Opinion

Getting Russia’s nuclear strategy mostly right

Many critics have challenged the assumptions of the recent Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) concerning Russia. Allegedly the NPR got Russian doctrine wrong and is therefore needlessly provocative in its call for modifications to U.S. nuclear forces.

A closer look at the facts and, even more importantly, at Moscow’s behavior suggests otherwise. To be sure it is arguable that Russia’s nuclear strategy is not “escalate or deescalate”, i.e. using nuclear weapons first in a war that is going badly in order to force NATO or the U.S. to come to the table because those enemies will fear nuclear war more than Russia does.

If we look at Russia’s activities it becomes clear that the strategy is much broader, namely it is a strategy to demonstrate nuclear capability ostentatiously throughout all the stage of any crisis to control the escalation processes during that crisis. Should war ensue, escalating to deescalate is part of that process. But, in fact the broader strategy is one of escalation control to inhibit any Western response to attempted Russian faits accomplis.