Russia’s new nuclear normal Analysis by Foreign Affairs

The Foreign Affairs magazine has published an article analyzing how Russia has grown dangerously comfortable brandishing its nuclear arsenal. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

For decades, nuclear weapons have been central to Russian national security and to the population’s collective mentality. The country’s arsenal is the world’s largest, and it has long been the best-maintained part of the Russian armed forces. It is diverse, with thousands of large nuclear weapons designed to level cities and thousands of smaller tactical ones theoretically built for the battlefield.

The Kremlin proudly points to this stockpile as a source of national pride, including by marching ballistic missiles and flying nuclear bombers during its annual World War II victory parade. Russian nuclear orthodoxy—a political myth, which Russian President Vladimir Putin himself endorses, that nuclear weapons and traditional values are the two pillars of Russia’s statehood and the main guarantors of its physical and moral security—became a widespread public belief before the war.

When Russia carries out foreign operations, it conducts nuclear drills and issues threatening statements to curtail West’s responsiveness. The invasion of Ukraine was no exception; the “special military operation” had a nuclear component from the start. When Russia launched its attack, it did so shortly after testing its nuclear systems in the exercise. Putin made nuclear threats in his war speech on the morning of the invasion. A week into the war, Moscow announced that it was putting its nuclear forces “on a special mode of combat duty.” And in the months since, it has repeatedly threatened to use its weapons if the West crosses various redlines. Western policymakers have shrugged off the Kremlin’s threats as bluffs, but they have been deterred from intervening in certain ways and forms.

Russia’s approach to nuclear weapons has evolved since the invasion began—and not in comforting ways. The war further nuclearized the Russian establishment’s strategic thought and normalized nuclear weapons in the public’s consciousness. These mutually reinforcing trends have implications for Russia’s prospective behaviour. Evidence from primary sources indicate that over the last year and a half Russia’s military has doubled down on its conceptualization of deterrence strategy, and that it is starting to rely even more on the country’s nuclear arsenal in strategic planning.

Apparently, the Russian defence establishment is developing a new concept called “operation of the strategic deterrence forces.” It is considering setting up a new organization that can carry out the planning, execution, and evaluation of deterrence operations, and it may expand the number of coercive options on the escalation ladder for conventional contingencies.

Meanwhile, the Russian public appears to have become more comfortable with the idea of using atomic weapons. The scale and sources of the public erosion of the nuclear taboo are unclear. They may be a natural reflection of wartime radicalization and a general perception of the war in existential-messianic terms.

Alternatively, this nuclear normalization may have been authorized by the Kremlin as an attempt to enhance its sabre rattling and restore Moscow’s coercive reputation, especially as the Kremlin has grown increasingly distressed by the West’s tendency to dismiss its nuclear signalling.

But whatever its cause, this new nuclear normal may result in a vicious cycle. It could pave an easier path for the Russian supreme command to engage in more nuclear muscle flexing, and it could make the public tolerate, and perhaps even encourage, the Kremlin’s assertive nuclear gambits.

Doubling down

During the past year, Russian military and foreign affairs periodicals, conferences, and statements by the country’s defence intellectuals have indicated that two themes preoccupy the Russian nuclear establishment: adjusting the country’s deterrence posture to repulse perceived threats and restoring the deterrence creditability devaluaed by the war. The former topic is explicit; the latter is implicit but still easy to detect.

In a year, the Russian military has elevated the role of the nuclear arsenal and doubled down on its conceptualization of strategic deterrence—a Russian euphemism for nuclear and nonnuclear coercion. These themes are evident in an extraordinary splash of publications in Military Thought, the flagship journal of the Russian General Staff.

Over the last year, about a dozen authors in its pages, including the commander of the Strategic Nuclear Missile Forces, his deputies, and other senior officers, have examined the future of Russian deterrence and nuclear warfighting. In terms of the authorship, themes, numbers, and level of detail, this wave of articles is unprecedented. This burst of nuclear writing is at once a coercive disclosure to buy time for rebuilding Russia’s conventional might and a statement of intent that reflects how Moscow plans to allocate its resources and attention.

