Much attention has recently been paid to an article by Max Tegmark, in which he gives the odds of nuclear armageddon arising from the Russia-Ukraine war as one in six. It’s a highly reductive analysis (of the sort one might expect from someone with a mathematical background), which might explain both its apparent appeal and the trenchant criticism it has received.
Tegmark doesn’t document his chain of reasoning in any serious way – he just pulls probabilities out of thin air – so while it’s difficult to infer his prior assumptions, many who consider the risk of nuclear war to be high seem to make a few false assumptions:
- That the use by Putin of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) would turn around the situation on the battlefield, absent a military response from the West.
- That the non-military consequences of the use of TNW wouldn’t be that dangerous for Putin.
- That increased support for Ukraine by the West would increase the risk of full-scale nuclear war, and decreased support would decrease the risk.
I’ll address each of these in turn.
Tactical nukes don’t smell like victory
There’s no clear way to define a TNW, but roughly speaking it’s a relatively short range, low-yield weapon – anything up to 30 kilotons, or perhaps as high as 100 kilotons. Regardless of the precise definition, everyone agrees that Russia has the world’s largest and most varied arsenal of TNW, with many Russian systems (such as the Iskander surface-to-surface missile) having been designed for both conventional and nuclear use. It’s debatable whether their doctrine on the use of TNW would really allow them to be deployed in the event of, say, the Ukrainian Army entering Crimea (would that amount to a threat to the “very existence of the state”?), or whether the Russian state apparatus – those who would have to sign off on it – would back Putin if he decided to use them. It’s also debatable whether individual officers would obey a launch order, knowing that the retaliation from the West could be personally fatal; but nevertheless, they do have the weaponry.
As discussed recently by Justin Bronk and also by William Alberque there are, broadly speaking, three possible scenarios for the use of TNW.
First, a “demonstrative” test in an unpopulated area (say, the Black Sea or the Novaya Zemlya Test Site). This would be tantamount to breaking the long-held “nuclear taboo” without any result except to strengthen Western support for Ukraine, and being extremely damaging for Russia and its interests around the world. This therefore seems very unlikely.
The next scenario would involve a strike against a Ukrainian population centre, which would definitely break the “nuclear taboo”. Again, the military value would likely be small, but the political fallout would be huge, not just from other countries but also from the Russian population – many of whom have relatives in Ukraine. Thus it would not only turn the world against Putin and the Russian political elite, it would make them vulnerable internally. The idea that such a strike would demoralise the Ukrainian military and population, rather than make them ever-more-implacably opposed to, and even more fiercely determined to defeat Russia, is at best questionable: the moral effect could, instead, be the complete collapse of the Russian will to fight. Again, this scenario is very unlikely.
This leaves the third scenario: battlefield use of TNW. The first problem here is that these weapons aren’t as devastating as people tend to think. For example, a simulation of a large (30kt) TNW airburst over Mariupol gives a result with significantly fewer casualties than what Russia “achieved” with conventional weaponry, and leaves the majority of buildings still standing. A simulated 10kt detonation wouldn’t really be life-threatening to humans much beyond a mile.
Such an attack wouldn’t necessarily confer any real military advantage unless there were large concentrations of Ukrainian forces in the blast/radiation zone – but this doesn’t match the Ukrainian disposition of forces. While Russia would have been able to destroy Azovstal and its defenders with a single TNW, other such concentrations of forces would be hard to find, let alone target in such a way that Russian forces wouldn’t also be in the danger zone (impossible on the front lines), meaning Russia would have to expend large numbers (dozens, or even hundreds) of nukes in order to destroy enough of the Ukrainian forces to achieve a strategic effect – and this would of course raise the risk of a Western military response very greatly.
