Despite Putin’s bluster, the world is no closer to nuclear war

The way the West has jointly mobilised to impose comprehensive sanctions on Russia in response to its war on Ukraine is likely to have exceeded Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expectations.

Putin – perhaps to show that he is in charge of a major power or a leader who holds true to his words – has ordered Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces to be put on high alert, or “special mode” as he called it. That he has ordered the fortification of Russia’s 6,000-warhead arsenal is tantamount to a major step towards the launching of a global thermonuclear war.

Putin’s order, of course, has provided good fodder for the Western media. As nuclear weapons are frequently associated with world-ending catastrophe in popular thought, countless imaginative narratives have emerged in newspapers, on television and in other media around the world, instilling panic among citizens, as if nuclear war were at hand.

However, simply put, it won’t happen. Putin’s so-called threat is not “nuclear deterrence” or even “nuclear intimidation”. Rather, it is merely “nuclear propaganda”.

Nuclear deterrence occurs when the enormous power of nuclear weapons is used as a factor to prevent their use, for example, as a basis for bargaining. Leaders who have well-prepared strategies are less likely to want to intimidate others with their nuclear weapons arsenal.

Just like the story of the boy who cried wolf, too many false alarms will only breed disbelief. What then, if nuclear weapons were actually fired? In reality, there is no need for such intimidation if one really wishes to use nuclear weapons.

In any case, the regular and targeted signal monitoring among countries around the world would be enough to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, including their accidental launch. This has been the case since the beginning of the Cold War. Therefore, nuclear deterrence is only used occasionally as a strategic tool. Frequent nuclear threats only devalue, massively, the effect of this deterrence.

The problem is that even so, we still see ignorant state leaders wield what is known as nuclear intimidation. This is not the same as nuclear deterrence. Nuclear intimidation is a common practice of rogue states, used by their leaders as a tool to vent their emotions.

Yet these leaders know very well that either the nuclear weapons in their hands are insufficient to go up against their enemies’ weapons (or might even have been destroyed, as in the case of North Korea) or could result in their own annihilation, as in the case of Russia. This is known as the mutual assured destruction, or appropriately, MAD, doctrine.

The world is currently in a state of nuclear equilibrium. Among the many nuclear-armed countries, only the US and Russia possess sufficient numbers of nuclear weapons to cause the simultaneous and total destruction of both parties.

Other countries with nuclear weapons could, at most, cause partial destruction of an adversary, and the nation that initiated the first strike could very well be destroyed by other countries soon afterwards.

Rogue states that often threaten the use of nuclear weapons either have an insignificant nuclear arsenal or face obvious limits given the global nuclear equilibrium. The threat of nuclear war posed by these countries cannot therefore be classed as real nuclear deterrence but, rather, should be seen only as irrational intimidation.

As for Putin, putting Russian nuclear forces in “special mode” does not even count as nuclear intimidation, but is merely a kind of nuclear propaganda. This was a move made not so much for the world at large but for the Russian public.

Putin wants Russian citizens to see the power of their leader, in order to maintain his strongman image. So this is propaganda targeting Russians, something that Putin clearly felt he needed to do now.

In this regard, I have to admire Finland’s attitude towards the Russian threat. After Finland decided to send weapons to Ukraine, Russia issued a series of threats, warning its neighbour that it could face serious consequences if it were to join the Nato security alliance.

Putin has doomed Russia with a war that can’t be won

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin appears unfazed by these threats and the reactions of other Western leaders, including those of the United States and Britain, are likely to be similar. Putin might in fact be disappointed when he realises that his threats are no longer so terrifying.

That is not to say that nuclear threats do not exist. In nuclear weapons strategy, there is a fringe doctrine known as “escalate to de-escalate” or E2D. This doctrine says that if a more powerful weapon cannot be used, a less powerful one could be deployed instead. In the Russian scenario, this could mean Moscow was willing to engage in a limited nuclear war to end the conventional conflict.

Though this is just a fringe theory, no one can guarantee that the use of nuclear weapons would not intensify in an act of retaliation. For now, the world’s nuclear equilibrium is being maintained. Although nuclear weapons have gradually spread to dozens of countries across the world, the often-neglected nuclear equilibrium has been the same for decades.

However, we have been living under the nuclear threat for too long, and it is time to escape from this tyranny. Almost daily, we see doomsday scenarios in the media, with pundits constantly warning that we are heading for a nuclear apocalypse. This is not the kind of world we should live in.

Chen Gong is the founder of Anbound, an independent think tank, and author