Escalation to Deescalate
“War is cruelty. … The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” - William Tecumseh Sherman, Commander of the Army of Tennessee. The ongoing war in Ukraine has shown this to the extreme, what with the Russian attempts to cow Ukraine through terror strikes on population centres and civilian infrastructure. And yet, beginning in September, a darker side of modern warfare has been unveiled, with the not-so-subtle threat by Russian strategic commanders and President Vladimir Putin that Russia could use a nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine. Although Russian military command’s “conversations, first reported by the New York Times, were speculative and did not entail explicit plans to use such weapons or identify possible targets” according to the Washington Post, the mere fact that these possibilities are being discussed threaten to disrupt the modern security paradigms that nearly the entire world born after 1945 have lived under. This leads to my addition to the discussion surrounding this topic. If Russia does decide to drop the bomb in Ukraine, be it a terror strike on Kramatorsk or a battlefield strike on a theoretical Ukrainian advance into Crimea, the United States’ (and by extension NATO’s) best option is to engage in a massive conventional strike against Russian military positions in Ukraine. This, ironically, would represent the best chance for forcing Russia to the negotiating table on Ukraine’s terms, as the systematic destruction of Russia’s forces in Ukraine would leave Russia hobbled at the tactical, strategic, and regional levels.
For ease of reading, I’ll first define certain terms that will crop up in this article. Common nuclear-capable missiles are usually divided into three categories: ICBMs, or Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles; SLBMs, or Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles; and ALCMs, or Air-Launched Cruise Missiles. These, alongside ground-launched weapons such as traditional nuclear bombs, make up a country’s typical ‘nuclear triad’ of air, ground, and sea-based nuclear weaponry. Conventional strikes, also known as kinetic attacks, are any sort of military operation that does not involve such weaponry as nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, or biological weapons. For the scope of this article, I will be discounting cyberattacks from the realm of ‘conventional strikes’. NATO is an acronym that stands for North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.
The theoretical backing behind my assertion comes from Steven J. Brams and D. Marc Kilgour’s analysis of the so-called Deterrence Game, based on a concept that is widely known: the game of Chicken. In Figure 1, visible in the paper linked above, a game of Chicken is sketched out based on what outcomes are available to players Column and Row if each either cooperates with the other or does not. If one adds the two inferences in this article that different levels of cooperation are possible in this Game, as well as the idea of “a subsequent level of retaliation”, then the game of Deterrence that Brams and Kilgour describe applies to real-life scenarios, such as deciding whether or not to launch a strike in response to an attack. If Russia does drop a bomb, then NATO needs to decide whether or not it is worthwhile to take an action as seen in Figure 1, or allow this to pass unmolested. The possibility of a conventional strike “may have the effect of raising its expected damage without” raising the possibility of “counter-value strikes”, and a generalised nuclear war.
Traditionally, the strategy employed by NATO should Russia drop a nuclear weapon is to deliver “a nuclear response” on the Russian forces that delivered the strike, as per the wording of Article V of the NATO treaty, writes Matthew Kroenig. Kroenig argues that a “conventional-only response, especially one that might take weeks or months to assemble and employ” would not be able to adequately intimidate President Putin; only a nuclear deterrence threat would be a proper response to a Russian nuclear strike. The preferred nuclear response by NATO would “likely be B61 gravity bombs delivered by NATO member states’ dual-capable aircraft (DCA)”, but those aircraft are threatened by impressive Russian air defences proven to be able to shoot down these DCAs. Additionally, retrofitting new warheads onto older weapons platforms, or manufacturing an entirely new warhead and weapons system, would be too cost- and time-prohibitive to be viable solutions to this problem. The document I cite is from 2016, when it was assumed that Russia would not invade Ukraine a second time or drop a nuclear weapon, and United States carrier strike groups were not in proximity to Russian forces in Europe. Today, there are two US carrier strike groups in proximity to the ongoing conflict: USNI News reports that the “George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group remains on station in the Adriatic Sea”, with a screen of “Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer[s]” under “NATO Maritime Group 2” and other ships equipped for conventional and nuclear strikes; and “the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group (CSF)” is at anchor in Portsmouth, U.K., with a complement of destroyers, at least one air wing, and “Destroyer Squadron 26”, alongside two fleet logistics ships. These CSGs already have an immense airpower and seapower rating, and can individually outmatch some national Air Forces; individually they would be able to launch strikes on Russian military forces in Ukraine, and together, they would be able to launch massive conventional strikes on the scale of those launched at the beginning of the Second Gulf War. This analysis does not include the capabilities of the US Air Force in Europe, or NATO’s overall air and sea capabilities. The psychological impact on Putin and his generals of having a massive conventional strike upon Ukraine-based Russian forces would be immense, and economic constraints would, if done correctly, prevent Putin from responding with a general nuclear strike. China has already expressed its hesitation to continue doing business with Russia if they drop a nuclear bomb. India, presumably, is following China’s path, as the US is a large trading partner with India.
I believe that, should a conventional strike be chosen, the ideal composition would involve a mix of aerial and naval assets. Air-launched missiles would be able to target Russian naval assets in Sevastopol, while naval strikes - cannons or otherwise - would be able to suppress Russian responses and ground forces. This would not require allied ground forces to enter Ukraine, which reduces the risk of Putin deciding to respond to an allied strike with his considerable strategic and tactical nuclear weapons arsenal.
In short, if Russia does drop a nuclear bomb on Ukraine, the best chance to force Russia to the negotiating table on Ukraine’s terms would be for the US and NATO to launch a massive conventional strike on Russian forces in Ukraine. This conventional force, including missiles that can fly through Russian air defences and drones that are stealthy enough to slip through unnoticed, would destroy Russia’s ability to effectively respond in Ukraine and against NATO, while not risking the commencement of World War Three. This solution not only minimises the possibility of generalised nuclear war-- but also presents fewer civilian casualties than other solutions, such as doing nothing or going with a full-on nuclear response.
Image courtesy of Пресс-служба Президента via Wikimedia Commons, ©2019, some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
