The Russian Invasion of Ukraine & Putin's Nuclear Threat
SPEAKERS
Jim du Bois, Mark Bell
Jim du Bois 00:00
Dialogue Minnesota. Conversations about the issues that matter to you. I'm Jim du Bois. The invasion of Ukraine is being met with widespread international condemnation and the imposition of unprecedented economic sanctions against Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the specter of a nuclear response against countries that might provide military assistance to Ukraine. This week on Dialogue Minnesota, University of Minnesota Associate Professor of Political Science Mark Bell, who is an expert on foreign policy and nuclear weapons, joins us to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Professor Bell, welcome back to Dialogue Minnesota.
Mark Bell 00:42
Okay, it's good to be here.
Jim du Bois 00:43
As Russian forces advanced into Ukraine this past week, President Vladimir Putin put Russia's nuclear forces on a high state of alert. What exactly does this mean? And how serious is the threat that Russia could use nuclear force?
Mark Bell 01:00
There's a fair amount of ambiguity about exactly what it means in terms of sort of what it means operationally. I think we can assume that it involves somewhat higher levels of readiness for Russian nuclear weapons to be launched quickly if given the order to do so. It might mean some additional nuclear submarines being put out to sea or staying out to sea longer. It may mean additional checks being conducted on missiles before they would be launched, and so on. I think we don't know exactly what kind of combination of different things have actually been sort of authorized. I think what's clearer is what it means politically. I think what Putin is trying to signal is to the United States and NATO more broadly, to stay out of this conflict, to stay out of the war in Ukraine, and that any direct involvement, and remember, this was, you know, where he made this comment and put these forces on alert, this was sort of in a period when some in the United States and elsewhere in Western Europe, were talking in terms of potential no-fly zone, and so on. I think what this signal was, was basically to say, stay out, don't get involved in this. And if you do get involved, you'll be risking significant escalation, potentially up in, up to the nuclear level.
Jim du Bois 02:19
Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other nuclear power. Can you walk us through exactly what their nuclear capabilities are and how they compare to the US and other countries that possess nuclear weapons?
Mark Bell 02:31
Yeah, I mean, Russia has a, has a lot of nuclear weapons, as you say, slightly more than than the United States. But I wouldn't put too much weight on that slight difference. Both the United States and Russia have have more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other as functioning societies several times over. And so, you know, in an all-out nuclear war, there would not be much left standing in either the United States or Russia. And that's sort of the, the nature of the nuclear balance and the nature of what these weapons can do.
Jim du Bois 03:01
If the Russians were to use nuclear weapons, where does the greatest threat lie? Are we talking about Russia targeting sites, potentially in Ukraine? Or is there a danger to other European countries or even to the United States?
Mark Bell 03:15
I think the the purpose of Russia's nuclear weapons, you know, at least to the extent we understand it, is less about, you know, the threat of sort of a, a bolt out of the blue attack against Paris, or London or New York or Washington DC. You know, that would be an obviously suicidal move for Putin to take. And, you know, whatever else we think about Putin and his personality and what drives him, I think it's pretty clear, he's not suicidal. That said, you know, there are potentially sort of uses of nuclear weapons that might appear more attractive, you know, in the same way that the United States used nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try to bring Japan to its knees, right, you could imagine at least sort of, in theory, Russia using nuclear weapons against a sort of Ukrainian city or is it or in the Ukrainian countryside as a demonstration of its will, to try and sort of bring the Ukrainian population to its knees right to force a surrender. I think that's, that's unlikely, but not not impossible. And then the other thing you could imagine is, if US involvement or NATO involvement does seem to be becoming more likely, and Putin wants to signal, you know, his resolve, and that this is unacceptable, and to try and stop that from happening any further, you could also imagine sort of demonstrations of nuclear weapons, nuclear tests being conducted additional sort of alerting signals, again, to try and signal kind of the seriousness with which he, he takes this. You know, in the same way, that, you know, the United States conducted various sort of nuclear signaling efforts during the Cuban Missile Crisis, right, to try and communicate to the Soviet Union, you know, we really care about this issue, you need to back down. You can imagine Putin trying to do somewhat similar things. And there would be various ways that he might be able to do that.
