WASHINGTON – The old nuclear order, rooted in the unthinkable results of the Cold War, was falling apart before Russia invaded Ukraine. It is now giving way to an impending era of disorder, different from any since the beginning of the atomic era.
Russia’s regular reminders over the past three months of its nuclear power, even to a large extent, have been the latest evidence of how the potential threat has re-emerged in clearer and more dangerous ways. They were enough to issue a sharp warning to Moscow on Tuesday from President Biden, a tacit acknowledgment that the world has entered a period of heightened nuclear risk.
“Currently, we see no indication that Russia intends to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, although from time to time Russian rhetoric to brandish a nuclear sword is in itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible,” Mr Biden wrote in a guest essay on The New York Times. “Let me be clear: any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict of any magnitude would be completely unacceptable to us and to the rest of the world, and would have serious consequences.
But those consequences would almost certainly be non-nuclear, officials said, in stark contrast to the kind of nuclear escalation threats Washington and Moscow pursued during the Cold War.
Such changes extend far beyond Russia and include China’s actions to expand its arsenal, the collapse of any hope that North Korea will limit – much less abandon – its nuclear warhead cash and the emergence of so-called threshold states, like Iran, which are temptingly close to the possibility of creating a bomb.
During the Trump administration, the United States and Russia withdrew from arms deals that limited their arsenals. Only one thing – the New START, which limits both countries to 1,550 deployed strategic weapons – has been left in place. Then, when the war in Ukraine began in February, talks between Washington and Moscow on what could replace the agreement ended abruptly.
As the Biden administration intensifies the flow of conventional weapons to Ukraine and tensions with Russia are high, a senior administration official acknowledged that “it is almost impossible at present” to imagine “how negotiations could resume before the last treaty expires early. 2026
Hundreds of new missile silos began appearing in the Chinese desert last summer. The Pentagon has said Beijing, which has long argued it needs only a “minimum deterrent,” is looking to build an arsenal of “at least” 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030.
The commander of the United States Strategic Command, the military unit that keeps the nuclear arsenal ready for launch, said last month that he was worried that Beijing was learning from Moscow’s threats to Ukraine and would apply them to Taiwan, which views it in a similar way. as a detachment. condition.
The Chinese “are watching the war in Ukraine closely and are likely to use nuclear coercion to their advantage” in future conflicts, Commander Admiral Charles A. Richard told Congress. Beijing’s goal, he said, “is to achieve military capacity to unify Taiwan by 2027, if not earlier.”
Other administration officials are more skeptical, noting that the rattling of Russia’s sword has failed to deter the West from arming Ukraine – and that the lesson China can learn is that nuclear threats can backfire.
Others learn their own lessons. North Korea, which President Donald Trump has boasted of disarming one-on-one diplomacy, is developing new weapons.
South Korea, which Mr. Biden visited last month, is once again openly discussing whether to build a nuclear force to counter the North, a discussion reminiscent of the 1970s, when Washington forced the South to abandon a secret bomb program.
In South Korea and beyond, Ukraine’s renunciation of its nuclear arsenal three decades ago is seen by some as a mistake that left it open to invasion.
Iran has rebuilt much of its nuclear infrastructure after President Donald J. Trump has given up on the 2015 nuclear deal. International Atomic Energy Agency reports show that Tehran can now produce nuclear fuel for weeks, even though it will take a year or more.
What is fast approaching, experts say, is a second nuclear era, full of new dangers and uncertainties, less predictable than during the Cold War, with established restrictions giving way to more open threats to such weapons. and the need for new strategies to preserve nuclear peace.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said recently in Foreign Affairs that the dawn would include “both a greater risk of a nuclear arms race and increased incentives for countries to resort to nuclear weapons in crisis.” ”
Threats of doom
Russian President Vladimir Putin has started the war in Ukraine by declaring that he is putting his nuclear capabilities on some sort of heightened alert, a clear message to Washington to back down. (There is no evidence that he moved nuclear weapons or loosened control over their use, CIA Director William J. Burns said recently.)
