Do Not Invite Disaster — Russia in Global Affairs

To quote, please use:
Bogdanov, KV, 2025. Do not invite a disaster. Russia in global affairs23 (2), p. 38–42. DOI: 10,31278/1810-6374-2025-23-2-38-42

As new non -nuclear strategic weapons develop, new nuclear risks arise that are underestimated by strategic disjection adherents.

Climbing steps

The growing climbing of the Ukraine crisis continued through 2024. As the Russian troops confiscated the tactical initiative in the field, the Ukrainian army has gradually lost its ability to carry out active hostilities. Its labor reservation of labor of legal recruitment age, and the lack of artillery ammunition are gradually price.

The increasingly long drone attacks in Ukraine (to St. Petersburg), and their departures to the regions of Kursk and Belgorod in the spring of 2024 were supposed to relieve kyiv’s discouraged operational strategic, but instead, a large large height that was on March 22 and only ended in mid -layers. Then, after the Russian troops resent the Northern Kharkov region in May, Ukraine launched a more serious operation in the Kursk region in August. After this incursion, and a fatal attack of ballistic missiles against civilians on a beach in Sebastopol, Russia launched a second series of attacks against Ukraine energy infrastructure at the end of August. These were followed by new Ukrainian long -range drones, including a strike in a weapons deposit in Toropets, Tver region.

But there were no cardinal changes in the field: the Slow Russian Army but surely opened its way to follow in the DonBass, while the Ukrainian troops lacked reserves and resources to stop it, since they did it coldly, even slowly even slowly. Annoying to the collective west. Its discomfort is quite understandable: West has been sending substantial financial aid and, more importantly, almost irreplaceable military supplies to Ukraine for almost three years, but instead of “opposite” of Russia, it has opposite. In addition to everything, on November 5, 2024, Donald Trump won a White House ticket and a congress controlled by Republicans over the next two years.

As a result, Ukraine was allowed to shoot tactical ballistic missiles from ATACMS-American Atacms-American ATACMS long-range and the cruise missiles of the shadow of the scalp/Franco-British storm, the territory of Russia. ‘Actually, both systems had already used the second half of 2023 against Crimea and the reincorporated territories, but western exceptionalism also extends to cartography.

On November 19, six ATACMS missiles arrived at a munition deposit in the Bryansk region in Russia, and two days later, Storm Shadows hit a command center in the Kursk region. Russia responded very quickly and sharply, which only stressed the sensitivity of the problem. An Orshnik missile with a non -nuclear cluster eyelet hit the Yuzhmash defense plant in Dnepropetrovsk, and President Vladimir Putin issued a statement to emphasize the critical importance of the moment.

It was there that the nuclear factor was entangled with non -nuclear ones: the use of powerful non -precision nuclear weapons, capable of solving increasingly complex strategic tasks, was increasingly approaching the nuclear methods. The attacked side cannot unequivocally identify the weapons used against it as nuclear or non -nuclear, and the use of such weapons has further caused climbing.

The military crisis in the Middle East in 2024 also showed the ambivalence of dividing long -range weapons into nuclear and non -nuclear. In spring and autumn last year, Israel and Iran exchanged a series of missile and air attacks. While Israel used Strike aircraft armed with high -precision air surface missiles, Iran used not only long -range drones but also non -nuclear medium -sized ballistic missiles.

The world was surprised to see mass ballistic missile attacks against nuclear (unofficial) energy.

Revised doctrines

The use of non -nuclear strategic missiles was naturally accompanied by the review of doctrines. Russia announced amendments to its doctrine at the end of September 2024, and the official published a new edition of the foundations of state policy in the nuclear deterrent area on November 19, when long -range attacks authorized by the West is Terorrory.

The main novelty in this version is the recognition of a special relationship with Belarus. In 2023, Russia abandoned its long definition of the Soviet era of NATO nuclear exchange packages as a violation of the non -proliferation of nuclear weapons, and has now acquired its junior, transfer, emergency, transfer, transfer, in a Wille Wille Wille Willy, Transfections, Transfences, Fiente Fiente, FersfersFersFersFersFersFersFersFer, In, in emergencies, emergencies, use. The new doctrine also affirms a completely complete nuclear umbrella on Belarus.