Jim du Bois 05:06
So far, most NATO countries have condemned Russia's attack on Ukraine, but they have not opted to send troops or provide air support. While some NATO countries have sent weapons to Ukraine, most of the response has been in the form of sanctions. Can this hands-off response to Russia's war on Ukraine be attributed to Russia's nuclear capabilities? In other words, do you think the response would be different if the aggressor country had no nuclear weapons?
Mark Bell 05:36
Yeah, I think it can be partly attributed to that. If NATO were to intervene, or the United States were to intervene in a direct way, I think that would be an escalation of this conflict, essentially, to the level of World War Three and World War Three fought between countries with nuclear weapons has the, you know, it might not automatically escalate to nuclear use, but that would be a very significant possibility. I think it's also a reflection of the fact that, that Ukraine is not in NATO. You know, the United States has obligations, or has at least committed to obligations to defend allies within certain treaties, right? That's what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is. NATO is not part of that. And so, the United States simply does not have an obligation to Ukraine in the same way that it has an obligation to other countries to which it has extended those guarantees. And so, you know, some of the West's reticence to get involved is also partly due to that. It simply does not have the same level of obligation, and allowing a sort of violation of the territorial integrity of a country that is not a treaty member, does not send the same sort of signal about the United States' credibility, say, as it would as if the United States allowed Russia to do this to, to a NATO ally, for example.
Jim du Bois 06:50
As someone who studies nuclear weapons and proliferation, does this conflict appear likely to resurrect the Cold War era?
Mark Bell 06:59
I think it depends a little bit what you mean by the Cold War era. Certainly, I think it's likely to resurrect it in the sense that US-Russian relations are going to take another nosedive. I mean, they were pretty bad before; they’re going to be even worse in the aftermath of this. So, you know, to the extent that the Cold War was characterized by pretty hostile relationships between the United States and the Soviet Union, I think that kind of hostility between the United States and Russia is going to exist for the foreseeable future. Where I think this is different is that Russia is still a country a fraction, with a fraction of the power that the old Soviet Union had. You know, the Soviet Union had a huge army, was in control of most of eastern Europe, had a vastly more significant, you know, more potent economy than Russia has today. It's not to say Russia is not a, not a great power can, you know, does not have a lot of military capability. But Russia is not a sort of peer competitor of the United States in the way that the former Soviet Union was.
Jim du Bois 08:02
Since the Cuban Missile Crisis and up to former President Donald Trump's tweets regarding North Korea, nuclear threats periodically seem to flare up but eventually fizzle out. In the post-Cold War era, what do you think is kept countries with nuclear capabilities from using them, and how precarious is this situation been, despite an end to the Cold War?
Mark Bell 08:26
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in the, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, nuclear weapons, in a certain sense, dropped off the agenda somewhat. People sort of emerged from living under the sort of imminent fear of nuclear war that had, had kind of existed for long periods of the Cold War. And you entered this sort of period of where the United States was sort of by far the most powerful country in the world without any real peer competitors, right? The Soviet Union had disappeared, China's rise was at that point, still a long way off. And in that world, to the extent that nuclear weapons were relevant, they were primarily relevant for adversaries of the United States trying to stop the United States from invading them, right? And so, you know, for North Korea, nuclear weapons were still very relevant because they worried about the United States potentially invading them. For Iraq or Iran, potentially nuclear weapons were potentially attractive. Why? As a way to make potentially the United States think twice about invading them. So nuclear weapons were, were still relevant in various aspects of international politics, but they weren't sort of occupying the minds of sort of average Americans in the in the way that they were during the Cold War. But what you've seen over time is that you know, U.S. power has somewhat declined. Chinese power, somewhat risen. Russian power has, has recovered somewhat from the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in that world of kind of great powers interacting with each other and interacting with each other in increasingly sort of hostile ways, I think nuclear weapons are sort of inevitably kind of going to become or are becoming again a more prominent feature of international politics. In terms of what's restraining their use, you know, in the relationships between these great powers, we hope that sort of mutual deterrence is sufficiently strong, right? These countries have sufficient capabilities to be able to do to each other unacceptable damage. And you hope that that results in those countries sort of being somewhat cautious in the interactions they take with each other. And I think that's what you're seeing today in terms of both, you know, what the United States and NATO, you know, an explicitly nuclear alliance NATO, are doing with, with Russia today, right? They're keeping a certain amount of distance; they’re not sort of accepting what Russia is doing that they're doing all sorts of things to punish Russia. But they're being very clear that they are not going to directly get involved militarily. And I think that's the, that's the sensible thing to do.
