What Does This Mean for Nuclear Safety in the World?

Victor Hvozd
Doctor of Military Sciences

In recent years, one of the most dangerous consequences of the deterioration of relations between the United States and Russia has been the de facto destruction of the international arms control agreements. Thus, back in 2007, after Putin had announced the course of Russia’s confrontation with the West, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was suspended. In 2019, the United States and Russia withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and in 2020 — from the Treaty on Open Skies.

Due to a number of disagreements between the United States and Russia over the terms of the extension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), there is a threat of termination of this international document.

As is known, the problem of extension of the New START Treaty was associated with an increase in the number of the countries with strategic nuclear arms, which significantly offset the objectives of the agreement. This is especially true about China, which has become a new global adversary of the United States, and which at the same time is establishing an anti-American partnership with Russia.

According to experts, the situation around the extension of New START Treaty should have got complicated after the election of US President J. Biden, whose position on Russia is tougher than that of his predecessor D. Trump. But such predictions did not come true: having taken office as President of the United States, J. Biden agreed to extend the agreement. Russia supported this decision without any conditions or remarks, which made it possible to extend the New START Treaty.

President J. Biden signs his first executive orders, January 20, 2021

At first glance, the United States and Russia reached a compromise on the New START Treaty because they sought to maintain control over strategic nuclear arms. In turn, this objectively helps to strengthen strategic security in the world. And even more, some Russian politicians have seen such a compromise on the New START Treaty as Washington’s willingness to renew other military agreements.

In view of the above-said, Russian experts are already talking about a possible “reset” of US-Russian relations, as happened in 2009 under President B. Obama. It is stressed that at that time J. Biden was Vice President of the United States and, in fact, agreed with this policy.

US Vice President J. Biden (right) during the signing of the instrument of ratification of the New START Treaty, February 2, 2011

Therefore, Russian experts do not rule out that the United States may agree to “exchange” Ukraine for the implementation of common strategic interests/projects with Russia. This may be one of the reasons why Moscow is disrupting the ceasefire in the Donbas and blocking negotiations to resolve the conflict.

However, Washington and Moscow have agreed to extend the New START Treaty for completely different reasons, and this could lead to rather ambiguous consequences. Thus, the United States and Russia are probably aware that the use of strategic nuclear weapons as a real tool for realization of their interests, including to win the war, is impossible.

In fact, such a weapon is only a mean of deterring opponents, and its actual use by either side would inevitably lead to a global catastrophe when there are no winners and losers. Similar consequences should be understood in China, which has the third largest strategic nuclear potential.

Under such circumstances, the New START Treaty has in fact lost its real significance for its participants, because for the most part it is symbolic in nature. That is why the United States and Russia are reviewing the concepts of the possible use of their nuclear capabilities and trying to make them more practical. In particular, this concerns the parties’ moving to the principles of the doctrine of the “limited nuclear war”, which provides for the selective destruction of critical enemy objects without excessive destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Today, opportunities for this are emerging with creation of a new generation of high-precision long-range weapons that can carry low-yield nuclear warheads. The emergence of such instruments of armed struggle has already been reflected both in the conceptual documents of the United States in the sphere of nuclear deterrence, and in practical measures for their implementation.

The “limited nuclear options” first mentioned in the USA’s “flexible response” military strategy, adopted in 1961 by the Kennedy administration to replace the previous policy of “massive retaliation”. Since then, such an approach to the use of nuclear weapons have been specified in a number of other documents. The main ones were the National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM-242), adopted by US President R. Nixon in 1974, as well as J. Carter’s Presidential Directive 59 (PD-59), and R. Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 13 (NSDD-13).

“Flexible response” was a defense strategy implemented by John F. Kennedy in 1961

At the same time, for the most part, they all concerned a change in the objectives and scale of strategic nuclear strikes. In particular, it was reported that American nuclear missiles were being redirected from civilian to military facilities of the Soviet Union. Besides, a set of measures was envisaged to prevent the escalation of conventional war into nuclear war, as well as the escalation of a limited nuclear war with the use of tactical nuclear weapons — into a large-scale nuclear war. First of all, such measures included increasing the role of conventional US/NATO forces, which were declared a “sword”, and strategic nuclear forces — a “shield”.

