The war in Ukraine is the most serious European military conflict since World War II and a growing number of commentators warn that it threatens to produce the greatest nuclear crisis since the height of the Cold War, but what exactly did Putin say? Who is most vulnerable if the Russians use tactical nuclear weapons? What is the debate over how the U.S. should respond to the crisis? What objectives does each party in the conflict want to achieve? What do Ukrainians think about the threat?

At an Ethnic Media Services online briefing, May 6, speakers – Michael Klare, Five College Professor Emeritus of Peace and World Security Studies, and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College; Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association and publisher and contributor for the organization’s monthly journal, ‘Arms Control Today’; Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández, Research Associate at the Arms Control Association; and Andrew Nynka, Editor-in-Chief, ‘The Ukrainian Weekly’ and ‘Svoboda’ at the Ukrainian National Association – addressed these and other questions.

(Above, l-r): Michael Klare, Five College Professor Emeritus of Peace and World Security Studies, and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College; Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association and publisher and contributor for the organization’s monthly journal, ‘Arms Control Today’; Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández, Research Associate at the Arms Control Association; and Andrew Nynka, Editor-in-Chief, ‘The Ukrainian Weekly’ and ‘Svoboda’ at the Ukrainian National Association. (EMS)

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association said, “The short answer is it’s all too real and we are in a heightened state of nuclear danger, the likes of which we have not seen in over 30 years, not since the end of the Cold War.

“According to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statements relating to nuclear weapons, he has made clear nuclear threats, since the beginning of the conflict, the first was on February 24, he said essentially that countries that seek to stand in Russia’s way of its invasion of Ukraine will know that Russia will respond immediately with consequences you have never seen in your entire history, and then more recently, on April 27, he reiterated a similar message – if someone wants to interfere in the situation in Ukraine from the outside it creates an unacceptable threat of a strategic nature for Russia and that means a threat to Russia’s existence, perhaps from nuclear weapons.

“The clear purpose of Putin’s threats is to ward off a direct U.S. or NATO military intervention in Ukraine. Thankfully, President Biden has not matched Putin’s nuclear taunts. The United States even cancelled a scheduled flight test of a Minuteman 3 Intercontinental ballistic missile so as not to send the wrong message to Russia.

“It’s important to know that if the United States and Russia were to by accident or by design become embroiled in a direct military conflict, it could very easily escalate beyond the borders of Ukraine and it is a fact that both Russian and U.S. military strategies reserve the option to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats under extreme circumstances, and that means that a conventional conflict between the United States and NATO with Russia could go nuclear.

“The first use of nuclear weapons in such a conflict would probably involve short-range nuclear weapons which both NATO possesses, and Russia possesses. Short Range are also referred to as tactical nuclear warheads. The Russians have approximately one to two thousand short-range nuclear warheads. These are in centralized storage facilities. The U.S. intelligence community has said publicly they’ve seen no signs yet that Russia is moving those warheads from storage to deployment.

“The United States and NATO have over 100 tactical nuclear warheads that can be delivered by fighter bombers. These are stored at five bases, in five European NATO countries – Italy, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. In addition, there are the long-range strategic nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia have about 1,400 each, that can be delivered in long-range missiles bombers and submarine-launched missiles. France and Britain have strategic nuclear arsenals too, smaller in number, but still extremely deadly.

“If nuclear weapons are used in such a scenario, can nuclear war be limited? – My short answer is No, not really. What is sometimes envisioned and is part of formal U.S. and Russian strategy is that if there is a NATO-Russia conventional conflict, and one side or the other is losing, each side reserves the option to use a small number, as in, one, two, three, four, five, maybe twelve short-range nuclear weapons detonations to change the balance of that military conflict to stop the invasion force, or to intimidate the other side into ceasing hostilities. But the reality is that once nuclear weapons are used, there is absolutely no guarantee that each side would not respond to the first attack and then respond and respond again quickly escalating up the ladder to become an all-out global nuclear conflagration.

“Today we are in a heightened state of nuclear danger, much greater than we were in before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its war against Ukraine began it, still may be relatively low probability because both sides recognize the danger, but sometimes good intentions are not enough,” said Kimball.

Michael Klare shared his perspective next, “We’ve been in a new world since at least 2018 when the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new strategic policy to guide the U.S. military and how it organized its forces and deployed its forces around the world. This was announced or encapsulated in the ‘National Defense Strategy of 2018’ written by Jim Mattison, the Secretary of Defense, formerly a Marine Corps General, and the essence of this strategy is called Great Power Competition (GPC).