Jim du Bois 10:58
During his presidency, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, which was first signed by former US President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Last February, President Biden extended the new START, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which aims to reduce the US and Russian nuclear arsenals. During this current conflict, what role do these treaties, whether the ones that we are still a party to or the ones that we've dropped out of, come into play?
Mark Bell 11:37
I mean, in a somewhat limited way. I mean, I think, you know, one of the, in some sense one of the more useful features of some of these treaties is that they provide kind of an institutional venue to facilitate cooperation, even in periods when there are significantly, you know, very hostile relationships between these countries, right? So, you know, I think, to the extent that it would be preferable for the United States and Russia to have, at this point in time in higher points of tension, as many sort of avenues for communication and as much transparency about what each other, of what both countries are doing with respect to their own nuclear forces, the better, because we know that absent those kind of institutional venues and those avenues of communication, you can very easily sort of spiral into conflicts unintentionally. We saw that in, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in which various kind of essentially mistakes or misinterpreted events during the crisis could easily have led to nuclear war, despite the fact that both leaders wanted to avoid that. So, I think these kinds of arms control agreements, you know, when you get into a crisis, you know, it's less about, you know, the effects they have on the precise number of nuclear weapons that each country has. But it's more about the kind of the institutional avenues and the, and the professional kind of contacts between senior-level policymakers in both countries. And that's sort of the way in which they're potentially more useful during these times of crisis.
Jim du Bois 13:10
During the Cold War, we heard a lot about the so-called hotline between Washington and Moscow, where presumably, the US president could almost instantaneously communicate with the Soviet president if there were some issue that posed the threat, perhaps of a nuclear exchange. Do we have any kind of mechanism like that in place today?
Mark Bell 13:32
Yeah, I believe that the hotline still exists. And I mean, and this is sort of one example of what I'm talking about, right, that this was a, you know, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the two leaders were sort of communicating in these, through these kind of complicated back channels. It took quite a long period of time to like, just, just for the logistical things like translating the communications that came from, from Khrushchev. And this was a real problem during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it made a peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis much harder. And so, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this, this sort of institutional setup was, was put in place to allow very high level, reasonably swift communication between the political leaders of both countries. As far as I know that still, that's that is still in operation. And it's good that it is.
Jim du Bois 14:18
Obviously, there are other countries that the US is watching closely with nuclear capability. One in particular, of course, would be North Korea. We know there were some exchanges between former President Trump and the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. What do you think countries and leaders like Kim or President Xi in China may be looking for as they watch how this unfolds, this tension between NATO and the Russians? Are they watching this carefully? And if so, could it potentially inform their future actions, thinking in terms of China, particularly with regard to their potential designs on Taiwan?
Mark Bell 15:01
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people have sort of made this, made this comparison. And certainly, at a sort of superficial level, there certainly are some, some similarities, right? Taiwan also has a somewhat ambiguous alliance relationship with the United States in the same way that Ukraine does. And therefore, you know, people have sort of said, well, maybe China will be kind of taking the lesson from this, that the United States would stay out of a fight with Taiwan if China attempted this. And I think that's one possible lesson. To me, the more likely lesson is that China or indeed North Korea would be observing the, the degree of isolation, and the degree of Western unanimity, and the degree of economic damage that is going to happen to Russia, and think that this is not something they want to attempt. So for me, the more likely lesson is actually the opposite one, that actually this makes an attack on Taiwan, say or an attack on South Korea, somewhat less likely, but we'll see. I mean, you know, I think we're, we're seeing that leaders who are sort of surrounded by yes men who, you know, can take very dangerous and very escalatory actions, even when it doesn't seem to necessarily be in their, their country's interests, at least from sort of our perspective looking, looking from the outside. And so, you know, while it's not impossible that they might be drawing that lesson, I'm inclined to think that the opposite lesson is actually the more likely one.
