What are the chances of an exchange of ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons with Russia?

What are the chances of an exchange of ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons with Russia?
We have arrived at the precise moment that Republicans warned about four years ago, back when the debate on Capitol Hill and in national security circles was over the wisdom of fielding a new lower-yield nuclear weapon that could be fired from a submarine.

The United States had (and continues to have) low-yield nukes that can be dropped by bombers and fighter jets. But the impetus for the submarine-based option came in response to the disturbing intelligence about Moscow’s new nuclear doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate.” It's a scary scenario in which Russia would engage in a strategy of nuclear chicken to intimidate an adversary into backing down.

In 2018, then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis revamped the Pentagon’s nuclear deterrence strategy. The new stance called for the warheads on some of the Cold War-era Trident missiles on America’s ballistic missile submarines to be modified: removing the powerful fusion bomb, while leaving behind the smaller fission trigger.

The result would convert the massive thermonuclear warhead into a smaller atomic explosive — a low-yield weapon about one-third as powerful as the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II.

“Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression,” read the Nuclear Posture Review of then-President Donald Trump's administration. “It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely.”

Over vigorous objections from Democrats, the Republican-controlled Congress approved the plan, and now many, if not all, of America’s ballistic missile submarines carry one or two low-yield weapons in their missile tubes.

This brings us to the current dilemma of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.

In thinly veiled rhetoric, Putin is threatening to protect Russian territory, which he falsely claims includes four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed after fraudulent referendums, with “all weapon systems available,” while insisting he’s not bluffing.

At the same time, while President Joe Biden now has a credible low-yield option in his arsenal, the commander in chief seems reluctant to consider its use or even threaten it.

Conventional wisdom in Washington is that even if Putin were to pull the nuclear trigger, Biden is not likely to respond in kind, the reason being that for all their fearsome power, nuclear weapons are not very practical in the current scenario.

“They are really more symbols than weapons,” argues Ward Wilson, the executive director of RealistRevolt, a group dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons.

“You don’t want to use nuclear weapons near your adversary’s front lines, because the size of a nuclear explosion will put your own troops on the front line at risk,” Wilson writes. “You don’t want to use nuclear weapons against a target farther behind the lines, because nuclear weapons can deposit lethal radiation up to 25 miles away and spread dangerous fallout hundreds or even thousands of miles away.”

Let’s say Putin ordered the dropping of the smallest possible low-yield bomb (a one-kiloton “mini-nuke” equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT) on a Ukrainian military target, such as an air base or troop concentration.

(Russia is known to have almost 2,000 “low-yield” weapons, which are not regulated by treaty and are believed to range from 1 to 10 kilotons, while “high-yield” nuclear warheads in U.S. and Russian arsenals range from 100 to 1,000 kilotons.)

Even the smallest 1-kiloton blast would destroy all buildings and kill almost everyone for at least a half-mile radius while leaving a larger area uninhabitable for an indefinite period of time because of radiation contamination.

Most U.S. military experts, including retired Gen. David Petraeus, believe Biden would likely retaliate with a massive conventional attack combined with an effort to rally world support to isolate Russia completely.

“We would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” Petraeus said on ABC’s This Week, while stressing he had no inside knowledge of the actual options briefed to the president.

Other experts argue that a low-yield response by the U.S. should not be ruled out, if for no other reason than to keep Putin guessing.

“What you're trying to do is control the escalation, so if they hit you, you are going to have to respond — and you want to respond in such a way that prevents their further response,” argued Joe Cirincione, an arms control advocate who says a case could be made for a low-yield counterstrike by the U.S. if, for example, a Ukrainian or European city was hit, resulting in many civilian casualties.

“If you respond too weakly, well, have you really deterred them from responding? Or have you encouraged them?” Cirincione said, making the caveat that any nuclear response would have to be limited and carefully calibrated.

“You make it very specific,” he said, such as, for example, targeting the actual air base in Russia from which the strike originated. “So you're not targeting Putin. You're not targeting Moscow. You’re going after the people who launched a strike. It’s a very specific escalation.”

Cirincione, like many experts, doesn’t actually think Putin is suicidal enough to risk using a nuclear weapon against a country on his border that he wants to rule someday, but no one can afford to dismiss his threats out of hand.

“We take those very seriously. We have to,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, on Fox. “It's irresponsible rhetoric coming from a leader of the modern nuclear power, but that doesn't mean that we don't have to look at it and make sure that we're ready. And we are.”

If Putin is deterred, we may never know if it’s because of the threat of a possible U.S. nuclear response, the prospect of radiation blowing back into Russia as well as killing his own troops, the risk of drawing the U.S. and NATO into the war, or simply because he was bluffing all along.

Washington D.C. Foreign Policy National Security Vladimir Putin Russia Nuclear Weapons Ukraine War in Ukraine News NATO
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Original Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/policy/defense-ukraine-russia-nuclear-weapons-war-vladimir-putin