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Firstly, tactical nukes would be used against formations in the field, not cities. That's what strategic weapons are for (of which Russia has 4000).
If Russia decided to vaporize Ukraine, the West would do nothing because Russia also has the capability to vaporize Europe and North America. That's what those strategic weapons were designed to do in the first place. I don't see why the US would commit national suicide by waging war against a nuclear superpower.
As I write this comment, I'm listening to Putin's live speech as he claims that other nations were threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia, where he stated that 'the wind could blow against them.'
Most people probably overestimate the efficacy of tactical nukes against armoured formations. No-one knows for sure, of course, but there was a lot of analysis done in the Cold War when it was assumed that NATO would need to use tactical weapons to blunt any Soviet invasion of Western Europe. There are two big problems with using them in a battlefield capacity. The first is that most armoured units aren't conveniently bunched up in very tight proximity like buildings in cities, so the same kind of bomb that would devastate an urban area might only knock out a dozen tanks. The second is that armoured vehicles are very good at surviving heat and blast effects - one Cold War study found that tanks require approximately 45 psi of overpressure to be reliably rendered inoperable. The 10kT warheads on Russia's SSC-8 creates a fireball approximately 400m in diameter (probably fatal to tanks in the affected area), but once you get half a click away, overpressure has already dropped to 20 psi.
On top of these inherent limitations to battlefield use of small yield nuclear armaments, it's also worth remembering that the battlefield situation in Ukraine is VERY different from that which NATO was facing in 1970. Back then, NATO expected to be dealing with massed armoured columns attacking in accordance with Soviet Deep Battle Doctrine. The topography of Germany means that the majority of these would be funneled through a few relatively narrow corridors, most famously the Fulda Gap, thus creating favourable conditions for the use of battlefield nukes. Additionally, even if tank columns survived the nukes themselves, the expectation was that the roads, bridges, and infrastructure near the blast would be damaged so as to slow the progress of subsequent reinforcing units. All of this is very different from Ukraine, where the actual number of troops and armoured vehicles involved have been comparatively small, and largely dispersed across a massive front.
Ultimately, the best way way to use small-yield nuclear weapons to obtain results on the battlefield is to use them to systematically knock out an opposing force's command and control and logistics capacities within the theatre of operations by targeting communications, bridges, airfields, power supplies, etc., essentially doing with nukes what America did to Iraq with precision bombs in Desert Storm. However, this kind of effort is unlikely to be effective in piecemeal form; in order to permanently degrade Ukraine's ability to wage war in a given theatre of operations, Russia would need to be looking at the use of multiple bombs, perhaps more than a dozen. And since many of the relevant targets would be located in or close to built-up civilian areas, casualties among the civilian population would be high (the human body, unlike tanks, doesn't tend to do well with 20 psi of overpressure).
All of which is to say that a handful of small-yield nuclear bombs used exclusively against military targets is unlikely to create sustained military advantage for Russia, while incurring significant diplomatic penalty. In order to be decisive even within a theatre of operations such as the Kharkiv front, Russia would need to use multiple weapons and target military infrastructure and supporting civilian infrastructure, with attendant massive diplomatic costs. If they adopted this second strategy, they could almost certainly obtain a decisive advantage in the short-term, but the cost would be complete international opprobrium and the breaking of the nuclear taboo (this latter ultimately being advantageous for Russia as one of the five official nuclear powers). Moreover, it is likely that there would be overwhelming political pressure at that point for the United States to intervene at least conventionally in the conflict, significantly raising the risks of escalation to general (nuclear) war between Russia and the United States.
There are no easy nuclear options for Russia.
Absolutely, you would need to use dozens of weapons or more. They would be effective at destroying entrenched infantry and break up any large-scale counterattacks which require concentrated forces. But the Russians have thousands of weapons.
But why does everyone think would be overwhelming pressure on the US to intervene and join a nuclear war?
Imagine you're the US president. There's a nuclear war going on between Russia and a country you're not obliged to defend by any kind of treaty. The country with the single biggest arsenal in the world is using somewhere between 0.2-1% of its tactical nukes. The remaining 1990 tactical weapons are held in reserve, ready to be used against you. The remaining 4000 strategic weapons are obviously pointed at you. The whole Russian arsenal is on very high alert because this is a major crisis.
Why do you join and make yourself a target? Do you think the Russians, after just launching nuclear strikes, will back down now? After they've done extremely costly signalling to show their desire to win? What benefit does joining a nuclear war have for the US? Why is it worth it? Everyone here seems to think the US should or would intervene but I can't understand why!
The US is not a sensible target for Russian nuclear weapons unless it is likely to use nuclear weapons against Russia. However, in the event of Russia using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the US and it allies have a lot of extreme measures they can use that are short of nuclear war or even direct attacks on Russian soil:
(1) Massive, apocalyptic cyberattacks that cripple Russian access to the internet.
(2) Attacking Russian satellites to destroy Russian TV and communications capacity.