But this brings us to the next problem, which is the effect on Russian forces. Regardless of what TNW could do to Ukrainian troops, there would also be the very considerable risk that Russian troops (already severely demoralised and prone to desertion) would be so stressed by witnessing the use of TNW that they might flee. They obviously don’t have hazmat suits and almost certainly no potassium iodide on hand, and while some of them may have been stupid enough to dig trenches near the Chernobyl NPP earlier in the war, I doubt they’re unaware of the possibility that deadly radioactive fallout could easily land on them. They might also believe that even being in sight of such a blast would make them vulnerable to radiation sickness or later cancers – and depending on the distance, that could well be true. It would take a brave officer to order an advance through an area recently hit by a nuclear bomb, with any assertions (however accurate they might be) that the post-blast risk would be minimal being scarcely credible.
But there’s another problem. As William Alberque notes:
Ukraine does not operate with a large enough concentration of forces to justify a 10–100 kiloton blast. Smaller nuclear weapons would be of even less use, as below 10 kilotons, their effects are overtaken by those of high-end precision mass-effect artillery, such as the Tornado-G and -S and the TOS-1M/1A and TOS-2, especially when using thermobaric warheads.
In short, not only could battlefield use of TNW in Ukraine be massively counter-productive for Russia, in the end it might only barely be more effective than conventional systems.
This is of course to assume Russian TNW systems actually exploded as intended, that the Ukrainian Army (with a roughly 50% kill rate) didn’t shoot down the missiles, and that they weren’t destroyed using HIMARS or other systems while being transported and prepared for use. Russia stores its nuclear warheads in a few well-known locations, and uses special troops and transport methods for nuclear warheads that would likely (though not definitely) be observed in advance. In addition, any build-up to the use of TNW would require Russia to ramp up its overall nuclear preparedness, which would be obvious to the West (and therefore Ukraine). Essentially, Ukraine would have advanced notice and could prepare accordingly.
Putin would also have to consider that the nuclear fallout could disperse over hundreds of miles and pose a serious risk to the civilian population not just in Ukraine, but also potentially in Russia. That’s unlikely to be popular. And the annihilation of significant parts of the territory that Russia seeks to conquer, while leaving behind a lot of irradiated material that could make certain areas uninhabitable (or at least agriculturally unproductive), would vitiate the purpose of the invasion to such a degree that Putin could hardly claim much of a victory.
Tactical nukes are no Wunderwaffe, and indeed Putin does seem to be aware that their value to him lies in having them, not using them – which is why he takes the greatest possible advantage by (implausibly) threatening their use every other week.
There would be a non-military response
There is of course the likelihood that Russian forces in Ukraine would be targeted and severely degraded by NATO following any use of TNW (thus losing Putin the war much more quickly), but less attention has been paid to the non-military ramifications of breaking the long-held “nuclear taboo”. This is presumably because the near-inevitable military response is far more exciting to consider, but what else might happen in the event that Russia used TNW in Ukraine?
One likely outcome is that Russia would find itself cut off not just by Western nations but also by China, India, Brazil, Hungary and other fence-sitters. In being cut off by China – on which it now depends very heavily – it could potentially lose not only a major hydrocarbon market but also the ability to import many goods, especially high-tech goods – without which it couldn’t rebuild its already heavily depleted military, not to mention the wider economy. And while this wouldn’t happen overnight, it could result in a total collapse of the Russian economy. The first against the wall would be Putin, but he might hope to survive as a puppet of Beijing – although that would depend on internal Russian politics, and partly on the Western non-military response. In short, walking away from Ukraine ought to be preferable to Putin than to lose Ukraine and his few remaining friends.
Breaking the nuclear taboo could also cost the support of usually-reliable countries like Iran and North Korea. Leaving aside the dubious fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons, Iran would have to consider that accepting the use of TNW could be to invite Israel to deploy them against Iranian nuclear facilities, some of which are buried deep underground to protect against conventional “bunker-buster” bombs; but in any event, it would greatly increase the odds of Israel launching strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities in the near term. Given this, it may not be an entirely unconnected fact that Iran has not accepted the results of the sham referenda in the occupied parts of Ukraine, which some consider might be a precursor to the use of TNW.
