The Pentagon carefully analyzed Putin’s threat. The findings were presented in April 2018 in a report by security expert Kroenig, a former senior official of the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense. He considers the same classic scenario that Putin openly threatens the West.
So, faced with the conventional superiority of NATO's collective defense, Moscow deals a limited nuclear strike. NATO has four possible answers: surrender; continuation of the war exclusively by conventional means; retaliatory limited nuclear strike; full-scale nuclear war.
Kroenig recommends fixing option number 3 as the basis of NATO's official military doctrine. The logic of this choice is that a clearly formulated credible threat of a retaliatory nuclear strike should serve as a tool to deter Moscow from delivering the first nuclear strike and
consequently from aggression against the Baltic states.
These were the conceptual recommendations of 2018. And here is the material invoice of February 2020: a new type of nuclear weapon was created and began to be put into service in the USA,
These were the conceptual recommendations of 2018. And here is the material invoice of February 2020: a new type of nuclear weapon was created and began to be put into service in the USA,
low-power warheads W-76-2 (less than 10 kilotons) for Trident II missiles. The Pentagon has just confirmed the deployment of new nuclear warheads in submarines that go on patrol. The Pompeo Doctrine versus the Patrushev Doctrine.
A nuclear strategy is always a psychological duel. Putin is confident that the United States will quiver and retreat in a regional conflict in the Baltic states when he threatens them with tactical nuclear weapons or uses them.
On this and only on this certainty rests his entire plan of revenge for the defeat of the USSR in the Cold War. This is evidenced by all his politics, all his behavior, all the dramatic evidence of insiders who have rare access to the gaping heights of power.
Until recently, the same confidence was shared by a close circle of dollar billionaires, who constitute the political bureau of the Russian kleptocracy. And they were quite positive about Putin’s Victory Plan.
Indeed, life was a success, so why not yet become rulers of the world? The Pompeo Doctrine and the deployment of new low-power nuclear warheads leave no doubt, however, that the United States will certainly respond if the Russians actually use tactical nuclear weapons.
The United States now has a wider choice of response to the Kremlin’s nuclear escalation than just surrender or mutually assured destruction. This psychological mechanism is called nuclear deterrence.
Nuclear weapons (including the new American warheads W-76-2) do not exist to use them, but to kindly convince an opponent to refrain from using them.
Putin and Patrushev were absolutely convinced themselves and convinced the entire ruling elite that they had a unique opportunity to violate this principle, turn world history with a throw of dice and take revenge for the defeat of the USSR.
The chance to humiliate and trample the West in one clash of wills, showing his confusion, indecision and helplessness, despite all his colossal economic and serious military superiority, promised dizzying geopolitical dividends, but the West had the last regiment in reserve,
the American “deep state”.
The strategic situation in the Russia-USA pair has changed dramatically. The political will of one of the parties changed, which recognized the existential threat and articulated its answer very clearly (conceptually and then in physical reality).
The strategic situation in the Russia-USA pair has changed dramatically. The political will of one of the parties changed, which recognized the existential threat and articulated its answer very clearly (conceptually and then in physical reality).
As Song Tzu taught, victory without drawing a sword. And, judging by the unclear noise that has been heard in recent weeks in the Kremlin, the Supreme Ruler and his entourage apparently realized that they had lost.
