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November 23, 2024 - 4:15pm
Major escalation is occurring between Ukraine, its Nato backers, and Russia. In response to the US decision to allow Ukraine to use US Army Tactical Missile Systems — ATACMS — to strike deep into Russian territory, Moscow has fired what it says is a new ballistic missile onto Dnipro in Ukraine. While the Russian missile carried conventional warheads, it is capable of delivering a nuclear payload, sending an ominous signal to Ukraine and the West.
Just as alarmingly, in a move undertaken in response to Washington’s consideration of these deeper strikes, Vladimir Putin this week lowered Russia’s threshold for nuclear weapons use in its official doctrine. The change says that Russia might use nuclear weapons to respond to a conventional attack on its territory by a nation that is supported by a nuclear power. Moscow is, in other words, warning that it might resort to nuclear war over Washington letting Ukraine fire US missiles at Russia.
Foreign policy elites in Washington and Europe largely dismiss escalation danger in Ukraine. They argue that crossing various Russian red lines — by sending tanks, F-16s, allowing the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to hit Russian territory, and tolerating Ukraine’s assassinations and drone attacks in Russia — has already called Putin’s bluff, and we need not worry about escalation, even the nuclear sort.
Coming from Ukraine, this cavalier attitude is more understandable. Facing an existential danger, heightened risk of escalation may seem relatively less significant. But the Western nations helping Ukraine have very different interests to those of Kyiv. Blowing off escalation risks, especially with the ATACMS decision, is strategic malpractice. There are several reasons why.
First, it is reckless to assume that Russia’s failure to respond to past violations with nuclear weapons in Ukraine or by inflicting serious pain directly on the United States means it is simply bluffing. It is, in fact, wrong to say Russia has not already responded to enforce its stated red lines. It responded to past actions by increasing the intensity of the war inside Ukraine, especially by air strikes against civilians and Ukraine’s key infrastructure offensives. Russia has also likely escalated horizontally by widening the scope of conflict, including by helping Yemen’s Houthis target Western ships, acts of sabotage in Europe, and most recently potentially cutting fiberoptic telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea.
Second, the threat of nuclear war should be given a wide berth. It is simple expected utility reasoning to note that even if there is a low probability chance of an extremely destructive outcome, you should still take great care to avoid it. In any case, US intelligence apparently finds the odds of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine to be quite significant. According to David Ignatius in the Washington Post, intelligence officials believed there was a 50-50 chance Russia would use nuclear weapons in October 2022 to stop Ukraine’s advances in Kherson and Kharkiv. CIA Director William Burns publicly confirmed that in the autumn of 2022, the risk of nuclear use was considered very real. US intelligence agencies similarly warned that long-range strikes into Russia could prompt a dangerous counter-escalation from Moscow.
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SubscribeBroadly I agree, but unfortunately, this article again hides the true nature of what is going on. Russia did not react because Ukraine has struck deep into Russia, nor because Ukraine used US-supplied weapons. Ukraine has done both before, without Russian counters, and Ukraine does not need and has not sought US or UK “permission” to do so.
Targeting ATACMS and Storm Shadows must be done by US and UK personnel respectively; what Russia reacted to is the fact that the ATACMS and Storm Shadow attacks were perpetrated by, and under the direct orders and responsibility of, the US and the UK.
By all standards of the law of war, the US, the UK, the EU, NATO, and sundry others have long crossed the threshold from neutral to belligerent, but Russia chose not make an issue of it. On the issue of US and UK personnel firing ATACMS and Storm Shadows at Russia, Russia drew a red line.
US and UK have recklessly crossed this red line. Even in the hottest phases of the Cold War, both sides took care never to actually shoot at each other’s territory.
Russia has shown remarkable maturity and restraint, in face of mind-boggling irresponsibility and recklessness of Western actors. It is high time the immature apprentice sorcerers populating our ministries and general staffs are cleared out and replaced with adults.
The only reason the Russians haven’t reacted to this US madness is they are waiting to see what Trump might do
Where exactly is your evidence that ATACMS and Storm Shadows must be operated/guided by US and UK personnel ? And – should you be able to produce any – how is that situation any different whether Storm Shadows and ATCMS are used in Donetsk oblast or Russia ? Remembering of course that Russia passed a law claiming that Donetsk and 3 other Ukrainians oblasts are an integral part of Russia.
It is absurd for you, Russia or anyone else to claim that a line has been crossed here while Russia maintains is claim that 4 Urkainian oblasts are part of Russia.
