Apparently Mr. Karaganov just isn’t going to let this insanity about nuclear options go. He’s still at it. – Natylie
By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 9/12/24
The respected Russian intellectual Sergey Karaganov, who serves as the honorary chairman of Russia’s influential Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and is also an academic supervisor at the Higher School of Economics’ School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs, is once again talking about nukes. He made global headlines last year after he proposed a nuclear first strike against Europe, which was responded to here, and just gave an interview to Kommersant about updating Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
Although the preceding hyperlinked response supported this proposal at the time, upon further reflection, it’s clear that it won’t deter the West for the reasons that’ll now be explained. The current doctrine enumerates four scenarios in which nukes can be used, which include threats to the existence of the state and large-scale conventional aggression. Karaganov believes that they should be used “in the event of any encroachment on our territory and our citizens” in a nod to Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk.
While he’s sure to have his share of supporters among the hawks at home and Russia’s most passionate supporters abroad, they’re all overlooking a few “inconvenient facts”. First, any encroachment of Russian territory can be framed as threatening the existence of the state if the Commander-in-Chief truly wants to use nukes in response, but the current one won’t resort to radical measures as explained here. Basically, Putin has worked hard to avoid World War III by miscalculation, and he won’t get careless now.
The second point is that the aforementioned calculations are already in force for a reason regardless of however anyone feels about this since dropping nukes in response to what the government officially considers to be an act of terrorism in Kursk is grossly disproportionate. Not only that, but it would suggest that Russia can’t conventionally respond to territorial incursions due to presumed weakness, which isn’t the case seeing as how it just launched a counteroffensive to expel Ukraine from that region.
Third, even if the doctrine was changed according to Karaganov’s vision, it’s unlikely to specify the targets and scale of Russia’s nuclear response since the exact circumstances can’t be known in advance. If decisionmakers were legally compelled by a revised doctrine to use nukes no matter what, then they might opt to drop them on their own territory or just across the border in order to avoid escalating. This observation segues into the fourth point about why their hands shouldn’t be tied in the first place.
Mandating a nuclear response to any cross-border encroachment whatsoever can lead to Russia’s adversaries manipulating it into using such weapons exactly as Lukashenko warned last month that Ukraine sought to do through its invasion of Kursk. It was explained here that “China and India would be under immense pressure to distance themselves from Russia, not just by the West, but also for appearance’s sake since they wouldn’t want to legitimize the use of nuclear weapons by their rivals.”
And finally, Russia can already employ discreet channels to convey its intent to use nuclear weapons in circumstances other than its publicly stated ones (or per a novel interpretation thereof as was touched upon in the first point), so updating its nuclear doctrine is pretty much only a soft power exercise. All that it would do is send a strong message of intent, albeit one which ties decisionmakers’ hands in arguably counterproductive ways and which could be easily manipulated as explained.
***
September 11, 2024
Enemies must realize Russia could go nuclear – ex-Kremlin adviser
The existing doctrine is outdated and does not serve as a deterrent, Sergey Karaganov has said
[See also: “Political scientist Sergei Karaganov on the change in Russia’s policy on the use of nuclear weapons”: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7059257]
Russia’s nuclear doctrine urgently needs to be revised to allow a nuclear response to any major military aggression against the country, former Kremlin adviser Sergey Karaganov stated on Wednesday.
The former foreign policy adviser to the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration told the Kommersant daily that the existing document is “woefully outdated” and no longer serves as an effective deterrent.
Adopted in 2020, Russia’s nuclear doctrine does not provide for pre-emptive nuclear strikes and envisages the use of nuclear weapons only in “exceptional cases” in the face of a “threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country. According to Karaganov, this approach has rendered it nearly useless and has effectively “excluded” the nuclear deterrence factor from Russia’s military and foreign policy arsenal.
“We have allowed the situation to deteriorate to a point when our adversaries believe we will not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances,” the political scientist said. “Having nuclear weapons without being able to convince your enemies that you are ready to use them is suicide.”
A failure to have an effective nuclear deterrent policy “would plunge the world into a series of wars that would inevitably turn nuclear and end up with the World War III,” Karaganov believes, adding that this could happen “within the span of several years.”
“The main goal of a doctrine should be in convincing all current and future enemies that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons.”
His words came amid the continued Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region and Kiev’s attempts to receive permission for the use of Western long-range missiles to strike deep inside the country.
“It’s high time we stated that any massive strikes against our territory give us a right to respond with a nuclear strike,” Karaganov insists. He also called on Moscow to clearly define the “nuclear escalation” steps in the next doctrine to leave Russia’s adversaries no room for doubt about whether it is ready to use its nuclear arsenal and when.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demonstrated a more reserved position on the issue. Talking to Karaganov at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, the president said that Russia was “not brandishing” nuclear weapons and expressed hope that “it will never come” to a nuclear exchange between Moscow and the West.
Moscow “has no reasons to even think about” using nuclear weapons, he said at the time, calling on Russian officials to not even “touch upon” the subject of nuclear weapons unless absolutely necessary.
Later in June, Putin also said that Russia did not “need a preventive strike yet, because the enemy is guaranteed to be destroyed in a retaliatory strike.” He did not rule out changes to the doctrine, though.