The Strategic Logic Behind Russian Nuclear Threats

What does Russia hope to gain from raising the prospect of nuclear annihilation?

This article will continue on the topic of nuclear weapons that was addressed in the previous article. This time, instead of talking about using nuclear weapons, we’ll talk about the mere prospect of their use and the purpose behind threats to that effect. 

The Clausewitzian lens is particularly appropriate for this subject because of the area between peace and war in which threats fall into. Clausewitz defines war as the use of violence for political ends. A threat is not war, but it is the leveraging of potential violence for political gain. The threat is at the core of Clausewitz’s concept of war. It is as much the threat of future violence as the actual violence of war that forms its ability to shape policy. A state is likely to make peace when it is militarily defeated because of the threat, implicit or explicit, of what will happen if it does not. The threat of violence is not war, but a threat is a clear illustration of the manner in which force serves as a currency for policy. 

When Russian state media glorifies murder of millions of Westerners by nuclear fire, the intermingling of force and politics is shown in stark relief. The promise of extreme violence is on display as a tool to persuade and dissuade. This use of rhetoric is significant because Russia possesses the capabilities to make good on these threats, almost instantaneously if it chooses to. The threat of universal suicide is not credible, but the mere possibility of something so horrendous gives it political weight nonetheless. 

Given the Russians have no intention of waging a nuclear war, why do they so frequently threaten it? To answer that question, we must first ask ourselves what the effects of these threats are on Russia’s adversaries. Even if there’s no realistic chance that anyone would be suicidal enough to start a nuclear war, the fact that such a thing is possible is enough to cause considerable consternation among the public in any confrontation between nuclear powers. This is true even if neither regime has raised the specter of nuclear war. Voices in media and academia inevitably urge restraint and mediation, and this has an effect on the public, forcing a government to expend political capital in order to remain engaged in the confrontation. 

It is this pressure that is the core of the strategic logic behind nuclear saber rattling. By increasing the salience of nuclear weapons in the public consciousness, one power can test the resolve of the other.  The mechanism for this is the increasing of the political costs for maintaining engagement in the confrontation. This is a rare arena in which authoritarian regimes possess the advantage relative to open societies. Russia, with its tightly controlled media environment and culture of political apathy, can expect little domestic reaction to its stoking of nuclear tensions. The open societies of the West must reckon with public opinion directly, and therefore pay a far higher toll when the prospect of nuclear use is raised in a confrontation. 

This imbalance creates a powerful incentive for authoritarian powers to engage in nuclear saber-rattling. By intimating the willingness to use nuclear weapons, Russia can increase the pressure on Western governments to disengage from Ukraine. Russia has little reason to refrain from making nuclear threats. The Putin regime is insulated from public opinion. In fact, saber-rattling plays to the kind of great power nostalgia that supports Putin’s popularity in Russia. As such, emphasizing Russia’s indelible status as a nuclear power can strengthen the regime’s credibility among nationalists, a much needed prospect as defeats on the battlefield weaken Putin’s support in that quarter. 

Crucially, nuclear rhetoric is not a form of escalation. Russia has not actually changed its nuclear posture or made any kind of move that would challenge the West to respond in kind. At the same time Russian statements on nuclear use are generating doomsday-filled headlines, senior Russian officials are meeting with their American counterparts to defuse tensions. Consequently, Russian saber-rattling is no more than propaganda, an effort to increase the salience of the risks of supporting Ukraine. It is a deliberate effort to add substance to arguments that Western support for Ukraine is simply too risky to be justified. Fundamentally, it’s an attempt to directly engage the Western public and use public opinion to pressure Western governments into disengagement. 

Russia could pressure the West’s governments directly via escalation, but that is an inherently risky prospect. It is dangerous from a Russian perspective, of course, because of the clear consequences if escalation gets out of hand. All parties are equally aware that a nuclear exchange must be avoided at all costs. Beyond the potential for annihilation at the end of the escalation ladder, Russia faces the problem that any escalation is more likely to deeply embroil the West in the conflict. In the simplest terms, Russia’s hope is that the West will lose interest in Ukraine. Escalating the situation makes that impossible. Creating a nuclear crisis makes the situation in Ukraine more relevant to the West and therefore makes the West less likely to exhaust its strategic patience. For this reason, Russia has confined its behavior to nuclear threats, without actual changes to its nuclear posture. 

Nuclear saber-rattling therefore fits into a larger Russian strategy of attempting to encourage the West to disengage from Ukraine, on account of both the risks and financial costs. If the West remains firm in its backing of Ukraine, the balance of force will continually edge further away from Russia. A Russian victory-or even stalemate-is contingent on successful attritional warfare. Because of the West’s overwhelming economic advantage, Russian strategy must be based on exhausting the West’s strategic patience in order to gain a relative advantage in Ukraine. Raising the prospect of nuclear war provides ammunition to domestic forces that favor appeasement and isolation and increases the costs to remain engaged. Nuclear rhetoric therefore becomes a costless method by which Russia may exert pressure on the West, without assuming the risks that actual nuclear escalation would entail.