Even North Korea would likely have to condemn the use of TNW, not just due to pressure from Beijing, but also because it knows that a world in which nuclear weapons are actually used (rather than merely developed shoddily) would put itself at risk of a pre-emptive conventional or TNW strike from the US, which it most fears.
Further, there could be severe direct impacts on Russian elites resulting from the near-inevitable confiscation of all Russian-held assets in the West, and the possibility of serious divisions and political instability inside Russia that could be stoked by Western intelligence services, which (so far as is publicly known) have not attempted to meddle in post-Soviet Russian internal affairs. Besides information warfare and on-the-ground subversion of Russian politics, it’s even possible that more gung-ho outfits like the CIA might get into the already-popular Russian defenestration game.
In sum, Putin and his inner circle would have to consider that using TNW would be to paint a massive target on their own back, even in the absence of a Western military response.
“De-escalation” doesn’t mean weakness
As noted by Tegmark in response to some of his critics, the term “de-escalation” is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean appeasement, capitulation or even necessarily some form of compromise.
In a hostage situation where armed police are surrounding a building and a negotiator is called upon to persuade the hostage-taker to give himself up, the means of de-escalation is to persuade the hostage-taker – from a position of strength, and in a calm and reasonable manner – that any of his escalatory options, such as shooting at the police or killing the hostage, will leave him worse off in the end. In short, “we have a bigger stick”.
Such it is with Ukraine. Reducing support for Ukraine in the face of Putin’s nuclear blackmail would only be the “first sip of the bitterest cup”, condemning Ukrainians to slavery and emboldening Putin (and others) to repeat the trick, greatly increasing the chances of facing a nuclear conflict of some kind further down the road, and leaving all countries not under a “nuclear umbrella” even more vulnerable to exploitation by the mad and the bad. It would also greatly incentivise non-nuclear states to develop nuclear weapons, and greatly decrease the credibility of a number of security guarantees (particularly the U.S. nuclear umbrella), causing a seismic shift in international relations and creating a much more dangerous world for us and future generations.
The correct means of de-escalation in this current environment is to communicate to Putin (and his inner circle) that nothing – including the use of nuclear weapons of any sort – will help his cause. Given that he may not yet have realised that he will lose this war, the best means of communicating that fact would be to increase Ukraine’s fighting strength, since if this is a dangerous moment for the world then it’s because the support so far provided has not been of the overwhelming kind. Providing modern tanks, jets and longer-range missiles would be truly decisive – and obviously so to the Russian population. This is Putin’s off-ramp in the face of a restless populace: “Don’t blame me, it was NATO wot dunnit.”
And thus can we purchase peace in our time for Europe.
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“The fruits of abortion are nuclear war” (former Nobel peace prize winner Mother Teresa).
She may yet be right, whether in this war or the others that will undoubtedly occur in the future as the world gets to grips with the catastrophic consequences of the demographic crisis of an ageing population – and there is absolutely a demographic element to current world events. (And by the way the fearful mentality which made lockdown and net zero possible has likely arisen in good part as a result of the attacks on the family over a number of decades).
Of course, if you say that killing (unborn) children on an industrial scale might harm physical and mental health; that it will make economic and geopolitical catastrophe more likely, you’ll probably have your money frozen or something these days…
If these are not the end times, they’re certainly doing a jolly good impression of it.
Quite the tenuous link between the article and abortion there.🤔
Very tenuous indeed. I recall hearing a flavor of this argument before, claiming that as nations have fewer potential cannon fodder (for conventional wars) in the future (due to fewer babies born), they will be more likely to go nuclear instead. But that argument really misses the mark, as even conventional warfare is still far less dependent on cannon fodder thanks to today’s technology. And it doesn’t explain why lower birthrates would encourage warfare in the first place, except maybe an even more tenuous “OMG this is our last chance to have a rematch with our arch-enemies who defeated us last time, before we finally run out of troops for good!” or something.
