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Brad ROBERTS
“Rethinking Russia’s Nuclear Strategy and its Implications for the West”1
RETHINKING DETERRENCE IN THE POST UKRAINIAN CONTEXT
AHEAD OF THE WARSAW NATO SUMMIT
Séminaire, CERI-Sciences po, 11 avril 2016
I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the organizers for convening this
gathering and creating this discussion. I am grateful also to my fellow panelists for the
opportunity to exchange ideas and to all of you for your interest in this topic. It was not very
long ago that we couldn’t have expected to fill the first row in a room this size with people
interested in this topic, and it is great to see people who are curious and want to be engaged
on the substance of these issues. I should also begin with a disclaimer – I am speaking only
for myself. I am not speaking for the Department of Energy, the Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. These are my own ideas and
please make of them what you will.
My remarks are designed to set out four main arguments on the topic of Rethinking
Russia’s Nuclear Strategy and its Implications for the West. The first argument is about
Ukraine and the wake-up call that we received with Russian military action there.
This was a wake-up call, of course, about Mr. Putin’s deep opposition to the post-Cold
War European security order. It was a wake-up call to his willingness to use military force
and to violate international law and the norms of European order to remake international
borders. But it was also a wake-up call to the fact that Russian military strategy has passed
through a period of very significant reform. Russian military strategy, as it is now set out,
addresses three main levels of warfare: local, regional, and strategic. The Russian military
strategy for local warfare is clearly on display in Ukraine today with its emphasis on hybrid
warfare and information control techniques. Their most innovative thinking has been about
the regional level of war, which we have barely paid attention to. In some ways, the new
hybrid warfare problem has distracted Western experts from the new challenges at the
regional war in Russian military doctrine.
I’ll go on and talk about Russian regional war strategy a little more, but since our
focus here today is the nuclear topic, let me just report that Russian military doctrine
identifies a role for nuclear weapons in all three levels of warfare. In local war, the role of
nuclear weapons in Russian military doctrine is a little unclear, but the basic function seems
to be to keep other guys out. In local war, Russian nuclear threats are intended to keep
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Transcriptiondel’interventiondeBradRoberts,relueparl’auteur
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outside powers from intervening. At the other extreme, at the level of strategic warfare, the
function of nuclear weapons is perhaps obvious. But to elaborate just a bit: according to
Russian military authors, the function of nuclear weapons at the strategic level of warfare is to
threaten and, if necessary, inflict unbearable and irreparable damage onto an enemy.
Unbearable and irreparable. These words become important in a minute. In regional war, the
basic function of nuclear weapons is to help keep a limited conflict limited, as I’ll explain
further.
So my first argument of the four is that Russian military action in Ukraine has been a
wakeup call to significant Russian military reform and its formulation of three levels of war,
each with its own nuclear component.
The second argument is about Russia’s approach to regional war. The primary
strategic problem at the regional level of war for Russia is to be able to deter and defeat a
conventionally superior nuclear-armed major power and its allies. This is a formulation that
you can find over and over again in Russian military writing. I should note that the Chinese
use this same phrase to characterize the main strategic problem they face. With some slight
variations it is also a formulation that North Koreans use. They all face a common strategic
problem: us. And the possibility that we might project power against them. And when the
Russians write about this problem of a regional war against a conventionally superior nucleararmed major power, they’re also thinking about China in the future because they anticipate a
time in the not so distant future when China will be a conventionally superior nuclear-armed
major power – but with no allies, of course.
The challenge posed to Russia by this fact of asymmetric power with a conventionally
superior nuclear-armed major power with allies is that the conventionally superior nucleararmed country can win if it chooses to. It can win if it is given the time. It can win if it
sufficiently resolved to do so – if it has the political commitment to win. And it can win in a
way that might directly threaten the control of Mr. Putin and his government. These are the
three distinct dangers that Russia faces in thinking about regional war. As the weaker power it
has to be concerned about the stronger power and its allies being able to do things that are
damaging and unacceptable to Moscow.
The scenario of most immediate military concern between Russia and the West is of
course a Russian grab for a Baltic country, or two or three. President Putin boasted a year and
a half ago that Russia could occupy all three Baltic capitals in less than 2 days. Of course,
Russian military leaders have done a lot of thinking about this scenario, and Russia faces two
main challenges. One is to grab the Baltics. The other is to hold them. It is one thing to be
able, through hybrid warfare techniques and the use of conventional military force, to occupy
a Baltic capital and part of the country. It’s another thing to be able to keep that if NATO is
resolved to reverse the aggression and the United States is committed to deploying power for
that purpose.
