One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, experts from the United States, Ukraine, Germany, Turkey, and France discussed the consequences of the war for the nuclear world order in a workshop
Russia’s war, shielded by nuclear threats, raised two key questions. Does nuclear deterrence have the effect of promoting or limiting war? Do arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation still matter, or have they become obsolete after Russia’s threats to break the nuclear taboo
The following analysis does not represent the conclusions of the workshop. Instead, it independently explores the questions that were raised. Taking into account macro-developments in nuclear policy and arms control in the run-up to the Ukrainian war, and looking more closely at the interaction of deterrence and (arms control) diplomacy during the past year, it becomes clear that deterrence must be viewed in a differentiated manner and that arms control must be conceptualized comprehensively to ensure security and strategic balance and to avoid nuclear escalation both between nuclear-weapon states and at the expense of a non-nuclear-weapon state (Ukraine).
The deterrence and arms control prelude to the war against Ukraine
Overstretched extended deterrence and the question of credibility
Prior to the Russian invasion, the nuclear deterrence policies of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) encompassed a series of gradations of nuclear deployment scenarios of varying breadth. At the low end of this scale was a minimalist policy of first-strike renunciation while preserving a second-strike capability (which roughly corresponds to China’s nuclear doctrine
Over the past twenty years, the center of gravity of the two great powers’ nuclear deterrence policies has always shifted within the middle and upper ranges of this scale, depending on the government and the state of relations. Most recently, however, a clear trend to expand nuclear deterrence and deployment scenarios prevailed during Donald Trump’s presidency. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, its hybrid war in Donbas and its practicing coercive threats towards the Baltic states and Poland contributed to a significant tightening of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in 2018. This document describes Russia’s nuclear policy as relying on the mistaken assessment that “the threat of nuclear escalation or actual first use of nuclear weapons would serve to ‘de-escalate’ a conflict on terms favorable to Russia”
The expansion of nuclear deterrence and options for nuclear warfare (including threats of nuclear use) required corresponding material adjustments to maintain credibility. Therefore, both the U.S. and Russian sides launched massive modernization programs to provide appropriate delivery systems and warheads
The erosion of arms control in Europe and growing hegemonic conflicts
During the same period, Europe underwent a phase of profound erosion of nuclear arms control. The termination in 2002 by the Bush administration of the ABM Treaty that limited missile defense and the build-up of the National missile defense (NMD) program had global implications on strategic balance. This triggered an arms race
The perishing of Cold War security mechanisms together with the degradation of arms control weakened the European continent’s security architecture amid a period of growing geopolitical tensions between the U.S./NATO and Russia, an increasingly nationalistic and imperialistic Russian foreign policy agenda, and virulent territorial conflicts on its borders, including that over Ukraine. While the United States continued to have, at least in theory, allied territory for tactical nuclear warfare, with its nuclear sharing and deployment of nuclear weapons in NATO member states
Examining the strategic background and evolution of nuclear deterrence and arms control throughout the past twenty years can neither justify nor explain Putin’s war of aggression and nuclear threats. Imperialist
Targeted deterrence and diplomatic arms control in the Ukraine war
Russian deterrence erosion and destabilization
Facilitating its war of aggression on Ukraine with nuclear threats, the Kremlin has left the classical spectrum of nuclear deterrence described above. Russia exploited the “nuclear shadow”
Reiterating nuclear threats in ever-changing variations (alluding to a nuclear catastrophe in the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which its military forces have been occupying
On the one hand, the significance of Moscow’s nuclear threats and capabilities increases as Russia’s conventional weaknesses become more apparent
Moderation and rehabilitation of deterrence
How have the United States and NATO responded to Putin’s exhaustion of rhetoric nuclear arsenal and this paradox (virulence of Russia’s nuclear signaling and attrition of its nuclear deterrent)? From the beginning, since February 24, 2022, the U.S. and NATO have stressed the need to keep nuclear weapons out of this war and pursued a consistent policy of denuclearization of the conflict. Russian threats have not been reciprocated to avoid a spiral of escalation. In the run-up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in August 2022 and at the conference itself, the three Western nuclear powers, the United States, France and Great Britain, contrasted the Russian threatening posture with their stance as “responsible nuclear weapon states” and strictly rejected “coercive deterrence” – regardless of the fact that deterrence policies of Western P5 members also contain coercive elements and do not rule out first strikes. De facto, they have pursued a no-first-strike policy in the Ukraine war, referring to the joint declaration of the five NPT nuclear-weapon states, or P5, in January 2022 that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”
The effectiveness of this policy became evident in the reaction to Putin’s declaration of annexation of the partially occupied territories. For the first time, the White House used an ambivalent formulation of deterrence in the Ukraine war that could be interpreted in both conventional and nuclear terms, with Biden warning of a “nuclear Armageddon”
Thinking arms control broadly during a crisis
Maintaining direct contact and dialogue between French President Macron, Chancellor Scholz and Putin was no less important for escalation management during the first phase of the war, as well as military contact points between the U.S. and Russian general staffs to avoid miscalculation and unintended escalation. Using channels of communication and risk-minimizing measures is part of the broad repertoire of arms control that takes on a prominent role, especially in times of crisis and in the absence of classical disarmament, arms limitation, and verification instruments. Another central element for containing the potential for nuclear escalation has been the expansion of de-escalating diplomacy beyond the bilateral level, through diplomatic demarches at the highest levels of government, particularly toward Russian sympathizers and friends, China and India.
