Following up on the post below about Elon Musk’s ignorant attempts at international relations, here’s Joe Cirincione, someone who knows what he’s talking about:
I want to end the week with some of the analysis that @chrislhayes and I did on his show, @allinwithchris, this Friday night. I got quite a bit of positive feedback from people and suggestions that I write it up. So here we go.
We started with Pres. Biden’s comments and Chris cites my WashPost article. “What do you think, Joe, of the President saying that this is the most imminent threat of nuclear weapons deployment since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/26/putin-nuclear-threat-bluff-us-biden-response/
Me: President Biden is correct that we are closer to the intentional use of nuclear weapons now than we’ve been in the 60 years since those terrifying 13 days in October 1962. The President is absolutely correct in his assessment.
Chris: So one thing I’ve heard is this: Putin’s military has performed very poorly…As his forces lose ground, Putin is reaching for a nuclear threat as a means of getting people to come to the negotiating table to arrest those loses and basically get a settlement that lets him keep some of the territory he’s won before it gets lost. And, if you take his threat seriously, you’re playing into his hands of using this as a tool of coercion. What do you think about that argument?
Me: We do have to take his threat seriously. This is not a bluff. (1) He has the means to do this. He has over 6,000 nuclear weapons. We failed to eliminate nuclear weapons after the Cold War, so we left him with this arsenal…
(2) He has the method to use them. Russian doctrine explicitly calls for using nuclear weapons first in a conventional battle in order to turn the tide of war. (3) He’s got the motive. He’s not only losing the war in Ukraine terribly – the Russian Army looks very fragile – but now he’s opened up a second front in Russia and he’s losing that. In part, being attacked by his right-wing base, who are urging him to use nuclear weapons. So, means, method, motive. This is quite serious.
That doesn’t mean we give into it. That means we have to do what I think President Biden is doing: Building up a global response to try to deter Putin from going down this nuclear road.
Chris: Well, what does deterrence look like right now?
Me: It’s a combination of things. Most importantly demonstrating to Putin that this is not a winning move. This will not end the war. this will lose it for him.
So:
(1) He will be diplomatically isolated.
(2) He thinks economic sanctions are tough now? Wait until he is cut off from the international banking system and all energy supplies are banned from purchase from Russia. (3) There are military options, including conventional military strikes on the army in Ukraine…In an extreme case you could bring NATO directly into conventional warfare. (4) There are cyber options. I don’t want to get too over the top, but we could turn Moscow dark with cyber warfare. (5) There’s psychological warfare. You could be reaching out directly to Russian political and military leaders. Reminding them that we know where they live. That we can reach out and touch them. And that there is life after losing a war, if they break with Putin.
Chris: OK so you have just listed a bunch of deterrence that one could articulate, that are plausible, that are non-nuclear deterrence, right? So, just do a quick mutual assured destruction recap here…
Chris: The doctrine that comes out of the work on MAD, following Tom Schelling’s work, is: You fire nukes; we fire them all; the world gets obliterated; nuclear winter; bye-bye. That means that no one ever tries to use one. It seems to me that we’re in a different world now.
Me: That’s exactly right! The world you described is 60 years ago, October 1962. This is a different world where you’re tempted to use a nuclear weapon in a limited way. 1, 2, a half dozen, to try to stop the war in its tracks. You try to break the European support for Ukraine..
You try to play into so-called peace sentiments in the US and split American support for Ukraine. That’s what you’re trying to do if you’re Putin.
So, you’ve got to try to counter that in a way that doesn’t bring you – the US – to the brink of using a nuclear weapon. Here’s the other thing President Biden was correct about: There is no safe way to use a tactical nuclear weapon that doesn’t bring us down this road.
War games repeatedly show that when you start down this road there are major escalatory risks. That’s what Biden is trying to do: Deter Putin from doing it and prepare response should he do it.
Chris: That was very illuminating, if not slightly terrifying. And that’s our show!
BONUS: Here is a video of the last two minutes of his show with Chris on deterrence theory in the Cold War and me, with deterrence theory now.
Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) on October 10, 2022.
I know that Elon can get his good buddy Vlad on the horn whenever he wants, but that’s because he’s a useful idiot. Cirincione is not. Listen to Cirnicione.