Thus, it isn’t surprising that Russian military literature devotes a lot of time and
attention to the problem of managing escalation and generating de-escalation by the West.
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What is the potential Western escalation that concerns Russian military planners and how do
they plan to avoid it and indeed induce Western de-escalation?
If Russia were to try to occupy one or more of the Baltic states (or parts of them),
NATO would then face a choice about whether or not to try to reverse the aggression.
Russia’s strategy is to create a fait accompli on the ground, to create an outcome on the
ground in a way that would leave NATO debating whether or not to pay the cost to try to
reverse it. So they present an image to us of the high cost that would go with trying to reverse
the fait accompli.
But it is possible that even with that image in mind, we (the United States and the
NATO alliance) would commit to trying to recover control of the capital and eject Russian
forces from that country. The next step in Russian thinking then is to try and separate
European allies from the United States, to remind European allies of their vulnerability, of the
cost they would pay if they were to support a US led war to recover the sovereignty of a
Baltic state. Russian military literature describes a great many ways in which Western
countries could be made to be fearful of the cost of additional war. These include kinetic
means – the use of conventional ballistic and cruise missiles to attack remote military
facilities and remote economic targets, but not targeting large numbers of people. And of
course they write about the use of non-kinetic means, namely cyber, to disrupt economic
affairs in countries—not to cripple them, but to generate fear and thereby generate political
pressure on governments not to support the United States in reversing aggression against a
Baltic state.
Now in this circumstance, the United States may still choose to project conventional
military means to reverse the aggression—the next form of escalation Russia has to worry
about. Accordingly, Russian military leaders have developed A2AD strategies. This is an
American shorthand for Anti-Access Area Denial. These are essentially the use of ballistic
and cruise missiles armed with conventional weapons to attack the ports and airfields where
American airfields would arrive in Europe. There is even some writing in Russian military
literature indicating that they are thinking also about attacking the ports and airfield from
which these forces would depart in the United States. So there’s some possibility that early in
on in a war in Europe, Russia might actually attack limited places in the United States with
conventional weapons and not nuclear weapons.
And of course if we the United States choose to fight our way through A2AD
capabilities, and the alliance is still resolved, and it actually looks like we might actually
succeed in rejecting Russia from an occupied country. This would be a double loss for
Russia, because it might lose the prize it sought but also many of the military forces with
which it acted. The Putin government might also lose political control in Russia.
Accordingly, Russia has prepared for this form of Western escalation as well, with the
capabilities to threaten the American homeland with nuclear and conventional attack.
Now those are the forms of escalation with which Russia has to concern itself, and
these are the forms of responses that Russia has been in place—to create a fait accompli, to
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separate our allies form us, to slow or reverse our projection of power, and to alter the balance
of power ante.
In support of these concepts, Russia pursues a comprehensive, integrated approach to
deterrence. They put together the hard power and soft power means, information strategies
(or propaganda strategies), kinetic and non-kinetic means, including nuclear and non-nuclear
strike capabilities. It is all in service of a strategy called escalate to de-escalate.
We tend to think of a simple escalation ladder, where you would go from the least
lethal to the most lethal if you were Russian. That doesn’t appear to be how they think about
it. They appear to think about the role of all of these tools, at every possible level of conflict.
And apparently they can imagine the possibility of the early employment of nuclear weapons
in Europe as part of their de-escalation strategy. What is the core concept here? The core
concept is that this employment of nuclear weapon on a limited basis would awaken us to the
fact that Russian interests in a conflict like this would be vital, whereas NATO’s interests
would be merely important. When Russian analysts write about why they think their threats to
attack us with nuclear weapons would be credible, and why our threats to attack them back
with nuclear weapons would NOT be credible in such a conflict, they explain this on the basis
of an asymmetry at stake. Their stake in this kind of conflict they see as being about regime
survival in Moscow. It isn’t just the credibility of Russian power or its close sphere of
influence; it is about the continued success of Mr. Putin and his model of government. That’s
a different kind of stake.
Russian analysts also emphasize asymmetry of geography, which is to say that we
can’t really retaliate for attacks that they initiate on Western European targets without striking
their homeland. And if we strike their homeland, then their threat to strike the American
homeland is credible.