In a meeting in November 2022, Chancellor Scholz and Chinese President Xi Jinping both stated that any threat or use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war would be unacceptable.
Conclusion
The hypertrophy of deterrence and the progressive erosion of arms control in Europe over the past twenty years are not sufficient explanations for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its obsession with having to defend itself against a perceived Western hegemony and threat. However, they do shape the strategic backdrop on which Russia’s war against Ukraine plays out, thus the potential for strategic escalation. The significance of the loss of strategic stability at the (geopolitical) macro level increases with the duration of the war. Obviously, the causal connection with the U.S. expansionist policy, with which Russia tries to justify the war, is constructed. However, the Russian narrative succeeds in convincing numerous actors, including China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, for historical reasons and convergence of strategic interests. Thus, overstretched deterrence and simultaneous erosion of arms control provide fertile ground while serving as a strategic justification foil for Russia’s war against Ukraine. The decoupling of deterrence and arms control have made the pre-war security environment fragile. Hypertrophic extended deterrence, rearmament and dismantling of arms control in Europe have created favorable conditions for the war of aggression.
This war shows further that it is not possible to say across the board whether nuclear deterrence has a stabilizing or de-escalating effect, whether it promotes or restrains war. We have to distinguish what kind of deterrence we are talking about in what (arms control) context. By extending its nuclear threats, Russia has repeatedly tried to manipulate the course of warfare in its favor and has so far failed to do so. Instead, clear signs of wear and tear on its nuclear deterrent are emerging, coupled with a loss of credibility. The U.S. and NATO in turn have succeeded in reducing the risk of escalation by consistently tabooing the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war. Three factors were decisive in this: the Russian nuclear threats were not imitated, China and India as well as the G20 were diplomatically engaged into an anti-nuclear war alliance and this was combined with an ambivalent deterrence focusing on conventional counterstrike options.
Throughout the past year we have seen that nuclear arms control must be thought of more comprehensively than regulation and limitation of warheads and delivery systems. Especially in the context of a war with global escalation potential, creating the conditions of crisis stability and avoiding behaviors that increase the risk of nuclear escalation are crucial. Military points of contact, strategic risk reduction, risk mitigation, and preventing unintended escalation due to misinterpretation are central. At the same time, given the loss of trust in relations with Russia and its lack of reliability, other actors, especially China and India, but also other BRICS states, must be consistently engaged in de-escalation and arms control efforts. Countries outside the transatlantic area are becoming increasingly important for arms control arrangements in the future. Therefore, a reorientation of arms control policy towards multilateralization is necessary. The risk of actual use of nuclear weapons by Russia has varied significantly during the war. Risk management and substantial de-escalation have been successful through a precise formulation of U.S./NATO deterrence policy (nuclear restraint, credible conventional deterrence) in combination with bilateral contacts with Russia and diplomatic initiatives toward third parties sympathizing with Moscow. So far, nuclear (de)escalation management has worked out. But it has also shown the limits of deterrence and arms control policy: only together, and if credible, precise and complementary, can they have their stabilizing effect.
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