Lot of mental gymnastics there….
There is no such thing as unborn children or killing them.
By definition everybody in the future is unborn. How do we kill children in 2021?
Face palm headdesk lol sigh rolleyes omg good grief.
The main reasons why Russia won’t use nuclear weapons are:
1) Russia is winning the special military operation in Ukraine. Do some research, please! Read the Saker, or Larry Johnson or Moon of Alabama.
https://sonar21.com/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
2) Russia has a constitutional governmental restriction on use of nuclear weapons; it is only allowed if Russia in its entirety, as a whole country is in danger.
Third link https://thesaker.is/
And a fourth, the excellent John Helmer:
http://johnhelmer.org/
Or Vanessa Beeley https://beeley.substack.com/
Seriously. Do some reading away from the MSM.
The country most likely to use nuclear weapons now or in the near future is the USA. And they’ll probably accuse Russia of having done it if they do so. 🙁
I fear you may well be right there.
Yes, I fear it too, because if any country is currently “desperate” or “losing” a war, it’s the USA.
At least Biden wouldn’t be the first American president to lose a war. That dubious honor goes to Nixon. But, as John Kerry famously said, “how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
Though to be fair, Woodrow Wilson was technically the first to lose a war: the Russian Civil War 1918-1920. Amercians forgot about that one, but the Russians apparently never forgot.
That’s the elephant in the room….
Any chance of turning up any evidence that Putin has even suggested pre-emptive use of tactical nuclear weapons.
It is grossly irresponsible for people to start talking up nuclear weapons use by Putin.
This!!! ^^^^^^^
The only people talking about it are the Americans, and the UK media, which is by far the worst for propaganda, by a country mile, of all the European media I read.
Only Elenskyy has actually gone on TV and asked for ‘preemptive strikes’…weird how that doesn’t get reported on!?
Sound bites are cropping up with increasing regularity on MSM sites inc GB news showing the normalising of possible Nuclear reactions by any of the protagonists ! The more it builds I get the feeling the yanks are gagging for it !!..
Yep…the USA have been trying for quite a while….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWHviwLMy8
Lindsey Graham & John McCain in Ukraine – Preparing for a proxy war with Russia (2016)
I imagine that the odds of ‘Russia’ using nuclear weapons in Ukraine for no apparent benefit is similar to the odds of ‘Russia’ blowing up Nordstream for no apparent benefit.
Ian Rons: the DS writer everybody laughs at.
I think you need to stop believing what comes out of Washington and the UK. Putin has never threatened the West nor Ukraine with nuclear weapons! Listen carefully to Putins speeches. BTW The only country to have used Nuclear weapons is America.!!
No. Rolling a 1 on a die has a chance of one in six. I can do that 20 times, right now – I shouldn’t need more than 120 rolls.
This prediction has no time-frame, therefore predicts nothing but hot-air.
You can’t multiply three arbitrary probabilities and then claim you’ve nailed the analysis.
There are many (potentially millions) of other factors in any calculation on this topic. Some of these have rather low probabilities, and the multiplication method starts to look silly the more factors you include.
And as we learned recently, starting variables are subject to arbitrary whims and models are not a good predictor unless those models can also predict the counter-examples (Sweden, Florida, …).
Honest attempts at creating models require feedback on errors to improve future guesses, but that requires an acknowledgement of error, which has been thin on the ground recently.
So the real probability is somewhere between 0 and 100 percent.
I’ll panic later.
An excellent article. Many thanks.
Latest news from the Nordstream ‘enquiry’……it happened in waters pretty much completely controlled by NATO or countries housing NATO troops..
Gazprom have not been allowed to investigate or visit the site…..I wonder why?
Sweden and Danish authorities cut off the area to all other shipping/countries during their investigation…..?
Latest news is that Sweden won’t share findings of the investigation into the explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines with Russian authorities or Gazprom, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Monday.
A Swedish crime scene investigation of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Europe has found evidence of detonations and prosecutors suspect sabotage.
