Scott Ritter: Russia Throws Down the Nuclear Gauntlet

In an appearance at the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club on October 5, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had successfully tested the Burevestnik “nuclear-powered global-range cruise missile."

This effectively brought to fruition a journey he had announced back in a speech delivered on March 1, 2018 when he unveiled a series of new Russian strategic weapons designed as a response to America’s continued nullification of arms control agreements regarding missile defense.

In his 2008 address, Putin outlined the efforts undertaken by Russia over the years to get the US to scale back missile defense programs Russia viewed as representing an existential threat to its survival. “You didn’t listen to our country then,” Putin concluded. “Listen to us now.”

Chief among Russia’s concerns was that continued US pursuit of missile defense capabilities, when coupled with an American nuclear posture that envisioned the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear war, could create the conditions in which US nuclear war planners could believe that an American first strike designed to neutralize Russia’s strategic nuclear capability, when combined with a missile defense shield the US believed could shoot down most, if not all, of any Russian missiles that might survive such an attack, might actually be viable.

In the audience at the Valdai Discussion Club was Sergei Karaganov, a well-known Russian political scientist who, in an article titled “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” published on June 13, 2023, in the journal Russia in Global Affairs, articulated in favor of Russia moving away from a nuclear posture based upon assured nuclear retaliation to one that favored pre-emption. “We will have to make nuclear deterrence a convincing argument again,” Karaganov wrote, “by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons set unacceptably high, and by rapidly but prudently moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder.”

According to Karaganov, “If we correctly build a strategy of intimidation and deterrence and even use of nuclear weapons, the risk of a ‘retaliatory’ nuclear or any other strike on our territory can be reduced to an absolute minimum. Only a madman,” Karaganov argued, “who, above all, hates America, will have the guts to strike back in ‘defense’ of Europeans, thus putting his own country at risk and sacrificing conditional Boston for conditional Poznan.”

If such a madman did, in fact exist, then, Karaganov noted, “we will have to hit a bunch of targets in a number of countries in order to bring those who have lost their mind to reason. Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God’s weapon, thus dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this, not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilization will cease to exist.”

President Putin, using the prerogative that is accrued through his position, called on Karaganov to ask a question. This was no accident, given the outcry that had followed the publication of Karaganov’s article, which led to much speculation that Putin was considering adopting a nuclear posture along the lines proposed by Karaganov. The Russan academic did not disappoint, asking the Russian President whether it was not time for Russia to change its approach to nuclear arms and restore its deterrent strength in the eyes of Western elites who repeat endlessly that Russia is weak.

It was a trap. “I have read your article,” Putin responded, before laying out a detailed answer that made it clear to all who listened that the Russian president did not agree with Karaganov’s thesis. “From the moment the launch of missiles is detected,” Putin said, “no matter where it comes from—from any point of the world ocean or from any territory—such a number, so many hundreds of our missiles appear in the air in a retaliatory strike that there is no chance of survival there will be no single enemy left, and in several directions at once.” Putin urged America to understand that any threats against Russia are “absolutely unacceptable for any potential aggressor.”

In short, President Putin was reinvigorating the Cold War-era nuclear posture of mutually assured destruction as Russia’s go-to nuclear doctrine.

Moreover, Putin noted, Russia would launch a nuclear attack against any country or countries that threaten its continued existence as a sovereign state, regardless of whether the threat posed is by nuclear arms or conventional arms. Since there is no such existential threat to Russia today, the Russian President concluded, there is no reason to threaten the use of nuclear arms.

However, Putin said, there was one aspect of Russian nuclear policy that could, and indeed should, be changed—Russia’s ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The United States, Putin noted, had signed the treaty, but had never ratified it. Given Russia’s modernization of its nuclear arsenal, which included, in addition to the Burevestnik cruise missile, the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, the Poseidon nuclear torpedo, and hypersonic delivery vehicles, many in the Russian military were demanding that Russia resume nuclear testing to be sure that the new cutting-edge strategic weapons systems that constitute the heart of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces perform as intended.

Putin observed that this very same question had been discussed in the United States by its military officials, who were, de jure, unrestrained by a treaty that had not been ratified, and as such never entered into force.

Thus, the big news out of the Valdai Discussion Club isn’t a new Russian missile or nuclear posture. The big news is that the Russian president will be sending a bill to the Russian Duma that would revoke Russia’s ratification of the test ban treaty. Russia won’t be the first to resume testing of nuclear weapons. But if the United States were to go down that path, then Russia would respond immediately. The important point here is that any US testing would be done in support of either legacy nuclear weapons that are in dire need of being replaced, or future nuclear weapons which have yet to be developed and fielded.

Russia, as Putin underscored, has already modernized its nuclear force. If the United States were to resume a nuclear arms race by returning to nuclear testing, Russia would begin such a race with an insurmountable lead in nuclear delivery systems.

Game, set, match—Russia.

It’s high time that some sanity be interjected into the nuclear policies of the United States where the fundamentals of nuclear arms control and disarmament are re-embraced. By pushing back against Sergei Karaganov’s proposal, Putin has proven to Russia and the entire world the rationality that governs his consideration of the life-and-death realities associated with nuclear weapons.

America needs a leader capable of backing up against those who continue to articulate a nuclear posture born from the fantasy of continued American exceptionalism. But the only thing exceptional about such thinking is the depravity of moral consciousness that attends to any notion of legitimizing preemptive nuclear war.