The community of analysts that write in Russian military journals seems to have
persuaded itself that there are options for employing nuclear weapons perhaps early in a
conflict in a manner that supports their overall de-escalation strategy. But there are also a
number of Russians who don’t think that is such a smart idea. Nuclear attack on the West
might cause us to back down—but it might not. It might produce fear and restraint, but it also
might produce anger and resolve and thus generate unwelcomed reaction by NATO. So over
the last decade the Russians have put into place in a regional concept of war with a significant
role for a pre-nuclear deterrence option. Pre-nuclear meaning the employment of conventional
weapons on cruise missiles and ballistic missiles in the same way that they would employ
nuclear weapons, for the same basic purpose that they would try to incentivize de-escalation
by NATO. They are of the view that the threat to employ these weapons is going to be more
credible in our eyes, and this makes them more effective as deterrents of us.
So my second main argument here is that Russia’s approach to regional war is fully
developed, following a period of significant innovation over the last decade or two, and it is
centrally focused on holding Russian gains by motivating NATO not to act.
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The third argument is about Russia’s nuclear strategy as opposed to its regional
strategy. As I’ve already argued, its nuclear strategy supports all three levels of war. In
regional war, Russia’s nuclear strategy has two main roles—in war and in peacetime. In
regional war, the function of nuclear weapons is not quite the same as in strategic war. Recall
that in Russia’s concept of strategic war, their function is to inflict unbearable and irreparable
damage. In regional war, this level of damage would be excessive to the desire to give NATO
a reason to de-escalate (indeed, it would motivate a retaliatory response). If you’re trying to
use a nuclear weapon in a regional war to give your enemy a reason to de-escalate, you do not
inflict unbearable, irreparable damage. You have to inflict reparable, bearable damage. So the
adjective used in Russian military literature is “unacceptable.” The role of nuclear weapons in
Russian regional nuclear war is to inflict unacceptable damage.
Hopefully many of the students in the room have read Clausewitz, who stated that
“war is a continuation of politics by other means.” If that is your view of war, then victory has
a specific meaning other than simply finishing off your enemy. In the Clausewitzian sense,
victory is that moment in war when you have manipulated your enemy’s perception of risk
and cost to the point where that enemy is no longer willing to bear those costs and risks, and
instead is willing to capitulate by accepting the political terms that you have specified for
ending the conflict. This is very much aligned with Russian thinking in how to apply nuclear
weapons in a regional conflict in a limited way.
If that is the role of nuclear weapons in a war time phase of regional conflict, the
Russians also write a lot about the role of nuclear weapons in the peace time phase of a
regional conflict, or the crisis phase before a conflict. And of course those threats have been a
matter of nearly daily messaging from Moscow. Russian military doctrine gives a very
significant role to nuclear threats as a way to generate anxiety, reluctance, debate, and
division within the NATO alliance. Russian experts apparently believe that in crisis the
alliance would be divided, and slow to make a decision and that making nuclear threats now
could help reinforce paralysis in time of crisis.
So my third argument is that Russia’s nuclear strategy has evolved in unexpected,
destabilizing, and dangerous ways. Russian leaders may be confident in their ability to
escalate and deescalate by nuclear means in a regional conflict.
Recall the argument
common to nuclear strategists that nuclear war cannot be won and thus should never be
fought; it is not clear to me that President Putin and his military leadership believe this to be
true at the regional level of war.
My fourth argument is about NATO. In 2012, NATO conducted a review of its
deterrence and defense posture, and concluded that it was “fit for purpose” and that it
included an “appropriate mix of nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities to meet present security
challenges.” The Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) was based on the NATO
Strategic Concept of 2010, which clearly said that Russia is not an enemy, and expressed
confidence about the prospects of integrating Russia more fully in Western practices and
institutions. At the Wales summit in summer 2014, NATO leaders said, ‘let’s not reopen the
Strategic Concept right now, we just finished that. Let’s not reopen the DDPR, we just
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finished that. Let’s begin the process of adjusting our deterrence posture, do the things we
agree to do in the DDPR, and two years later in Warsaw’… which is this July… ‘Let’s take
stock and decide what we have to do next.’
So, to speak metaphorically, we are now on the road from Wales to Warsaw. What
does it mean for the alliance to work within the terms of reference in the DDPR as it thinks
about adjusting its deterrence posture to deal with this new Russia problem?