I won’t bother commenting on the emotional claptrap of your later claims. Other than to disagree that Russia has “shown remarkable maturity and restraint” in invading Ukraine. LOL.
The Ukrainians have been asking the Germans and other NATO members for long range missiles for years, a while back 2 German generals were recorded saying their missiles could only be fired by the Germany Army, so if they gave the missile to the Ukrainians, Germany would then be at war with Russia. its probably similar with other US/NATO missiles
Its amazing to me how popular nuclear war is with some people, you would think living in Washington or London would make them a little more cautious
Sounds like “I’d lend you my car, but only I know how to drive it”.
You’re throwing in a red herring. Even if I were wrong in my assertion, the fact remains that this is the argument Russia has made, and it is undisputed by the US (of the UK).
For an article purporting to want to explain things to readers, it is malpractice and exceedingly bad journalism to not address this issue.
And: What if I am right – how does that affect your view?
What about Russia, the USA and UK guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty (as per existing borders) under the Budapest Memorandum, in return for Ukraine giving up its inherited USSR nuclear capability? I understand the argument about not intentionally provoking Russia, but you seem to think Putin, Lavrov and co. are in the right.
The US at least never understood the Budapest Memorandum as a treaty that created binding obligations on the US, and the US has very clearly said so.
Also, Ukraine never had a nuclear capability to give up. The US was anyway not happy about the break-up of the Soviet Union and the proliferation of new countries, all of them governed by ex-Communist Party hacks and at best authoritarian, if not family fiefdoms. It is completely fanciful to think the US would have gone along with a nuclear-armed Ukraine. “Giving up” nuclear weapons was a quid-pro-quo for independence, not for a US guarantee.
As for being “in the right”, my concern is that the West’s reckless escalations are risking nuclear war. It’d be scant consolation that we’d have been in the right to start a nuclear war.
It is not a question of being in the right. We can argue for ever on whether the Russian invasion was ‘unprovoked’. The point is we are where we are now, on the brink of nuclear armageddon which nobody will be able to control. Is that really worth the risk to prove we were right?
Of all the combatants in the Ukraine War, Putin is the most laid-back. The DNC wants regime change in Russia. Beware of what you wish for.
Worth remembering that in 1994 Ukraine transferred all its nuclear capability (a third of the USSR total) to Russia in return for security assurances from Russia, USA, UK.
Yes, and they threatened with nuclear re-armament on the Munich Security Conference 2022 by quitting the Budapest Memorandum, only a week before Russia sent their troops into Ukraine. Might well have been the final factor that tipped the scales for invasion.
You have your head up your posterior. It will be ineffective for your brain if Putin fires an intermediate ballistic missile at your ass.
Russia has shown remarkable maturity and restraint
You can’t be serious. Think about that statement then think about again.
Russia has shown remarkable maturity and restraint. Really? Have they dialed back the commission of war crimes?
I fully agree with this analysis. The timing of the US agreement for use of its ATACMS weapons (with likely US personnel involved in their deployment) couldn’t be more egregious. Some have even argued the move may help Trump once he assumes office, but by far the most sensible thing to have done by the outgoing Biden team (i can’t believe it was his decision) was nothing: just leave well alone, and avoid unnecessary consequences.
I commented the other day that the decision was, in fact, un-American. I guess some didn’t like that, but i stand by it. This article sets out precisely why it’ll go down as the act of bitter election losers.
All of the pro-Ukrainian optimisms of the early days of this conflict have dwindled. The brave and resourceful Ukrainian soldiers that unexpectedly demolished the columns of Russian tanks headed for Kiev are now exhausted veterans for whom Ukraine cannot muster sufficient replacements. Remember the confident assertions by Western leaders that sanctions would cripple Russia? Not so much after all. Or how about the notion that Ukraine should, would or could win back the Donbas? Who expects that now? And we see the creeping return of Ukraine’s reputation for corruption, an ominous attribute for a country receiving hundreds of billions in Western aid.
Putin made his opposition to NATO enlargement crystal clear throughout the Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump I, and Biden administrations. No one took him seriously; assurances to him were not honored; and, after years of assuming he was all talk, he rumbled into Ukraine. We are now staking the safety of the world on the notion that Putin is a bluffer. Big wager.