Jim du Bois 16:24
We know that the invasion of Ukraine is not going as the Russians would have hoped. There is much greater resistance than they anticipated. There are issues with their own supply lines, getting adequate food to the soldiers, fuel for vehicles, vehicles getting stuck in the mud, almost reminiscent of the, the Nazi invasion of Russia, back during World War Two, when the weather conditions bogged the Nazis down to the advantage of the Russians. Given the fact that this is not going the way that Putin envisioned, does this have the potential to isolate him? Clearly, we know that the public opinion in Russia, we've seen video of surprisingly large demonstrations, although the numbers have gone down since the authorities have cracked down on these demonstrations, anti-war demonstrations. And even you wonder under his, his, with his own oligarchs in Russia, some of them have expressed concerns about the direction this has taken, is there a possibility that Putin will find himself not only isolated from the international community but even isolated from other Russians and perhaps people in his own government?
Mark Bell 17:35
I think that's, that's definitely a possibility. And to the extent that it is a possibility, these sort of dynamics can shift very quickly in authoritarian regimes. And so, you know, I mean, people are sort of talking, you know, about, you know, well, maybe this is sort of the end of Vladimir Putin. And I guess that's a possibility. And if it were to happen, it might happen quite quickly. I would just sort of add two kind of notes of caution to that. One is that we're still in the very early stages of this war. And certainly, it is true that it has not gone, we assume, in the way that Putin would have wanted and had, had anticipated it would go. But there is still a lot of time left in the course of this war. Russia has an enormous amount of military capability that it can still bring to bear on this situation. And so I don't think, you know, I mean, I understand that there's sort of a fair amount of optimism about Ukraine situation, given how the extent to which their their military forces are sort of outperforming expectations. But Russia is still a very powerful country and can send an awful lot of soldiers to die if need be, in order to take Ukraine if they, if they choose to. Second, you know, to the extent that we worry about sort of nuclear use, or these sort of additional escalations, in some ways, the most dangerous scenario would be if Putin feels that the only way he can survive this, and I mean, survive in sort of a political sense, or maybe even a literal sense, right? Authoritarians often don't get, you know, cushy retirements and, you know, nice pensions. Alright, so if he feels that his own sort of personal survival is kind of on the line, those are exactly the circumstances in which you might expect him to become more prone to escalation, more willing to take, you know, highly risky, highly dangerous steps. And that might be in terms of, you know, greater human rights abuses, more indiscriminate uses of violence within Ukraine. It might be in terms of nuclear, sort of additional nuclear demonstrations, additional signaling, or even, or even nuclear use. And so, you know, while I get that there's sort of a certain amount of, a certain extent to which people are sort of relishing Putin's sort of demise or the possibility of that, you know, that that also comes with a certain amount of danger attached to it.
Jim du Bois 19:56
We've heard numerous comparisons to what's happening currently in Ukraine with really what led up to the start of World War Two. The designs that Hitler had, for example, on creating a greater Germany, as he called it, bringing back territories into Germany where there were large percentages of people who spoke German, who had some sort of German ancestry. We're hearing Putin saying some of the same things, although he is claiming that actually Naziism exists now in Ukraine, and that's one of the purported reasons why they're going into topple that regime. Do you think there are parallels to say 1938, 1939? And what can we learn from history? Maybe what should we be considering, especially the West, as they take a look at the designs that Putin may have on essentially resurrecting the former Soviet Union?