The articles show that the Russian nuclear establishment’s main concern is a US “prompt global strike” that decapitates the Russian military’s supreme command and nullifies its nuclear retaliation capacity. Russian sources assume that to achieve these aims, the United States will employ nonnuclear offensive and defensive means, as Washington seeks to—according to the Russian perception—“de-militarize” and “de-sovereign Russia” and then exploit the country’s “territorial, natural, industrial, and human resources.” The Russian military plans to deter this imagined blitzkrieg by demonstrating to Washington its capacity to repulse US airspace strikes, suppress US missile defence systems, and deliver unacceptable nuclear damage to the American homeland.

Russia’s nuclear brass has urged the Kremlin to modernize each leg of the nuclear triad, to enhance the survivability of command-and-control, warning, and weapons systems, and to develop novel employment patterns that demonstrate resolve and capability. The biggest disclosure from the publications is the revelation that the General Staff is formulating its “operation of the strategic deterrence forces”—a concept, which will probably encapsulate the innovations designed to deter the United States. Also, sources reveal that the Russian defence establishment is seeking to set up a national-level organization charged with planning and executing strategic deterrence.

Next to this official discourse, several Russian security experts have even promoted the idea of launching a preemptive strike to repulse a knockout of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. This destabilizing inclination predated the war. Leading Russian defence intellectuals believed then, as they do now, that the United States was lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use and that Washington asserts that a limited nuclear war would be manageable. They also believe that US policymakers have an “escalate to de-escalate” approach—in which Washington would use a nuclear weapon in order to coerce other states to its political will—even as the US accuses Moscow of adopting this same framework.

The most urgent problem that the Kremlin apparently expects the Russian nuclear establishment to solve, however, relates to conventional battlefields. Moscow believes that its nuclear coercion has deterred direct Western intervention in Ukraine and somewhat limited indirect interference. But it has been completely unable to compel Kyiv to surrender and end the war. In the Kremlin’s view, the West does not doubt Russia’s nuclear might, but Washington and its allies do question Moscow’s resolve. The Kremlin’s conclusion is understandable: Russia’s repeated nuclear intimidations have not been followed by Russian actions. Coupled with Moscow’s caution during escalation management, this inaction has devalued the credibility of the country’s nuclear coercion.

The military realizes that the Kremlin is looking for more returns from Russia’s nuclear sabre rattling, especially in conventional contingencies. To meet this expectation, the military should contemplate new intermediate rungs on the escalation ladder, create fresh ways to manipulate nuclear alert levels, and carry out “strategic gestures”: a Russian euphemism for demonstrative activities with nuclear forces to deter Moscow’s adversaries and compel them to bow to Russia’s will. In sum, as the Kremlin seeks to coerce without a major nuclear exchange, it expects the military to expand its repertoire of nuclear muscle-flexing options. These are likely to be the near-term goals that Russia pursues as it refines its coercion mechanism.

Thinking about the unthinkable

Against the backdrop of these formal innovations, within the Russian public, an extraordinary ideational climate has emerged. In the past year, nuclear weapons have become a popular topic of conversation. Only lazy Russian media commentators have not offered their take on nuclear use. The notion that using nuclear weapons should be a last resort but not an unthinkable option has become routine in Russian media and has framed common thinking about escalation in war. This recurring belligerent nuclear rhetoric—official and unofficial alike—has somewhat eroded the nuclear taboo, even if unintentionally.

The sources of nuclear normalization are unclear. It may be a naturally emerging, bottom-up phenomenon that reflects the zeitgeist. The war, after all, has routinized violence and brutality in the country’s public consciousness, and the bellicose environment has radicalized much of the population.

But the messianic-existential aura that the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church have given to the war has also contributed to nuclear normalization. Both institutions are framing the conflict in almost transcendental terms—as a clash of civilizations and a civil war within the “Russian world.” The Kremlin and the church present Ukraine as a “prodigal daughter” that has become a proxy for the forces of darkness, specifically a collective West that is seeking to dismantle Russia spiritually and geopolitically.

