Why wouldn’t Putin use a nuke on Ukraine?
Russian forces in Ukraine are attacking civilian infrastructure and Wagner Group mercenaries are committing barbaric acts because they can’t do much more at this point. Vladimir Putin’s poorly led, supplied, and demoralized troops are retreating. There is every reason to believe that recently mobilized reserves will be even less effective than existing forces once they reach the front. But winter is coming and Europe needs Russian energy. Given how soft and poorly led the West is, why wouldn’t Putin risk a nuclear strike on Ukraine?
To make matters worse, they are running out of helicopters, armored vehicles, missiles, artillery, and strike aircraft. So far they have done little to break Ukraine’s resolve. Russia now appears to have lost more troops eight months into their invasion than the United States lost during the entire Vietnam War. Putin can’t hide this from his people forever and there will be a cost once Russians learn how badly this unprovoked invasion has gone. We can only speculate how secure his hold on power has become, but the deteriorating situation in Ukraine has clearly damaged Russian national prestige and is hurting Putin’s political capital in Moscow. Russia has failed at this point to achieve their strategic objectives via conventional means which means something has to change.
Mutually assured destruction prevented nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union because both sides believed the other would retaliate. Both sides had everything to lose and nothing to gain from launching. But decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union the world has changed.
Nuclear weapons have such a stigma to them that it is hard to imagine a country actually using them. Apart from using atomic weapons on a defeated country that wouldn’t quit to end World War II, no country has really needed to use them. But why go to the immense trouble and expense to build a weapon that you’ll never use? A powerful weapon that isn’t used completely contradicts history and human nature, and it is very possible that one day nukes will be an accepted part of war.
Wiping a city like Kiev off the map would likely result in a nuclear response from NATO. But why not use a low-yield tactical warhead and show people you mean business? For that matter, a dirty bomb that you could actually blame on Ukraine? Russia is already an international pariah; doing so wouldn’t necessarily change anyone’s opinion of them. If framed properly by politicians and the media, the difference between a battlefield nuke and a large conventional weapon that Russia has used, like thermobaric rockets, becomes semantic. After all, Ukrainians vaporized in a nuclear reaction are just as dead if they those killed by a fuel-air explosion from a vacuum bomb. If the target was military, it isn’t much of a stretch imagining television analysts saying at least the dead were troops and not schools or apartment complexes.
Going back to the Cold War, if the Soviets rolled into the Fulda Gap and invaded Europe, we would almost certainly have launched. They had a significant manpower and equipment advantage. NATO would not have been able to stop them conventionally, and Russia doesn’t seem to be able to defeat Ukraine. And if they do manage to occupy the country, Russian forces will be bled white by an insurgency.
No civilized society should tolerate the campaign of murder, pillage, and rape of a non-threatening neighbor, but we also have to consider our national interests. We say we “stand with Ukraine,” but when it comes down to it, how many nations are actually willing to risk thousands of lives — or possibly their very existence — to fight Russia? Putin knows that apart from sending arms, most of our support is merely virtue signalling. If the Biden Administration really wanted to hurt Russia we could weaponize our vast resources of energy. Flood the market with cheap oil and natural gas. We won’t. Likewise, European leaders are too interested in green energy to truly pull the plug on Russian energy.
Russia has painted itself into a corner and if it is to be taken seriously on the international stage, and if the Putin regime wants to remain in power, something has to be done. The West is weak. It’s people are soft. Barring a drastic change on the battlefield, why wouldn’t Putin go nuclear?