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What is the response that the US government will have toward Russia if (when?) they deploy nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict?
What's the response other European countries, or NATO will have?
It seems more and more likely that Russia will be facing a choice between capitulation on Ukraine or further escalation, and I personally think its rather likely some kind of nuclear bomb will be detonated somewhere in the next year or two. Would the western response be different if it was the lowest form of escalation, i.e. a "demonstration explosion" over some unoccupied area of Ukraine? Is the response to get serious about forcing Ukraine to negotiate a peace, even if that means giving up territory?
I don't think reciprocal nuclear escalation is really on the table (nor would I want it to be), but what can the US/NATO do in that situation? Clearly there is a plan, I just wonder what it is, if it differs from what was "communicated to the highest levels of the Kremlin" by US, and what you all think it should be.
Personally, I wonder if in that situation, whether there really are any downside to escalating, not on the nuclear front, but on a "special forces boots in Russia decapitation strike" front. Or even a public, US government sanctioned/sponsored bounty on the heads of Putin et al.
obligatory substack article that first got me thinking about this: https://policytensor.substack.com/p/a-nuclear-zugzwang
really bad for Russia? which makes me inclined to beleive it will never come to that. Putin hasn't even unleashed his full military might (no no airforce) agaisnt Ukraine. Why would he resort to nukes.
I would suppose that if there were an escalatory option that would significantly improve Russia's performance in the war short of the 'partial mobilization' that's just being done, it would probably be less costly and thus would have been resorted to before. Perhaps there's a reason everyone else knows why unleashing the full might of the Russian air force would be more risky for Putin than bringing the war to the Russian civilian population through the recent mobilizations, but I can't offhand think of what it is.
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Russia hasn't used much of its airforce because it doesn't have robust airforce capabilities, and isn't really able to conduct enough SEAD to get through Ukrainian air defenses consistently. It's used planes in occasional situations, and there are multiple confirmations of them being shot down.
At this point, Russia has used basically all of its conventional assets. Assertions that it's holding a bunch of stuff back (e.g. best units, best tanks, air force, etc) are not credible.
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Why is the assumption that Putin is holding back the air force instead that the VVS has little might?
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It would be nice of you to expand on the specifics of how Putin hasn’t even unleashed his full military might, because he’s certainly using his Air Force. We have photographic and video evidence of dozens of Russian jets being shot down in this war, and in fact several just in the past week.
As far as I know they haven't begun to use chemical weapons, which is sort of in between typical arsenal and nukes.
Some chemical weapons are easily created (see: people inadvertently gassing themselves at home by mixing the wrong cleaning supplies), some chemical weapons are very costly to the targets (Novichok lethal doses are supposedly fractions of milligrams), but are there any that are equally easily created (in volumes useful for war) and costly?
Weaponized fentanyl is probably worth worrying about, especially since you can equip your troops with an antidote.
That ... is actually really interesting. The manufacturing process doesn't take state-level support. (this assumes China's bans aren't just "bans", but while I'm sure they're not crying their eyes out over the West getting ironic payback for the Opium Wars, I don't think the OD crisis here is a CCP op either) The lethal dose isn't nearly as low as state-of-the-art organophosphates but it's still in the milligrams range. ... Looks like the biggest issue may be that skin absorption ranges from less dangerous to much less dangerous than ingestion? To get fentanyl or carfentanil airborne you want a dry powder, but to get it to absorb quickly enough through skin to be dangerous it needs to be moist. I can't find any research about whether it penetrates skin when moistened by oil (or anything else that I'd expect could be finely aerosolized without just evaporating) ... maybe that's for the best. Do we know how Russia weaponized it in Chechnya? Might have been easier to make it useful against indoor targets whose ventilation is controlled by the attacker, might simply be that a research team working for a few years could implement ideas that I can't even imagine in a few minutes.
Since I don't know much about either drug, maybe my quick searches this morning are misleading me. In particular, I'm reading that, while carfentanil is 100x more potent a narcotic than fentanyl, the lethal doses are around the same ... so why the hell is anyone still making fentanyl? I know, drug kingpins aren't noted for their overwhelming concern for human life, but killing your customers does still cut short future revenue, and even if it didn't you'd think the relative ease of smuggling 100x less volume to achieve the same potency would pay for any extra difficulty in manufacturing.
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I believe that unleashing the air force, unless it's for something like firebombing cities, would achieve little and result in much of the airforce being lost. At this point, Ukraine seems to be able to use its air defense with near-impunity, as it gets US-quality targeting information and incoming warnings in near real-time and has actually functioning horizontal integration of battlefield information, whereas Russia's SEAD and counterbattery fire still operates on the principle of "report all the way up the chain of command and hope they will pass an appropriate order back down within a few hours".
I've heard it described in scuttlebutt as like one of those shitty safari tours where the guide finds the animals, helps the tourist aim the gun, and then the tourist pulls the trigger and goes home bragging about what a great white hunter he was in the bush. Like the Americans are phoning the coordinates to the Ukrainians, the British trainers are explaining on the phone how to punch the coordinates in, but the Ukies pull the trigger so "the US and UK aren't parties to the conflict" under traditional international law.
It was described incorrectly then, and you should read on that more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine#Air_defense_systems
Ukraine operates mostly old Soviet equipment for counteracting cruise missiles (Like "Buk"), and no American instructor will pull the trigger for a Stinger or some other Western MANPAD. NASAMS are not yet deployed AFAIK.
Probably though, Americans warn Ukraine when submarines with Kalibrs launch their rockets though. But Russia switched to Iranian drones for strategic strikes in the last week.
And even if it was US, and UK personnel doing almost all the work and the Ukrainians "just pulling the triggers" (and I agree with you it isn't). It wouldn't exactly be an unprecedented level of involvement in post WWII wars were one major power was fighting a small power that was receiving a lot of aid from another major power. In Korea, and to a lesser extent Vietnam, Soviet pilots fought the USAF. Also China, while not an open full blown combatant like they were in Korea, had construction and AA units in North Vietnam. In neither of these cases was it considered a reason to go full WWIII on either the USSR or China.
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I mean, yeah, in a way this war is close to a perfect setup for the Imperium to fight against the Russians - in a properly declared war between the parties (nukes barred), contained by some gentlemen's agreement to Ukrainian territory, one could surely expect the Russians to at least shoot at the AWACS drones that have been circling around Ukraine's borders since the start and possibly even Kessler low-earth orbit for the next few decades (which doesn't seem to be all that hard). As it stands, they get a massive and highly motivated fighting force at no domestic penalty, and can continuously employ outrageously fragile intelligence platforms that normally would not survive in a conflict with a near-peer adversary to their own advantage.
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