Maine Sen. Angus King is one of many Kremlin-watchers unnerved by the Russian president’s increasingly mercurial behavior and nuclear saber-rattling.
“Vladimir Putin today is the most dangerous man in the world,” says King, “perhaps the most dangerous man in the history of the world, because he has this blind ambition to reunite the greater Russia at the same time he’s sitting on one of the world’s great nuclear arsenals.”
Since the days of the Cold War, nuclear weapons have successfully deterred a third world war between major powers via the principle of “mutually assured destruction” — the idea that any nuclear attack would trigger a devastating counterstrike and, potentially, an apocalyptic nuclear conflagration.
Indeed in January, Russia joined fellow nuclear weapons states China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States in declaring “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
But under Russia’s 2014 military doctrine, Putin sees a role in using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons, so-called battlefield nukes, to raise the stakes so high that the other side folds.
“They actually have a doctrine called “escalate to de-escalate,” says King. “That means using tactical nuclear weapons if they’re losing on the battlefield. And Vladimir Putin has made clear that this is something that he considers to be in his arsenal.”
Putin’s not contemplating a full-blown nuclear exchange with the U.S. Rather, his doctrine envisions a one-time coup de grace intended to shock the U.S. into capitulation rather than risk an escalation that could imperil the planet.
It’s a nuclear doctrine “different from anyone else in the world,” says King, “where they discuss openly the option of using tactical nuclear weapons in a conventional war setting.”
“The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it,” says Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied Putin for decades.
In an interview last month in Politico, Hill made headlines with her take on Putin: “Every time you think, ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.”
“If anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again,” said Hill, who was a Russia expert on the National Security Council under President Donald Trump.
“There’s evident visceral emotion in things that he said in the past few weeks justifying the war in Ukraine,” Hill said, which is “unhealthy and extraordinarily dangerous because there are few checks and balances around Putin.”
In a Feb. 24 speech, Putin warned that any interference with his military operations in Ukraine “from the outside” would be met with consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history” — widely seen as code for a limited nuclear strike, but which could also be interpreted as the threat of massive cyber warfare.
And in case his veiled threat wasn’t clear enough, Putin ordered high-profile nuclear exercises and put his nuclear forces on “special alert status,” a term unfamiliar to U.S. intelligence.
“They see nuclear weapons as a normal extension of a conventional conflict,” former Supreme NATO Commander retired Gen. Philip Breedlove told the CBS news program 60 Minutes in 2016. “To them, the use of nuclear weapons is not unthinkable.”
To that end, Putin has developed a small arsenal of low-yield mini-nukes and other “non-strategic” weapons for which the U.S. has no counterpart.
“We know that Russia is in development of Skyfall, which is a nuclear orbiting weapon; Poseidon, which is an undersea, unmanned nuclear weapon that is supposed to pop up on the shores of a nation like the United States and attack our cities; and Vanguard with its hypersonic missiles, which are already deployed,” said Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, at a March 8 hearing on “Worldwide Threats.”
“Putin has invested very wisely in these niche weapons,” testified Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, the director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. “I believe that he thinks that gives him an asymmetric advantage, and he’s also invested in tactical nuclear weapons.”
“I also believe that when he says something, we should listen very, very carefully and maybe take him at his word.”
If cornered, Putin is gambling that he could use a “mini-nuke” to, say, take out an airfield, an aircraft carrier, or an entire tank division, and the U.S., being the responsible nuclear power, would be unwilling to unleash Armageddon in response.
That very scenario was the impetus during the Trump administration for equipping America’s ballistic submarine fleet with a “low-yield” version of the W-76 warhead that sits atop a Trident intercontinental ballistic missile.
The result was not a new nuclear weapon, but a less powerful version of an old one — intended to signal Putin that the U.S. could retaliate to a tactical strike with a similar smaller-scale nuclear response.
The Biden administration was putting the finishing touches on its new nuclear strategy when Russia invaded Ukraine and was reportedly considering eliminating the low-yield weapon and canceling a sea-launched cruise missile version.
That would be a harder sell now that Putin has shown he can play his nuclear trump card without ever having to show his hand.
In August 1990, when Saddam Hussein rolled his tanks into Kuwait and declared the Gulf state was historically Iraq’s “19th province,” U.S. President George H.W. Bush famously declared, “This will not stand.”
And it didn’t.
Now more than 30 years later, in 2022, President Joe Biden has been effectively deterred from making any military moves that might risk triggering Putin’s reckless side, in part because the longtime Russian leader is displaying just the right degree of crazy.
Whether or not it’s a bluff, Putin’s “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine has been scary enough to keep the U.S. and NATO from going toe-to-toe with the Russians in a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
A week into the invasion, the Pentagon scrubbed a long-scheduled test of a Minuteman-III intercontinental ballistic missile to avoid any chance that Russia could see it as somehow provocative.
Republicans in Congress were quick to deride the move, arguing it plays into Putin’s perceived ability to engage in nuclear blackmail.
“There’s nothing escalatory about long-standing, long-scheduled, routine tests that Russia knows about in advance,” said Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton at a Senate hearing on U.S. nuclear policy.
“It’s just another example of how we have mistaken actions that would have de-escalated this situation rather than escalated it.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