“What Mattis said was, the era of the global war on terror has come to a close. That’s no longer the guiding philosophy and has been replaced by this new policy, or this new overarching vision that the U.S. is now engaged in a long-term global competition with two essentially two hostile powers Russia and China, and that this will define U.S. military policy for the indefinite future and this policy would require re-engineering the U.S. military from fighting low-intensity conflicts, small-scale wars in the global south, and mainly in Africa, and the Middle East against terrorists and insurgents, and instead concentrate on fighting great powers, what they call near peer powers, that is close to the United States in their military capabilities, Russia and China by building up U.S. forces in Europe and in Asia, and strengthening U.S. alliances, especially NATO and a proto-NATO in Asia called the Quad for the quadrilateral security arrangement between the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.

“From the perspective of the U.S. military, we have been engaged in a heightened military competition with Russia and China since 2018. This view was present and well underway before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. To what extent it influenced his decision to invade Ukraine will be something for future historians to decide. It certainly involved a greater threat to Russia than existed before, in particular because the weapons that the U.S. has been developing and deploying in Europe, the conventional weapons are weapons that are intended to strike Russian military assets in Russian territory and to destroy its key military capabilities, and this is exactly the sort of threat that Daryl discussed where conventional weapons could pose a threat to a strategic threat to Russia, that might trigger the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“The same thing is happening in Asia, where the U.S. is building up its ability to use conventional weapons including hypersonic missiles aimed at the Chinese mainland in the eventuality of a conflict in the South China Sea or over Taiwan, and this has triggered anxiety in China, and led to an expansion, a buildup of Chinese nuclear forces, so it created anxiety in China as well as in Russia.

“This is the backdrop to Ukraine. After the war in Ukraine, this process of all three powers of building up their military capabilities to fight both a conventional war and a nuclear war is bound to accelerate. In Europe, after the war, or the war may go on for a long time, we don’t know when it’s going to end, I think we’re going to see a sharp divide in Europe just as there was in the Cold War. A new iron curtain as it were except this line is much low, will lie much closer to Russia than the one during the Cold War, and this is a big difference.

“It looks like Finland and Sweden are likely to join NATO as a result of the war, which means the Finnish-Russian border will become a new battleground, the Arctic is becoming a battleground between the West and Russia, the Baltic Sea area where the Baltic Republics are, now on the front line, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and Poland, that’s part of the front line, and it will probably go from Belarus, depending on how the war ends, through somewhere in Ukraine, depending on where the fighting ends and then into the Black Sea, which has become another battleground between the West and Russia. So, when the war ends these lines will be heavily fortified on both sides with advanced conventional weapons and weapons that are intended to to strike deep into enemy territory on each side.

“We will see a similar picture where the U.S. is strengthening its military bonds with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, and other countries in the region deploying more forces there. It will be deploying more hypersonic missiles, they are on navy ships and submarines, building up bases at Guam, elsewhere in the region. This brings us to the question of Taiwan, which is on the minds of many people. Taiwan now becomes the Ukraine of the Pacific in many respects. From the perspective of China, Taiwan is part of China, a renegade province and any move by Taiwanese people to the government to move towards independence is viewed as a revolt against the government and should be crushed by any means necessary, somewhat the way Putin viewed Ukraine.

“If China did make a move to use force against Taiwan, the U.S. would [possibly] intervene militarily and the use of conventional weapons by the U.S. against China could pose a strategic threat to China and could trigger China to use tactical nuclear weapons, or vice versa, so we have a more dangerous situation in Asia, as well as a consequence of what’s happening in Ukraine and in the United States, with very little debate, Congress has abandoned its priorities of spending on infrastructure, education, and health, and instead, is talking only about increasing military spending. But, spending more money on American weapons designed for fighting China and Russia, increasing spending on nuclear weapons and in sending heavier, increasingly more powerful weapons to Ukraine, the United States is no longer providing defensive weapons.

Gabriela Iveliz Rosa Hernández, also with the Arms Control Association, said, “What are the war aims particularly that Russia sees when it comes to Ukraine, when it comes to this conflict, when this entire thing first began, for all of us who have actually been tracking this conflict ever since the beginning, to all the way on February 24, where there was the horrid speech, the first thing that we saw was that President Putin declared the deed that the demilitarization and denotification of Ukraine were to be Russia’s main war objectives, or in the special military operation, as Russia likes to call it. What does demilitarization mean? – Demilitarization can be interpreted from managing to get some sort of agreements on demilitarized zones in contact regions between Russia and Ukraine, it can be interpreted as striking particularly Ukraine’s defense assets, Ukraine’s military infrastructure, which will undoubtedly cause casualties, as it has.