Last week Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin sent a letter to the Swedish government demanding that Russian authorities and Gazprom would be allowed to be involved in the investigation, which Sweden denied.
On Monday Andersson said Sweden won’t even share the findings of the explosions that took place in the Swedish economic zone, with Russian authorities…..
Sorry, but if it looks like a set-up, smells like one, and obvious fairness has been ignored….Russia looks better than the West…..no wonder people are fed up of the massive propaganda….this sort of thing does the West no favours…in fact it makes them look not just petty but guilty. It just makes it look as though they need to ‘create a narrative’ before they say anything…..?
The Biden Crime Family is very worried that Vlad may vaporise its laundered money 🙈
Slava Ukraini slush-fund!
Lord help us.
These set of opinions appear to be quite common amongst the Economist/FT readers now.
The hubris of the West at every crisis knows no bounds.
Hamartia here we come…
A couple of days ago Lavrov said that Russia was still open to talks on Ukraine, if the US was serious…this was their reply, from US State Department, Ned Price….
”We see this as posturing, we do not see this as a constructive, legitimate offer to engage in diplomacy….” ??
Which I find inexcusable…..the USA is playing with millions of other people’s lives..
and millions of people know it…whatever the propaganda machine churns out…
Within America and Europe the public are very much at odds with the foreign policy…
every survey confirms that people want peace, and want a political solution to the conflict…not the war the politicians are pushing.
The latest EGF Public Survey in the USA showed that across both political parties When asked what is the most important goal the Biden administration should consider as it confronts Russia over its war in Ukraine, the most popular answer for Republican, Democratic, and Independent survey takers is avoiding a direct war between the US and Russia;
They should be listening…..
I find it exasperating, much as we all do no doubt, when we see people actually throwing out decades of common sense understanding from racism, to economic policies, to pandemic preparedness or lessons learned from Nuremberg, and now the very notion if M,A.D. seems to be called into question.
I am actually hearing that Russia can be pushed over any red lines because it is weak and that NATO can overwhelm its forces in direct conflict.
These people are completely deluded and, as you say, playing with millions of peoples lives.
I’d only say that it is Billions not millions.
And since the same types of people (although perhaps this author isn’t on this particular program) we’re willing to experiment on billions of peoples lives snd health with novel gene editing/manipulating injections, so it’s not new territory for these idiots.
..yes I agree, you would think that after two plus years of lies and propaganda people would question what they were being told about anything..but it seems not….
I’m probably preaching to the converted here but this New Atlas episode highlights the MSM propaganda beautifully, while also calling out the faux morality of caring about Ukrainian infrastructure while being happy about civilians being killed on the Kerch Bridge…these questionable moral equivalences, the lies and obfuscations are why, I believe, the West’s propaganda is failing big time….(and why 90% of the bots on-line HAVE to push the Ukrainian/West position…
it’s also an excellent round up of the real situation rather than the propagandised stuff that passes for news….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEg_xVJSO8c
Stop this nonsense please.
Using battlefield tactical nuclear weapons is not ‘nuclear war’, Using ICBMs carrying hugely powerful nukes to annihilate each other’s Countries is.
By what rationale is it to be supposed that if Russia did use theatre nukes, this would trigger a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, and on what legitimate grounds?
Currently the Russians are using ‘tactical’ non-nuclear missiles to hit energy infrastructure and other targets in Ukraine cities in retaliation for sabotage against its infrastructure. What would they need nukes for when they can achieve the same thing without poisoning the land which allegedly they want to conquer and add to the Empire of Putin?
Since the nitwits supporting Plucky™️ Ukraine believe in ‘Punch, don’t punch back’ doctrine, there are huge shrieks of indignation that Russia is striking back… and at (Gasp) civilian targets. That’s called ‘war’.
The greatest risk of nuclear war, to World peace and to the Human race is that demented, fool and his handlers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
As Sting famously sang, “I hope the Russians love their children too”.