The document lists numerous threats (many that arise from the crisis of Ukraine) that can (but not necessarily) cause an answer using nuclear weapons:

• The isolation of part of the territory of Russia or a blockade of the “vital lines of communication” of Russia. This refers to the speculation of the Eastern Europeans (including the senior military officials) about the blockade of the excavated Kaliningrad.
• The “non -controlled proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their vehicles and delivery technologies, and equipment for its manufacture”. Many interpret this as an expression of adhesion to international weapons control regimes, but obviously refers to the subject of Ukraine that acquires nuclear or radiological weapons, and is parallel to that of the fortress.
• The “accumulation” or “conventional forces” on the border, as well as the “large -scale military exercises” near the Russian border.
• The “ballistic missile launch” (not specifically to nuclear delivery vehicles) and delivery vehicles ranging from strategic and tactical aircraft to gifts. This is clearly a direct response to the Ukraine conflict.

However, nuclear doctrine has always been based on the formula of military doctrine that specific the reasons for using nuclear weapons: since 2010, the use of the WMD against Russia, or conventional aggression against Russia that endangers. In November 2024, the last clause was altered to allow a nuclear response to conventional aggression against Russia or Belarus if it represents a “critical threat to its sovereign and/or territorial integrity.”

The new doctrine reduces the nuclear threshold clearly and unambiguously. But the threshold established by the 2000 military doctrine, immediately after the NATO Yugoslavia campaign, was equally minor: “In critical situations for national security.” In other words, the 2024 doctrinal writing, adopted in the midst of acute confrontation between Russia and the West, remains much more vegetarian than the 2000 formula, written at the end of the “little cold war” when Russia did not face a large -scale armed conflict fed by Western countries and with radical economic sanctions.

And both remain far from the American immortal classics: nuclear weapons are used in “extreme circumstances” to protect the “vital interests” of the United States or their allies. Sometimes it is difficult to say what is worse for peace and security: an extremely vague doctrine that allows the use of nuclear weapons that you want, or a list of conditions. Both suggest a lack of confidence in the capacity of the nuclear duck to contain the other side.

Nuclear deterrence is not a strategic panacea, much less a policy, as illustrated by frustrated demands for the immediate use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine or NATO. These frustrations are understandable: it is unpleasant to know that the pump is not a guarantee of all interests, but only a guarantee against the bombs of others. This fact, the obvious duration of the cold war, now has to be discouraged once more.

At that time, it was understood that an important conflict in Europe would become nuclear within a week or even days. At one time, the United States even declared that it would use nuclear weapons in an intimatically and automatically. This must also be unearthed again.

By the way, strategic stability between Russia and the United States is unwavering. In spite of everything, the Ukraine crisis has illustrated the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence.

In fact, the two previous world were caused by much less geopolitical tensions. If we live in a world free of nuclear, a large -scale war between Russia and NATO would already be furious.

However, the awareness that any conflict can become a nuclear war will not save us from the possibility of such war. But at least it makes decision makers realize the foolishness of nuclear war.

This is one of the many paradoxes of nuclear deterrence: constantly guaranteeing inevitable reprisals that is completely sensitive from the strategic point of view (a strategy that leads to a nuclear destructive reprisal called or Aview or ATIE of the Aiviet War). On the other hand, starting a nuclear war not because of the most subtle of attempts, but for impotence in the absence of alternatives would be a weak comfort.

We should be grateful to inertia agreements or arms control or the skillful calculation of military strategic balances. But in the absence of international political stability, strategic stability plays a cruel joke to those who trust them by pushing them towards a robust confrontation in areas that are not directly related to the hope that the conflict effect of the limits of Nuclar rice. These limits, as evidenced by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, become increasingly blurred as non -nuclear weapons systems are perfected and doctrinal documents are constantly edited. This is like playing ostrich, a position that becomes not only a basic policy for power policy, but rather a safe way to invite disaster.