(3) Closing off Russian access to the sea at all points.
(4) Closing off Russian civilian air access to all possible points.
(5) Closing off Russian civilian land access to all possible points, including Kalingrad, which would face food shortages etc.
(6) Expelling Russia from the United Nations Security Council. China would almost certainly abstain at worst and maybe vote for Russia's expulsion, since association with Russia would be massively toxic. Russia's suspension from the UN would also be an option. This would mean that, in future, Russia would face Korean War type scenarios, where the UN Security Council could vote to mobilise the UN against Russia and/or its allies (assuming it still has any after Pressing the Button).
(7) Extension of sanctions to countries that still trade with Russia, which after Pressing the Button may not be that many. While India would be out, somewhere like Cuba might still be in, and would face apocalyptic sanctions.
(8) Intensification of sanctions in all respects.
This is why, unless Putin is colossaly stupid, he will not Press the Button, even on a limited scale, let alone bombing Ukrainian cities. Much of the world still likes Russia and there is a lot of incentives for the West to keep their powder dry on extreme measures. Once Russia ends the nuclear taboo, it loses both of those, and goes into a forced pariah status that is unprecedented in human history.
You may say "Are China/India really going to give up on Russia in this situation?" Think of it from their perspective: right now, using nuclear weapons to any extent is taboo. This means that e.g. India doesn't have too much to fear from nuclear war with Pakistan, and China doesn't have to worry about the US using tactical nukes to defend Taiwan. If Russia breaks the nuclear taboo without massive consequences, then that sets a precedent for Pakistan or the US to do so without massive consequences.
That's all pretty fucking horrifying, and probably will transpire, nukes or no nukes.
Looking into Putin's early career, I've just read an interesting interview, admittedly from a suspect source: an Israeli-Russian arms dealer who filed some lawsuits against Putin-affiliated companies for scamming and forcibly removing him out of his businesses in the 90-s-00's. (and beating him half to death). He talked on a USA-funded Radio Freedom. A terse intro in English.
The point is, he says the same thing I've seen from many other people personally acquainted with early Putin: that he is absolutely, purely amoral. This image reminds me of Achilles Desjardins from Peter Watts' trilogy. Except Achilles was very smart and rational.
To be clear, I do not subscribe to this interpretation: Putin clearly has some attachments, some scruples, it's just this sentiment is reserved for «his people». And I don't mean Russians or something, but literally his little mafia team. Then again, even Achilles Desjardins mourned his cat.
With time and age, men become dumber, emotionally unstable, insecure, fall into echo chambers, come to believe in nonsense. But they still have habits and customs to guide them. Old Putin, Putin we have today, may be both stupidly irrational and completely devoid of conventional morality that could have prevented self-defeating extreme moves on its own.
Two short excerpts:
[...] But then an unpleasant thing happened: they called me and told me that there had been a general meeting of shareholders, and they signed the documents for me, which was probably true. According to the general practice, there are a lot of such things even now, when some part of the company's shares is assigned to a bum or to someone who is sure not to come, for whom they sign, and everything is fine. Because if you start dividing shares, there are a lot of questions from other co-owners. But this way they put it aside and put their signatures on it. It's a common practice, in fact, such an "unallocated stake".
I was offered to buy documents with which I could go to the police and to court. I came to the meeting, waited in the cafe "Victoria" in front of my house. It's a cafe with a counter, and then a restaurant and separate offices in the restaurant. I waited for the guy who called me. Another guy came up, said this one wasn't coming, if you need papers, come and see. I went into a separate office in the restaurant, got hit in the head, a hole was made in it by hitting me from behind.
– When was this?
– December 2003, after Dima Skigin died. They hit my head, kicked me hard, ripped my pancreas, ruptured my intestines. It was highly unpleasant. Along the way I was told several times: "Sigma, Sovex - just forget it, good man" - in the process, so to speak, of the beating. Well, I ended up in the hospital, they cut me open, did a laparotomy, I can show you the scar from here to there. They operated for four hours and still saved me, although it was not clear on that subject. When I recovered, took off for Israel. I tried to find out what happened to the company, because it was a silly situation: on the one hand you seemed to have shares, but on the other hand they were useless.
[...]
– Aside from civic position, or rather, one of its manifestations, there's another goal here. Whether or not you can punish someone is another question, but you can point the finger: this is a bandit, and this is a thief, and this is a crook. Just, you people, know that, and then how you deal with them is your problem.
– For whom exactly do you want to point with fingers?
– For people here in the West, among all else. Because a man with money comes, and until recently very few people were interested in how many old ladies were hacked to death with an axe for this suitcase of money. So I would like to point to the facts, and then people will decide for themselves how to treat this. You can shake hands with them, or not.