“Russia is unhappy that it is losing its influence in Ukraine, and when you have such a broad objective, and when you have such a problem, it is impossible to map out a possible military campaign to achieve this. But this is a political objective, the other objective which prompted a lot of confusion at the beginning was about making Ukraine a much less anti-Russia country because the Russian government seems to believe that that NATO and its allies have practically hijacked the country and have installed the Zelinski government, and that somehow, this government only answers to American interest. A very broad and unclear aim of the campaign and then there is the failure of a multi-axis approach of a purely conventional military campaign. Russians went in with bad intelligence, bad planning, and poor tactics, and a very limited understanding of the Ukrainian nation.

“Russia has shifted its military objectives. It went from trying to conduct a regime change operation and to give with this silent hope that somehow if Kiev fall, the country would stop resisting. Now you have a very slow and steady campaign particularly in the east part of Ukraine and some parts of the south.

“Currently both sides have made it clear that they do not want to fight. There is a valuable argument to be made that in March, President Zielinski really signaled that he really wanted an agreement, and he wanted to stop the fighting, and that there was a conversation to be had about Ukraine being a neutral country, however, Russia seemed to be very intent on just continuing to strike Ukraine, so what are the scenarios for a broader conflict, there is an argument to be made that the Russians could misinterpret the U.S. policy towards Ukraine and actually somehow get the idea that the U.S. is actually trying to conduct a regime change operation through this war.

“Another scenario for a broader conflict which is much more the stereotypical one where these countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, somehow that something happens, they send troops and NATO gets drawn up in a conflict, and what are scenarios for a broader conflict, Russia possibly losing, or that the war would enter mainland Russia entirely. “Even if Russia used a tactical nuclear weapon, it could still accomplish the objectives of its military campaign. Russia is unhappy that it is losing its influence in Ukraine and using a nuclear weapon would not help. It may perhaps try with these nuclear threats, to coerce Ukraine, which is highly unlikely, but however the battlefield use of one of these weapons are completely null and void.”

“Ceasefire negotiations have completely stalled. Neither side has a strong incentive, both sides are still clearly resisting each other, the last report of possible negotiations was seen in early March, where they were discussing a possible ceasefire, and a withdrawal of Russian troops. There was this expectation according to at least two Ukrainian officials that Ukraine was expecting compensation from Russia, and there was also the subject of giving Ukraine security guarantees, and to prevent Russia from taking its territory if it ever decides to.

“Russia is not sure of what it’s trying to do as well because there are the territories in southern Ukraine where Russia has established occupation regimes. Does Russia want to annex these occupations in order to create a new buffer zone; does Russia want to punish Ukraine for what they perceive that Ukraine has done and for continuing to fight; does it want to just keep launching missiles at Ukraine in hopes that it will somehow give up; or Is the goal to just cut off completely Ukraine from the Black Sea. Currently, a ceasefire anytime soon cannot be seen.”

Andrew Nynka said, “As a former KGB Security Service agent, this [Putin] is an individual who is skilled in disinformation, misinformation subterfuge. Trying to get into his head is a very difficult thing to do.

“Ukrainians have shown themselves as not just to be exceptionally brave in the physical fight, but incredibly skilled at the information fight as well. That includes things like the use of different memes, the use of different social media tools, obviously a huge part of that as propaganda, but they have been remarkably skilled at it.

“In the United States, the common idea is that this war doesn’t affect us. We don’t want to be involved in this. We don’t want American troops to be physically involved, but if we think about this situation as also a question of an information war then I try to remind people that we have been already fighting this war for quite a long time, and that includes in the United States.

“Putin, the spy who revels in misinformation and disinformation and subterfuge, would rather see his enemies in a disagreement than united.

“Putin likes to look at our history and say well we’re very hypocritical so when we talk about nuclear weapons, in fact the lone country to have used a nuclear weapon in wars, the United States, and I think that’s one of the things that gives us from the nuclear deterrence standpoint. If the world looks at us pragmatically, they realize that we are the only country that has used them and therefore we might be very ready to do so again.

“One of the things that Putin is struggling with right now is that while he’s trying to use the threat of nuclear weapons as a as a tool in his arsenal, he has never actually used them and therefore there is a legitimate question about whether he would use them.

“The world does understand that if we go that route, it’s close to Armageddon, and obviously we don’t want to do that. But again, when we look at Putin’s behavior, when we think about what he’s doing in Ukraine, we really don’t know whether he will or will not use them, so we do have to consider that Mr Putin will use nuclear weapons because until he does, one could argue that the threat from Russia is nothing more than theoretical.

“Putin knows this well and it should be one serious consideration for us, and for the western world, when we try to answer that big question,” concluded Nynka.