost his mind, as the risk of uncontrolled escalation is too high. Besides, I suspect (ignorantly) that dialing down is intended for use by a defender, on its own territory. An attacker who wants to occupy territory and profit from it probably doesn't want to use a nuke anyway. An attacker who just wants to kill as many people as possible has no interest in dialing down.
But all this misses what I continue to believe is the main point. We should be scared about the collapse of civilization and human extinction, and do our very best to avoid the minus-infinity outcomes. That has, in my view, much more to do with aborting escalation than with trying to read Putzik's mind about whether his threat to use any nuke is real. The first nuke, of whatever yield, will not itself cause civilization to collapse. The West, which despite what some people seem to believe are the comparatively good guys, can only control what it does, not what the bad guys do.
If I were part of the group Biden has established to debate how to respond to a WMD event from Putzik, I would talk about a non-WMD response to the first nuke, and at every point respond somewhat less destructively. Let all the escalation, if any, be done by the other side. Perhaps the Russian military would notice, and stop before the point of no return. What other choice has a better chance? Even if NATO just surrenders, sooner or later war between Russia and China, or other existing or new nuclear states, would be inevitable. In fact I would expect that surrender in the face of an actual limited nuclear attack, or worse just the threat, would make it all but certain that somebody would try it again, and again.
"Even if NATO just surrenders, sooner or later war between Russia and China, or other existing or new nuclear states, would be inevitable. In fact I would expect that surrender in the face of an actual limited nuclear attack, or worse just the threat, would make it all but certain that somebody would try it again, and again."
This is absolutely the case. It would also incentivize non-nuclear nations to get themselves some nukes. One advantage (and there are many) of dialing down a tactical nuke (say to 300 tons) is that it makes it easy for the other side (NATO in this case) to equivocate. If that happens it would normalize the use of those weapons. It would then be rinse and repeat.
"I do not equate Putzik to Hitler. At least so far, Putzik has not mouthed antisemitic drivel. He has copied Hitler in asserting the superiority of his ethnic group over others, but that's a club with a lot of members."
The 1930s are apt. The Russian version takes white-peopling to a new level. Putin and cronies have embraced some total loons:
"Ilyin, he says, is 'probably the most important example of how old ideas'—the fascism of the 20s, 30s, and 40s—'can be brought back in the 21st century for a postmodern context.”
https://www.openculture.com/2018/06/an-introduction-to-ivan-ilyin.html
https://ridl.io/en/ivan-ilyin-a-fashionable-fascist/
and:
"And so the Russian, a philosopher, understood history as a disgrace. The world since creation was a meaningless farrago of fragments. The more humans sought to understand it, the more sinful it became. Modern life, with its pluralism and its civil society, deepened the flaws of the world and kept God in exile. God’s one hope was that a righteous nation would follow a leader to create a new political totality, and thereby begin a repair of the world that might in turn redeem the divine."
https://reees.macmillan.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-god-russian
Then there's this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Denikin
Both of these guys died in exile some years ago and were buried outside Russia. Besides regularly quoting them, Putin had them reburied in Russia with all sorts of honors. If this elicits a "so what'" I would remind you of one of Keynes more apt observations:
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”
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