Mark Bell 20:50
I mean, I think there are, there are some parallels. I think there are some big differences as well. I mean, the the primary difference is I don't think there's much evidence that Putin has as expansionist aims as Hitler had. He may do, but I don't think there's evidence for that yet. So that's one thing we should, and if that's the case, we would just expect that Putin's goals would sort of necessarily be more limited. It's not to say that they're not significant. It's not to say they're not, you know, unacceptable. But I would be quite surprised if Putin had the same level of territorial ambition that, that characterized Hitler. Secondly, the big difference is we live in a nuclear world. And that makes even the most aggressive dictator or the most aggressive country, it sort of forces them to think twice, I think, about any sort of, you know, effort at kind of conquering NATO allies, regardless of as I said, before, you know, what you think about Putin. I mean, I don't think there's much evidence that he's suicidal, and for him to invade a NATO ally would be taking a huge gamble with his own survival. You know, it's not to say he won't do it. But that would be a vast increase in the sort of risk he's chosen to take on compared to what he's currently taking on. I think it's unlikely. You know, full disclosure, I thought that him doing what he's currently doing was also unlikely. So, you know, so maybe I should reevaluate that. But, you know, to really take on NATO directly, and the risk of nuclear escalation, that that would involve, I think, would be a huge escalatory step. There's no indication that he, yet that he's interested in taking that sort of step.
Jim du Bois 22:34
There has been some speculation that while Russia may indeed conquer Ukraine that the resistance movement in Ukraine would continue well beyond that. We know that citizens are making Molotov cocktails, they're arming themselves, there seems to be a pretty large degree of partisans who are taking up arms to try and combat the incoming Russians, even if they're not members of the military, per se. Insurgencies over the last 60, 70 years have generally not fared well for powers with conventional military forces, the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan being a couple of prime examples of that. Is there a chance that essentially Putin could win the battle but lose the war if an insurgency continues, and Russia gets bogged down in Ukraine for a war that seems to be endless?
Mark Bell 23:28
Yeah, I think that's, that's very plausible, you know, in the same way, that, as you say, right, that happened returned to the United States in Vietnam, happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, it happened more recently to the United States in Afghanistan and the United States in Iraq. Yeah, it's hard, you know, in an age of nationalism, clearly, the Ukrainians today think of themselves as a nation. And with every day that passes, they think of themselves as a nation to a greater extent, right? I mean, Putin is actually creating, in some ways, the sort of independent and nationalist myths and ideologies that make up the sort of, you know, nations' understandings of themselves by the actions that he's taken, right? He's sort of reinforcing Ukrainian nationalism. And so in a world in which that is the case, and a world in which external powers are able to supply those insurgencies with, you know, significant forces, yeah, I think it's going to be very difficult for Russia to sort of effectively subdue a country as large and populous as Ukraine. Ukraine may be able to stop Russia from sort of winning the peace in a sense, but Ukrainians will pay the price if they do that, right? I mean, this is not an easy sort of out. This would be a long, bloody insurgency that would be characterized probably by very high levels of violence, high levels of violations of human rights, and all sorts of kind of nasty tactics, and violent, bloodthirsty tactics that, that countries tend to use when they're fighting counter-insurgencies. So, you know, yeah, I think that might well happen. It's, it's not something we should relish. And if it does happen, you know, Ukraine would, would suffer tremendously. And Ukrainians would suffer tremendously in that event.
Jim du Bois 25:14
The Doomsday Clock has measured the likelihood of the human-made global nuclear catastrophe since 1947. Do you think this latest conflict has moved us closer to midnight on that clock?
Mark Bell 25:28
I mean, they you know, that the Doomsday Clock is not, the methodology that goes into the creation of that particular time is not, I would say, the most rigorous, but it gives sort of a, sort of a dramatic sense of where we are. Yeah, I mean, there's no question that this is a dangerous period. And the possibility of, of nuclear escalation, is certainly higher than it was, you know, before Russia undertook these operations, I still think we're in a, you know, we're generally less likely to see nuclear war breaking out than we were at certain periods of the Cold War. So the level of danger, I think, is not, is not unprecedented, but it's certainly, it's certainly high. With nuclear weapons, we care a lot about sort of the small probability of things happening, right? I mean, you know, I don't think we're at a place where the probability of nuclear war is anything close to, you know, 50% or maybe, you know, or even 10% or 1%. But, you know, when you're dealing with events that could potentially have serious consequences for, you know, the future of civilization, we care very much even about small increases in in risk.
Jim du Bois 26:36
Mark Bell is an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Professor Bell. Thanks so much for joining us on Dialogue Minnesota.
Mark Bell 26:44
Thank you.