And regarding Vladimir Vladimirovich himself, he is a person who is, how should I put it... When we met with him, and, understandably, I was considered a CIA and Mossad agent – an Israeli, an arms dealer – I was struck by a feeling in him that is hard to convey verbally. He is not human in our understanding. It was not something infernal or like he's demon-possessed, but, apparently, something very strongly broke inside him, there were no human reactions. I don't even know how to describe it. I had various acquaintances at that time in St. Petersburg. There were people who loved women, money, cars. But they were very much alive, they had certain inner limits, set for themselves: I'm going to do this, but this here I won't do, else I won't respect myself. Vladimir Vladimirovich showed that he was not burdened at all. Either the KGB school had taught him that, or something else, but it was clear that there were no ordinary human standards – no gratitude, no boundaries. I'm trying to find a metaphor.... Well, some beyond-scary bandit wouldn't strangle a girl with her own ribbon for a candy bar. After all, it's kind of awkward. But here it was clear that there was only expediency and nothing else.
That's the horror of Soviet man in general, who has lost the notion of good and evil in principle, and this man had no such inner conceptions at all.
– Can you give me an example when this became clear to you about Vladimir Vladimirovich?
– No, just from the general stylistics, when certain phrases were uttered.
– It's just that there are completely different opinions. He made an extremely positive first impression on many people. In the '90s he said the right things about the development of small businesses, the free economic zone, banks, and so on and so forth.
– I think that both Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky fell for this. Because a man unwittingly models his interlocutor in accordance with himself. As they say in the criminal world, there are some "understandings," some framework, within which a person will constrain himself. But here, as it seemed to me at the time, there is no such framework at all. And it also seemed to me at the time that the man has some kind of fetish for money, with money as an abstract idea. Maybe as a way to protect oneself from this world. It was clear that he also joined the KGB in order to have the organization propping him up. In general, it was clear that he was trying to protect himself, and that for him this sacred fetish of money was simultaneously a protection from all possible trouble. And if you add here a common idea, popular in Russia, that "everything can be afforded for money"...
I have long had a mental model of Putin as a cautious but ruthless Russian nationalist, who is occasionally led into overconfidence by high oil prices, as in 2005-2008 and 2011-2014. Basically, Brezhnev with a trim waistline, who also was led astray from his normal caution by high oil prices in 1973-1979.
Thus, I interpret Putin's nuclear posturing as for domestic consumption, to assuage the wounded pride of the Russian people. "The West is threatening us with nukes, but WE have nukes too!!" is as much national pride as Putin can offer Russians right now. Pathetic? Yes. Sensible given his goals and means? Yes.
I would also be stunned at the US, China, and their allies doing such things without Russia breaking some huge taboo like using nuclear weapons. Even Russian "strategic bombing" of Ukrainian civilian areas would probably only increase Western aid to Ukraine and investment in fucking up the Russian economy through e.g. reducing the demand for oil.
I don't know if he will use nukes. I thought the war preparation itself will resolve as a bluff to assuage the wounded pride etc. Miscalculations are hard to predict.
but it's my extremely strong belief that he's not a Nationalist (of course neither was Brezhnev). He's not any -ist or -ian or whatever. He's a tiny psychopathic Mafia don out of his depth. He's occasionally aping a Nationalist, an Orthodox Christian and a strongly identifying Russian because that gives his overwhelmingly Nationalist Russian Orthodox plebeians (which is to say, just Ruskies with default firmware) some warm fuzzies; back when they weren't reminded enough of this cheap and robust mindset, he would talk more about economic ties and development and shiet. He will turn on a dime and call himself a liberal, then appoint a homosexual to oversee traditional morality (including beatings of gays), then criminalize hate speech and Russian Nationalism so that nats die in prisons, then say he's reading a Russian Fascist Ilyin and sign an essay endorsing nationalistic talking points, then go kiss the Wall in Israel, then fedpost on air about Judeo-Bolsheviks, then endorse tribal minorities abusing Slavs, then send them and Slavs together into the meat grinder to subjugate a slightly different sort of Slavs. He'll call Azov «neonazis» and threaten retribution, then release them. He really is unshackled by any ideology, moral code or decision theory, and his behavior is, if scrutinized in good faith as the behavior of some political visionary, grotesque and mostly incoherent.
But he can get very serious on particular occasions. Insults (Nemtsov and Saakashvili who called him a shorty, foreign leaders who don't respect his autoritah and don't want to listen to his bloviation). Legitimate threat to safety, power and prestige (Navalny, journos digging his dirty laundry). Betrayal (Litvinenko, Skripals). And trouble for his vassals. He does not tolerate betrayals, and he seemingly does not betray his own. Right now, Russia has conducted a prisoner exchange with Ukraine. 215 Ukrainian and foreign fighters for 54 Russians and this piece of shit Medvedchuk. You see, he's Putin's kum: Putin is a godfather of his daughter. They're family.
Sure he has embezzled resources provided for subversion of Ukraine and implementation of those frivolous Imperialist schemes. Sure that's cost tens of thousands of Russian lives, and possibly everything. But Russia is a footnote to the clan's well-being. Mere substrate. A project dedicated to the promotion of Russian power is only another кормление, a domain to extract rent from, for a clan member.
Opportunist?
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