The word “vitrified” is generally used to describe the state in which a nuclear explosion leaves matter behind. But to observe how, this week, the Poles and the Americans failed to deliver to the Ukrainians about thirty Mig-29 planes which could have changed the balance of forces and put the Russians on the defensive at the dawn of their assault on Kiev, we can think that the vitrification has already taken place. In the dictionary of synonyms, we find “vitrified” and “intimidated” side by side.
The bully is, of course, Vladimir Putin. By allowing the nuclear threat to hover, as he did from the first days of the conflict, he succeeded in dissuading Westerners from taking the only steps that would prevent the slow and bloody seizure of Ukraine: reinforcements already mentioned, the interdiction of airspace by NATO aircraft or even the shelling of the Russian invasion forces by conventional weapons.
NATO countries prefer to absorb up to five million refugees, observe the illegal use by the Russians of cluster bombs, the untreaty bombing of hospitals and civilian buildings, rather than play Russian nuclear roulette.
It would be irresponsible to assert that the risk of the use of nuclear weapons by Putin does not exist. But wishing for zero risk would lead not only to the dismal failure of the Mig-29 affair, but to any move that might arouse Putin’s ire. Yet every day we deliver state-of-the-art anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to the Ukrainians. However, the US Congress has just voted for 6.5 billion dollars to deploy troops in allied regions and provide military equipment to Putin’s enemies. Yet we have collectively declared war on the Russian economy.
The dictator could have chosen any of these actions as a pretext to rain down his radiation. He did not do it. Among experts on these issues, there is a cynical expression: the nuclear posturing. It is the expression, by a head of state, of a nuclear threat for the purpose of pure intimidation. Nikita Khrushchev, at the turn of the 1960s, was the champion. Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War, had let it be known that he might drop the A-bomb or the H-bomb on the North. The North Korean tyrant gesticulates at regular intervals.
Then there are the times when we thought more seriously that the ultimate weapon was about to come out of silos, submarines or hangars. During the Korean War in 1950, the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the border war between the Soviet Union and China in 1969, the Vietnam War at the turn of the 1970s, the 1999 war between India and Pakistan.
During the 77 years that separate us from the only use of the atomic weapon in history, by the Americans in Japan, in 1945, nothing has happened. Not because the rulers believed that any use of a nuclear weapon would lead to the annihilation of the planet. They have long possessed tactical, short-range nuclear weapons that are not of an apocalypse-inducing nature. These weapons have been the subject of thousands of discussions about their use, but have never been employed.
Cumulatively, the restraint of the leaders of three quarters of a century — elected officials and dictators, coolheads and hotheads — fuels what specialists call the nuclear taboo. The terrifying responsibility to break this taboo in the face of history increases with each generation of leaders practicing atomic abstinence. To hear the opponents of a more direct NATO intervention in Ukraine, Putin would be willing to break the taboo. It would thus have to break with Russian nuclear doctrine, which established that this step would only be taken in the event of an attack on Russian territory itself or in response to an imminent enemy nuclear attack. None of this is on the horizon.
But let’s roll the scenarios. Suppose Putin wants to react atomically to the presence of NATO planes that have come to reinforce the Ukrainian positions. The specialist Michel Fortmann, of the University of Montreal, evokes the principle of escalation to de-escalate. It is when a belligerent makes a dramatic gesture in the hope of calming the adversary. In interview at Homework, Fortmann hypothesizes the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against a place from which NATO troops would come, for example a command center located in Poland. The damage would be real, but less heavy than the destruction of a city like Kiev.
Moscow-based defense expert Pavel Felgenhauer told the BBC that “one option would be to detonate a nuclear bomb somewhere over the North Sea, between the UK and Denmark, and see what’s going to happen “.
The main thing, if you go there, is the risk of escalation. However, there is no scenario where the West would respond to a tactical or sea-launched nuclear weapon with a nuclear response of any kind. The response would come with increased shelling of Russian positions, on Ukrainian terrain, with conventional weapons, perhaps supplemented by an intensification of cyber warfare, where nothing has yet been done to bring Russian infrastructure offline. .
Putin would therefore be the only one to break the taboo. What would he do next? Going further in nuclear power would suppose that the dictator has lost his mind, which his recent Western interlocutors deny. It inhabits its own logic, they report, but remains rational. Gustav Gressel, specialist at the European Council on International Relations, sums up New Yorker Putin’s posture as follows: “He has no more cards available in his game than to play with the Europeans’ fear of a nuclear war. But it’s a game, nothing more. For now, at this game, he wins. The West is vitrified. The Ukrainians are sacrificed.
jflisee@ledevoir.com ; blog: jflisee.org