The corollary detriment to the West in this conflict is in how it has enhanced Putin’s offensive capabilities. The feckless command chain of the Russian military has been forced to adapt and is, as a direct result of this conflict, a more functional adversary. Its generals now have real world experience in near-peer warfare that no Russian had faced since WW II. Those once bumbling officers are now combat veterans that have likely learned from their mistakes. They have taken advantage of a live-fire seminar in Western weaponry, which they now better understand and can better defend against; and also have been gifted the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of their own weapons systems in real combat against a peer adversary. Its armament factories are running full speed replacing antiquated equipment with new. They have created supply chains that did not previously exist to augment their own arms industry and circumvent sanctions. The war has also had the net effect of purging Russia of internal dissent via mass emigration of anti-Putin Russians and active suppression by the Russian State. Consequently, there will exist in any post-Putin Russia a much smaller contingent of alternative political persuasion upon which to base a more responsible democratic regime and, conversely, a greater likelihood that he will be succeeded by another despot.
Although it sucks for Ukraine, the collective West might have been better off letting Putin continue in his fantasy of February 2022: that his rusted tanks and idiot generals–who thought drones were something in bee hives–were actually a capable force. They weren’t then. They are now.
Of course you’re right. And if Putin is a fool then the West has proven to be no better.
And don’t forget this debacle has pushed the largest country, nuclear power and resource rich country into an alliance with the most populous and most industrial (high and low tech) country. Bloody madness.
And you think there wasn’t already an axis of combined interest between them?
There are so many naive comments here it does make one wonder about FBS Bots.
What happens now is that Ukraine fights as long a it can, and kills as many Russian soldiers as it can. The death of every Russian soldier makes the world a better place. The sanctions stay on Russia in perpetuity, and the West doesn’t trade with Russia in perpetuity. Europe massively rearms, on the basis that it will have to fight Russia sometime in the next century (and probably several times).
What an understated way of pointing out the degenerate rationalizations that have infected the West.
What “degenerate rationalisations”? Reagan said Russia was the “Evil Empire”. He was right. It always has been, and probably always will be.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s what happens when you have a President with Alzheimer’s in charge.
The question is always: how does this end? Starmer has no response, none at all, to this question, and meanwhile the cemeteries fill up and the grandmothers weep for the loss of their grandsons.
How would Starmer know how it ends? Does he read tarot cards?
This is the best article I’ve read on this topic. Ukraine’s only hope of getting through this war without its cities being flattened WWII-style has always been to avoid precisely this kind of escalation. Starmer and the neo-cons
Pretty well every prediction made by the ‘experts’ about the course of the war have been wrong. Neither side can win: it must be obvious to Putin that western Ukrainians will never again accept rule from Moscow just as it must be obvious to Zelensky that the Russians will never give up Crimea. Time to negotiate.
The Russians are winning
They don’t plan to take 100% of Ukraine
They plan, buddy, and they can do that thanks to Biden/Obama decisions
I think you forget they went straight for Kyiv at the start of the invasion. Last time looked at a map they are some way from that. It’s all about saving face and despite immense damage to Ukraine Putin has created a Nation, clobbered his own economy, weakened the desire of Europeans to take his oil, decimated his own Black sea fleet, weakened himself with Xi and Modi and killed over hundred thousand of his own. He’s probably guaranteed Ukraine has some western security guarantees and that it becomes a S Korea Mk2 in due course. V well done.
And your answer early on to a spate of Buchu type massacres? At which point were you negotiating and trusting Putin? Do you trust him?
Of course I don’t trust Putin. I don’t trust neo-cons either. If, as it seems, you want the war to continue, then you must describe what victory looks like. It’s a long way from the Donbas to Vladivostok.
Yes, it is alarming.
Once more, the circle should be emphasised that if the West is mobilising a Ukrainian war effort to destabilise or weaken an enemy regime in Russia, then they are doing so because Ukraine is a non-aligned country outside of their European defence structure.
As Russia knows this all too well, the most pertinent point made in this worthwhile piece is that Ukraine alone risks being destroyed by a significant nuclear attack.
Yes, the West is mobilising a Ukrainian war effort to destabilise or weaken an enemy regime in Russia. What is your point? Russia is unarguably an “enemy regime”. It always has been (a couple of short periods of uneasy alliance notwithstanding).
Sorry but exactly the sort of response Putin would hope for. And no doubt these Authors said the same thing at every other stage of Putin’s sabre rattling. Do they really think the Ukrainians surprised by the response to the use of longer range munition. They’ll have long computed the likely reaction. The munitions help stop Putin taking further significant territory in advance of a coming Armistice.
