It is hard these days to decide which threat deserves our greatest attention: election deniers being put in charge of future U.S. elections and other threats to democracy; the radical right wing Supreme Court majority; inflation and recession; hurricanes fueled by the climate crisis; famine in Africa and the Middle East; the global growth of neo-fascist movements; or Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in his desperate and failing attempt to subdue Ukraine.
Here, I want to focus on the latter, because the threat is growing, and it has catastrophic implications.
When I studied national security years ago at Harvard Kennedy School, I learned how the Pentagon’s war planners and Russia’s counterparts think about the use of nuclear weapons. This was in the 1980s when Reagan and Gorbachev had agreed to reduce the strategic nuclear stockpiles on both sides of the Cold War divide. Both sides recognized that a full exchange of nuclear missiles and bombs would end life as we know it on the planet, thus rendering an all-out nuclear war one that, in Reagan’s words, “… can never be won and should never be fought.” This stand-off reality was dubbed Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
It was under the umbrella of MAD that deadly non-nuclear conflicts such as the U.S.-Vietnam War or the Soviet-Afghan war and many other smaller wars could go on at horrific human costs without either side introducing nuclear weapons. MAD did not mean peace.
But war planners were not sitting back in their recliners, self-assured in the notion that just having a nuclear arsenal would guarantee they would never be used. Even in the strategic arms control atmosphere of the 1980s, there was a growing interest in the Pentagon in the possibility of using lower-yield, “tactical nukes” in the battlefield. War scenarios were gamed out to explore situations where such weapons might be used, especially in Europe.
One of the most likely scenarios was one where a country with nuclear weapons was losing a conventional war with an enemy that did not possess such weapons. An autocratic leader with no checks on their power, even possibly surrounded by advisors who urged the use of tactical nukes, losing battles and soldiers, doubtful of his ability to marshal enough troops to win the conflict — this is the scenario that many war gamers consider the most likely to lead to the use of battlefield nuclear weapons.
This seems increasingly to be the situation Putin finds himself in, and it is the reason why we should take seriously his rattling of the nuclear saber. Russia’s stated policy on first-use of nuclear weapons includes the right to defend Russian territory. That is why the recent annexation of still-contested parts of Ukraine could be a dangerous prelude to using nuclear weapons to defend what he has now declared to be part of Russia.
So, what are tactical or “low-yield” nuclear weapons? And how could the U.S. and its allies respond if Putin used them in Ukraine?
Many of these weapons have about a third or less of the destructive power of the 15-kiloton Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs that, combined, killed between 130,000 and 200,000 people, but their lower yield could make them more tempting to use if conventional forces are failing on the field. “Lower yield” as a military term of art tends to minimize or normalize the notion of incinerating “only” 10,000 people, instead of 100,000, with one weapon.
These weapons should not be confused with intermediate-range (500km and more) nuclear weapons, which were once banned under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachev. That treaty was ended by the Trump administration on Aug. 2, 2019, with the Russians quickly following suit. The lower-yield, battlefield nukes, some of which can be fired from the back of a jeep, were never subjected to a treaty limiting their manufacture or deployment. Russia has about 1,900 tactical nuclear weapons, which they could use against Ukraine if, for instance, a Russian assault across the muddy fields of the Donbas region is repelled by Ukraine’s resistance. NATO countries have intermediate-range nukes at bases in Europe and on submarines. The U.S. also has about 100 low-yield tactical nukes stationed in five European countries.
The Biden administration has responded to Putin’s threats by promising “very serious consequences.” We don’t know what that means, and that ambiguity is part of the stare-down game. Will the U.S. respond with nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, or by other means? The U.S. and NATO need Putin to ponder the uncertainty of a U.S. response in his calculations. But there is danger in this uncertainty. A single battlefield commander, or a desperate, cornered despot, could set off a chain reaction that could lead to global disaster. One war-gaming exercise at Princeton University concluded a tactical nuclear weapon exchange could quickly escalate to a strategic nuclear exchange, killing 90 million people or more and leaving large portions of the planet uninhabitable.
It is way past time that the INF treaty be renewed and that world leaders take bold steps toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons, including the tactical weapons that are more likely to be used. Failing to do so is, well, MAD. A nuclear ban treaty has been signed by 66 nations. This Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons would eliminate the nuclear weapon threat to our own existence and allow us to begin the process of coming together as a global community to end war and join in addressing the other existential threats we face, such as the worsening climate catastrophe. More information and an activist tool kit is available at the Union of Concerned Scientists website www.ucsusa.org.
Tom Gardner, MPA, PhD, is chair of the Communication Department at Westfield State University. He served in the 1980s as director of communications and public education for the Union of Concerned Scientists. He lives in Amherst.