In the latest worrisome saber-rattling sparked by the US-led proxy war in Ukraine, Russia announced it’s revising its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons, saying a change has been necessitated by “escalation” initiated by the country’s Western adversaries.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS that the update was precipitated by an analysis of “recent conflicts” including “Western adversaries’ escalation course” in the Ukraine war. The revision is “in the advanced stage,” but Ryabkov said it was too early to project when it would be completed, given “we are talking about the most important aspect of our national security.” While there’s been no indication of the specifics, any revision seems certain to lower the threshold for nuclear weapon use — and increase the potential for a global conflagration.
Per TASS, under current doctrine set forth in 2020, Russia may use nuclear weapons when:
- An enemy uses a weapon of mass destruction against Russia or its allies
- Russia has confirmation of a nuclear launch against it or its allies
- An enemy attacks “facilities necessary for a response” to a nuclear attack
- Conventional warfare threatens the existence of the Russian state.
That last condition of the current doctrine is particularly noteworthy in light of the Ukraine war. As foreign policy realist and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer recently told UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers,
“There is all sorts of talk in the West about defeating Russia inside Ukraine, wrecking its economy, causing regime change and maybe even breaking up Russia the way the Soviet Union was broken up. This is a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons. If its survival is threatened, it’s likely to use them. So we have this perverse paradox here that most people don’t seem to realize…which is that the more successful NATO and Ukraine are against Russia, the more likely it is that the Russians will use nuclear weapons.”