It means that a number of topics are ruled out of discussion for the time being at
NATO. Missile defense is not about Russia, despite the emergence of new Russian missile
threats to allies. New conventional strike capabilities are not in discussion. Outer space is
barely mentioned as a domain of conflict. Cyber space is mentioned, but the focus is entirely
on resilience. Working within the DDPR result means focusing on two specific aspects of
NATO’s deterrence posture: the conventional force balance and the nuclear sharing
arrangements. The alliance has gotten a lot done in these two areas on the road from Wales to
Warsaw but it clearly has more to do to adapt its deterrence strategy and posture to the new
challenge of Russia’s regional war strategy.
What should be the objective of a revised strategy? We cannot make Russian threats
disappear. But we can get to a point where we do not see them as credible and thus can safely
afford to ignore them. This would make his coercion of our allies ineffective. We want to strip
away Mr. Putin’s confidence in his ability to manage escalation in a regional conflict. To do
this, we are going to need some role for ballistic missile defense, we are going to need some
role for some conventional strike capabilities, we are going to need some role for some cyber
and space capabilities to counter Russia’s, and those are uncomfortable political and strategic
facts.
In the nuclear realm, NATO’s nuclear posture has two main components. It has dual
capable fighter-bombers with U.S. nuclear weapons. These so-called sharing arrangements
contribute to deterrence of Russian nuclear escalate-to-deescalate strikes by holding out the
possibility that the Alliance has the will and the means to respond to limited Russian strikes
with limited strikes of its own, while keeping its strategic forces in reserve. The other
component is provided by the P3. The strategic forces of the three nuclear-armed allies are,
as the strategic concept says, the ultimate guarantee of the sovereignty of the allies. If Russia
threatens to continue a series of nuclear attacks in Europe, including on the homelands of the
United Kingdom and France, then these strategic come into play.
A central question and debate in the alliance is going to be: does the alliance need to
have a symmetric nuclear response to Russia’s strategy and posture, or not? In the Cold War,
we said we did; NATO decided that it needed a large number of nuclear weapons at all levels
in support of the doctrine of flexible response. I don’t see that logic today. What we need is a
limited ability to respond to a limited attack, and we need to be able to say credibly to Mr.
Putin, “if you cross this threshold, this war is going to be a catastrophe for Russia. We have
the means to make it a catastrophe for you, don’t test our will.”
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The alliance also needs to be clear on the software side of its deterrent. It needs to be
clear. It has said less and less about the role of nuclear weapons in its strategy over the last 25
years. NATO should be clear that we do not intend to follow Mr. Putin in rattling nuclear
sabers, violating arms control agreements, or otherwise increasing nuclear risks. We are
responsible nuclear powers and are members of a responsible nuclear alliance. But we don’t
want him to mistake our lack of saber rattling as a sign of weakness and a lack of resolve to
defend our vital interests if he attacks them, especially if he attacks them with nuclear
weapons.
So my 4th argument is NATO’s adaptations in strategy and posture to the new Russian
challenge have begun, and there has been some good progress on the road from Wales to
Warsaw, but major difficult debates and decisions lie ahead for NATO after Warsaw.
I would like to make a final closing argument at the end of my time to add some
perspective to these arguments. To say that Russia has a strategy for war against NATO, that
it has a strategy for nuclear war in a regional context in Europe, and that it has a strategy for
limited nuclear war is not also to say that Russia wants war with the West. I don’t think that
President Putin is seeking war with the West. His best case outcome is that we recognize his
influence, his superiority, the credibility of his military threats—and simply acquiesce to his
political agenda in Europe and a remaking of the European security order in a manner aligned
with his preferences. In short, although I am making a case for the alliance to be much more
serious than it has been about nuclear deterrence and its deterrence against other kinds of
strategic attack in Europe, I am not also making the case for a high prospect for nuclear war in
Europe. I think prospects remain low.
But clearly Russia is preparing for that kind of war, and clearly using its military
capabilities to try and shape the peace today. If we do nothing, we are sending a political
message to Moscow and it is a message of appeasement. If we do too much to make our
military posture very robust, we will divide the alliance, and present Moscow with a great gift
– a divided alliance. We need to find the middle pathway, which strengthens our deterrence
and defense capabilities while maintaining alliance cohesion, while maintaining an open door
to Russia, at such a time when it might choose to come back through it for cooperative
purposes. Thank you for your attention.