What we’ll see repeatedly now until 20th Jan, and for a few weeks after no doubt, is a testing by Putin of what exactly is the Trump position. Is he the apologist and will roll over for Putin, or is he much more Hawkish and additionally not want to be seen as the Putin poodle many have accused him of being? The Capitol Hill and Pentagon consensus was Putin cannot be allowed to win even if a Ukrainian outright victory unrealistic and one suspects that is where Trump is too. Whilst there is doubt Putin will keep testing the resolve.
Trump will grasp soon enough, if not already, allowing Putin a clear victory in Ukraine strengthens Xi and Khamenai too because US Allies doubts will grow and resolve elsewhere weaken. The outcome needed is an armistice, with the current front lines close to that now, perhaps with some swops, and crucially military guarantees from the West. Zelensky knows this but cannot be certain what guarantees Trump is prepared to support, but Trump will need them to be solid and real or he’ll undermine the support he does need with China, Iran and others.
Fortunately Putin knows precisely what the poodle in Downing Street will do in any given set of circumstances. Starmer is turning out to be as useless at foreign policy as he is domestically. Just what we didn’t need, another f*ing Blair.
Say what you like about Blair, but at least he had the decency to go to war in Iraq.
Seeing “Blair” associated with “decency” caused me to choke. Trigger warnings please!
‘Do they really think the Ukrainians surprised by the response to the use of longer range munition’
The Ukrainians weren’t surprised that Russia used a totally new weapon system that the West did not know existed?
You think the West didn’t know and would tell you all what it knows. We well knew. These things can’t be tested and developed with us knowing. The satellite surveillance technology way beyond what is publicly declared.
The Russians didn’t use a totally new weapons system. They used an IRBM with a MIRV payload, which was upgraded but not really new. This was not the hypersonic missile system Russia has been boasting that it has. The only unusual thing about it was that it was used in combat — no such missile has ever been used in combat ever before as they are designed to deliver only nuclear warheads. When the Russians used this one none of the warheads apparently had even conventional explosives.
What percentage of Unherd subscribers are Russian bots?
27.3%
Just thought I would check some facts. Russia launched an aggressive invasion against Ukraine. The rest follows. The old German rulebook; invade weaker powers only for defensive reasons, naturally. Putin is a fascist, simple.
No one disputes Putin is a fascist. What they question is the meddling of the US and NATO in these affairs and the consequences,
If you don’t stand up to Putin, he’ll keep doing it (just like his spiritual grandfather Hitler did).
Precisely. Russia saw that at some point it would have to stand up to NATO, or they’d just keep on doing it … as NATO has done persistently since 1991, and in flagrant violation of international promises.
Russia finally had to face the fact that continually appeasing NATO was a hiding to nothing. Russia drew a red line, and when NATO blithely crossed it, consequences followed.
Your history lessons do not go unheeded.
Desperate marketing from US think tank lobbying for disengement from Ukraine.
In fact, as smarter observers have noted, there is no difference in the new rules of engagement for ATACMs missiles “inside Russia”. Since Russia claims four Ukrainian provinces as “part of Russia” and the ATACMS missiles were already used there. The Russian claims are self-contradictory and absurd. We know it. They know it too.
Ukraine is an independent state fighting a foreign invasion. Not a “US proxy” as the article falsely claims.
“So far the results have been awful”. Really ? After only a few days these clowns feel themselves able to judge with that degree of certainty ? And with no evidence given of these supposedly “awful” results.
There is plenty of evidence that attacks on critical military targets further inside Russia will reduce the Russian threat to Ukraine.
UnHerd really shouldn’t be publishing such drivel.
In 2014 after a violent illegal coup fomented and paid for by the US, Ukraine as ‘an independent state’ started massacring it’s own citizens (albeit Russian speaking citizens). Around 14,000 had been blown to smithereens by random shelling of urban areas before Russia intervened.
Peter B must think that boundaries drawn up by Soviet dictators are more important than the wishes of the Russophile population of the Donbass, Zaparozia and Kherson.
To be consistent Peter B should support national boundaries drawn up by one Austrian corporal in the mid 20th century as inviolate, unalterable without any regard to the wishes of the peoples inhabiting said territories.
Mind you the British were famous for doing exactly that in the latter half of the 19th century and the first 25 years of the 20th century.
As you say – we in the West have been good at solving problems by generously giving our friends land that didn’t belong to us, never mind the views of the people who lived there.
Glad of the balance. Thanks!
You make some good points that counter the article’s arguments, but there’s nothing drivelous about it. There is indeed a difference between striking occupied territory and striking targets inside Russia proper.
Politically we are in an important transition in the United States. This is no time to provoke Russia with stunts like this. What until the new president has the power in his hands to execute strategy.