If there is a nuclear war, we will go to heaven, they [the West] it will just catch on. ” The fact that Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia’s disinformation network, RT, has to joke about the nuclear destruction on tea TV reveals much of the militaristic disease among Russia’s elite.
The influential Simonyan has not been removed; her words deliberately echoed Putin’s in 2019, when, answering a question about nuclear war, he said “we will go to heaven as martyrs, they will simply croak because they will not even have time to repent.”
Putin himself has long ruled the specter of Russia’s nuclear arsenal with messianic abandonment. It is clearly a source of deep pride that Russia’s nuclear stockpile is once again the world’s largest, restored with love for the size and height of the Soviet heyday.
This is more than can be said for Russia’s post-Soviet politicians. In the Cold War era, politicians on both sides were more careful about flaunting weapons of mass destruction, more aware of the horrors they caused. Soviet and American leaders signed several important arms control agreements, including the forerunner of today’s New START Treaty. Thanks to this agreement, the Russians warned the Americans in advance that they were launching their new RS-28 Sarmat missile, avoiding the escalation of the already tense atmosphere. On Friday, the US Department of Defense confirmed that it does not expect Russia to use nuclear missiles in Ukraine.
This network of agreements and advantages is reassuring, until you remember that Russia is not the Soviet Union, this type of arms control is under strong pressure, and Russia’s war against Ukraine is fueled by deep irrational thinking. After an invasion armed with mythology rather than analysis, the military has failed to achieve its goals and Russian elites are now blaming everyone for the results, pointing to increasingly ridiculous enemies, from NATO to a gay-sponsored gay-sponsored team. of the Satanists.
A number of Russian politicians have indicated that they see Ukraine as a proxy war with NATO and the West, partly to divert attention from hostilities, but partly because they believe so. The idea that Russia is at war with the West has penetrated the National Security Strategy until 2021 and a recent comment by Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin’s closest advisers.
Putin has threatened the West with a “lightning-fast response” if he goes much further in aiding Ukraine, leaving strategic uncertainty about what exactly he means. Judging by his rhetoric and the very decision to invade and destroy Ukraine, Putin’s decision-making cannot be judged outside the context of messianic martyrology, in which nuclear war is presented and discussed in Russia.
The willingness to accept, even rhetorically, mass death reflects in part the public’s concern for military heroism, but it is also a marker of existential fear. From this point of view, the Western threat is existential not only for Russia but also for Putin – if the Russian president wants to make more of a difference. Putin is said to be haunted by the brutal death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He is probably aware that personalized autocracies of the type he created are seldom peaceful. Faced with a shameful defeat or regime change, Putin may feel sufficiently (personally) threatened to drop a nuclear weapon.
Presented with a blood-curdling vision of nuclear destruction, it is normal to try to think and reconcile the goals and language of the Russian elite with our own paradigms and frameworks. But Russia’s perception can no longer be deciphered by cost-risk analysis alone.
There are some measures that may be sensible – along with strong support for Ukraine, Western countries must be clear that they are not pursuing regime change in Russia and find ways to keep appropriate channels open – but no one can pretend. that there is a solution.
That is why Western leaders must include the unthinkable in their calculations. If the Salisbury poisonings, the political assassinations and the invasion of Ukrainians have proved anything, it is reckless to say boldly, “Putin never would.” Rationalization will not protect us from the irrational.
Dr. Jade McGlyn is the author and academician of the Monterey Initiative on Russian Studies
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