WHY DOES RUSSIA WANT TO CHANGE THE NUCLEAR DOCTRINE NOW?
Putin’s arms control point man, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, said on Sunday that the planned changes were “connected with the escalation course of our Western adversaries” in connection with the Ukraine conflict. He did not refer to specific events. Public discussion about the nuclear doctrine has been taking place for more than a year and intensified this year after French President Emmanuel Macron floated the possibility – dismissed by NATO alliance partners – that Western troops might be sent to fight in Ukraine.
Ultra-hawkish foreign policy expert Sergei Karaganov has said Russia should lower its threshold for using nuclear weapons in order to “contain, frighten and sober up our opponents”, and that countries providing direct military support to Ukraine could be targeted.
“Over 75 years of relative peace, people have forgotten the horrors of war and even stopped fearing nuclear weapons … That fear needs to be revived,” Karaganov wrote in June 2023.
He argued that Russia’s enemies needed to know that Moscow was prepared, if necessary, to deliver a pre-emptive, limited nuclear strike. If Russia used a nuclear weapon in Europe, Karaganov said, only a “madman” in the White House would respond with a nuclear or conventional attack on Russia because it would inevitably trigger a Russian nuclear strike on the US.
WHAT MIGHT ANY CHANGES MEAN IN PRACTICE?
In a televised discussion at the St Petersburg Economic Forum on Jun 7, Karaganov directly asked Putin if Russia should “hold a nuclear pistol to the temple” of the West over Ukraine. Putin said Russia had no need to use nuclear weapons to secure victory, but that the nuclear doctrine was a “living instrument” that could change.
Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian and Soviet arms control diplomat, said the aim would be to send a signal to the West: “Don’t forget about nuclear weapons. Be very, very careful.”
But Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, said Russia would not announce changes publicly of the kind proposed by Karaganov.
Overtly lowering Moscow’s nuclear threshold could severely antagonise countries that have avoided aligning themselves with the West against Russia: China, India, Brazil and others in the global south.
Instead, Russia might announce it had changed its policy but that the new doctrine would be kept secret – sending a signal to the West while also keeping it guessing.
In June, the head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee said Moscow might shorten the decision-making time for using nuclear weapons if it perceived that threats were growing.
Source: CNA