However, all this did not have an impact on the capabilities and consequences of the use of strategic nuclear weapons. As a result, both the United States and the Soviet Union maintained their readiness for a large-scale bilateral nuclear war. Such scenarios were worked out during the strategic exercises of the United States and the Soviet Union of the Cold War era. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, such exercises ceased, but since 2010 they have been resumed with the participation of the United States and Russia.

For example, in 2019, the US Department of Defense published a new Doctrine on Nuclear Operations, based on the above principles. The document provides for possible nuclear strikes on enemy targets (including during a conventional war), so that it would suffer limited losses, which would be enough for the United States to win the conflict and restore strategic stability.

In 2020, this approach was specified in the US concept for the creation of W76-2 low-yield Trident submarine warheads. At the same time, the goals and objectives of such plans were explained in the US State Department’s report “Strengthening deterrence and reducing nuclear risks: additional low-power warheads for submarine ballistic missiles”.

At the same time, the United States stated about the steps already taken in the above-mentioned direction. In particular, as of early 2020, the US nuclear arsenal already had about 50 W76-2 nuclear warheads. At this, some of them were deployed on the Trident II (D5) missiles of Ohio-class nuclear submarines.

It is believed that the USS Tennessee is the first nuclear submarine of the US Navy, armed with missiles with a new warhead W76-2

At the official level, Russia condemns the principles of the “limited nuclear war”, believing that this lowers the threshold for the possible use of nuclear weapons. In view of this, the Russian Federation criticizes the above-mentioned actions of the United States.

Nevertheless, Russia also applies elements of approaches that are characteristic of the principles of the “limited nuclear war.” Thus, according to the Decree of Russian President V. Putin “The Foundations of Russian Federation State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence”, signed in 2020, the possibility of limited use of nuclear weapons during a conventional war is allowed.

Given this, we can conclude that the RF Ministry of Defense has relevant plans. This can be evidenced by the development and adoption by the Russian Armed Forces of specialized technical means capable of inflicting short-range nuclear strikes on targets with low-yield nuclear warheads.

One of them is the Kinzhal hypersonic aviation-missile complex, created on the basis of missiles of the land-based Iskander-M operational-tactical missile complex. MiG-31K fighters and Tu-22M3M long-range bombers can be equipped with Kinzhal missiles. In the first case, the range of the complex is 2 thousand kilometres, in the second — up to 3 thousand kilometres, which allows to strike at enemy targets in operational and strategic depth (in case of bombers’ approaching the US border with air refueling).

Russian MiG-31K fighter with Kinzhal missile

Of course, the United States’ and Russia’ sticking to such principles in no way means that they are abandoning massive use of strategic nuclear arms. This is evidenced by the nature of military exercises of the parties, which rehearse exactly such scenarios.

In particular, the scenario of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia was worked out during a series of operational events and tests of the US nuclear triad conducted by the US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) in February 2020. During the exercise, practical launches of Trident II missiles by nuclear submarines were performed.

In 2020, exercises of strategic and nuclear forces of the United States and Russia took place

In turn, in November 2020, the Russian Armed Forces conducted training of strategic offensive forces with the participation of command posts and combat complexes of Strategic Missile Forces, two pairs of long-range bombers Tu-160M and Tu-95MS, as well as two strategic missile submarines from the Northern and Pacific Fleets. At that time, six sea- and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and two air-based cruise missiles were launched.

In fact, it is only the question of creation by the United States and Russia of new types of nuclear weapons and their carriers, as well as changes in their use. Moreover, this does not reduce at all, but on the contrary — increases the threat of conflicts and wars with the use of nuclear weapons.

For example, during the aggravations of Russian-American and Russian-European relations, Russia is openly trying to blackmail Western adversaries with nuclear weapons, demonstrating various new systems, including the Kinzhal missile system. It has already been placed on combat duty in the Southern Military District of the Russian Armed Forces.

All this really lowers the threshold for the possible use of nuclear weapons, which is recognized by both Western and Russian experts. Given today’s realities, the catalysts for such developments can be both sudden crises in US-Russian relations and unintended incidents during their military exercises.

In this context, an additional factor of instability may be Russia’s or the USA’s policy to improve their tactical nuclear capabilities for the direct use on the battlefield, which complements their strategic nuclear capabilities.

In general, these threats are directly related to Ukraine, as it is located at the intersection of Western and Russian interests. Some political scientists point out that a conflict between them may arise through Ukraine. And grow into a real nuclear war.