This was the latest expression of Putin’s strategy to remind the world that even if Russia’s economy is the size of Italy’s and its influence is overshadowed by China’s rise, its nuclear arsenal remains the largest.
Updated
June 1, 2022, 1:05 p.m. ET
In the years before the invasion of Ukraine, Mr Putin regularly highlighted videos in his nuclear propaganda speeches, including one showing a swarm of warheads landing in Florida. In March 2018, when he announced the development of a 78-foot torpedo with a nuclear weapon designed to cross the ocean and cover an area larger than California with radioactivity, he called it “amazing” and “really fantastic” – as the accompanying video shows how it explodes into a huge fireball.
A popular Sunday news show in Russia recently featured an animation that once again showcased the giant torpedo, claiming that the weapon could explode with a force of up to 100 megatons – more than 6,000 times more powerful than the US atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima – and turn Britain “in the radioactive desert”.
It was a little difficult, even for a bruised Mr. Putin. But inside the Pentagon and the National Security Council, his noise has drawn attention to another part of Russia’s arsenal: tactical or “combat” weapons, relatively small arms that are not covered by any treaty and are easy to transport. Russia has reserves of about 2,000, 20 times more than NATO’s arsenals.
They were designed by the Russians to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, which strategists fear makes their use more conceivable.
In war games and field exercises, Russian troops simulate the transition from conventional to tactical nuclear weapons as an experiment to intimidate opponents. In Russian military doctrine, this is called “escalation to de-escalation.”
Preparing an answer
A sign of the risks of this new era was a series of emergency meetings in the administration to outline how Mr Biden should react if Russia carries out a nuclear detonation in Ukraine or around the Black Sea. Officials will not discuss the classified results of these bench exercises.
But in a public statement to Congress last month, Avril D. Haynes, director of national intelligence, said officials believed Putin would reach for his arsenal only if “it is understood that he is losing the war in Ukraine and that NATO is in effect or intervenes, or is about to intervene. “
Intelligence officials say they think the chances are low, but that’s higher than anyone predicted before the invasion.
“There are many things he would do in the context of escalation before he gets to nuclear weapons,” Ms Haynes said.
The war between Russia and Ukraine: Key developments
Map 1 of 4
US military aid. The United States will send advanced missile systems to Ukraine as part of a new $ 700 million aid package, President Biden told The New York Times. A senior administration official said the missile system was provided only after assurances that Ukraine would not use it against targets on Russian territory.
On the ground. Russian troops have invaded the city of Severodonetsk and gathered in the city center, according to a local official. The fall of Severodonetsk will give President Vladimir Putin the last major city in the eastern province of Luhansk, which is still in Ukrainian hands.
The Russian oil embargo. European Union members have finally reached an agreement on a Russian oil embargo and new sanctions against Russia. The long-delayed deal effectively frees Hungary, which has opposed the embargo, from the costly move the rest of the bloc is taking to punish Russia.
The White House, the Pentagon, and intelligence agencies are investigating the consequences of any potential Russian allegations that it is conducting a nuclear test or using relatively few nuclear weapons on the battlefield to demonstrate its capability.
As Mr. Biden hinted in the article, his advisers are quietly looking almost entirely at non-nuclear responses – most likely a combination of sanctions, diplomatic efforts and, if a military response is needed, conventional strikes – at any such demonstration of nuclear detonation.
The idea would be to “signal an immediate de-escalation” followed by international condemnation, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to give an idea of classified topics.
“If you respond in kind, you lose your morale and ability to harness a global coalition,” said John B. Wolfstal, a nuclear expert who served on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.
Mr Wolfstal noted that in 2016, the Obama administration held a war game in which participants agreed that a non-nuclear response to a Russian strike was the best option. Mrs. Haynes, …
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