In their wartime speeches, both Putin and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, have embraced the language of martyrdom, of purifying sacrifice, and of repentance—all for the sake of winning the war. This language is most obviously applicable to Russian soldiers, many of whom face death on the battlefield, and many of whom are blessed by priests before being deployed. But the rhetoric may also prime Russians at home to accept the highest possible costs as necessary in this clash of civilizations.

Wartime folklore—militaristic songs, clips, performances, and military heraldry—also bears religious symbols and apocalyptic motives, further eroding the nuclear taboo. This folklore venerates Russia’s nuclear might, painlessly threatens nuclear use, and glorifies Russian combat, past and present. A popular Russian rock singer, close to the Kremlin and sanctioned by Ukraine, produced a hymn to Sarmat—the country’s newest class of intercontinental ballistic missiles, for example. A video clip of the song, with the military orchestra of the Strategic Nuclear Missile Forces performing the music, highlights Putin’s eschatological figures of speech in relation to nuclear weapons and the fate of world, threatens the United States and NATO, and concludes with the words: “God and Sarmat are with us.”

The civil role of religion matters, too. The legitimization of the war by the Russian Orthodox Church is an extension of the years of ecclesiastical support for the Kremlin’s foreign policy gambits and nuclear assertiveness. The patriarch’s wartime sermons have transformed him into something like a national spiritual commissar. Prior to the war, the Kremlin actively portrayed itself as a faith-driven actor to enhance its coercive bargaining.

Now, in war, the patriarch’s messianic and apocalyptic rhetoric, occasionally in unison with nuclear threats from the Kremlin, apparently assists Moscow in sending signals that line up with the “madman theory”—persuading adversaries that it is crazy enough to go to nuclear extremes to achieve its aims. The Russian public is not the target audience for this messaging. But inadvertently, the religious-military rhetoric has made nuclear employment more conceivable in the public’s consciousness.

The Kremlin could also be deliberately authorizing this public nuclear normalization to enhance its sabre rattling. Russia’s nuclear threats, after all, might seem more credible if the country’s people appear willing to risk Armageddon. But even if Moscow worked to get Russians to embrace nuclear use, the tail might now be wagging the dog. Nuclear public discourse appears to have acquired a life of its own and may be detrimental to its master. Several Russian defense intellectuals and nuclear experts have been shocked by the unbearable nuclear lightness among the Russian public. These experts have said that public sentiment inaccurately represents the Kremlin’s position, and that it is irresponsible because of its dangerous implications.

And irrespective of the source, the public’s nuclear normalization could corrode the norm against using atomic weapons—especially when coupled with the military leadership’s conceptual innovations and strategic concerns. The Russian sources reveal an anxiety that the West perceives Moscow to be weaker and less determined than it really is, and that Western states will seek to exploit this faintness. It is unclear how the Russian supreme command intends to address this concern. But within this self-reinforcing climate, there is simply now an easier path to escalatory conduct. 

Russia’s increased nuclear muscle flexing, designed to recharge the batteries of deterrence and restore Russia’s coercive reputation, should therefore come as no surprise. Moscow’s decision to build infrastructure in Belarus that can host its nuclear arsenal, the hints that the Kremlin could deploy its nuclear weapons in even more countries, the government’s reluctance to engage in arms control negotiations, and the experts’ suggestions that Russia might carry out a nuclear test all illustrate steps in this direction.

Vicious cycle

The merging of military’s embrace of nuclear operations with the normalization of nuclear weapons in the public consciousness is an unprecedented nexus, one that may have long-term implications for various segments of the Russian strategic community.

For the political leadership, this nexus preserves the centrality of Russia’s nuclear arsenal in national security, justifies the allocation of resources for the arsenal’s modernization, and turns nuclear coercion into a morally acceptable tool. It also affords an easier path to assertive muscle flexing, if the Kremlin and the military brass, already frustrated with the West’s neglect of their nuclear saber rattling, sense that Russian coercive potential needs a recharge. This nexus further enhances Russian nuclear orthodoxy, strengthens the members of Russia’s security elite calling to intertwine spiritual and physical deterrence, and nurtures an ideology that mixes nationalism, messianism, militarism, religious conservatism, and the veneration of nuclear might.

The growing prominence of nuclear weapons within and outside of the establishment could also stimulate the Russian Orthodox Church to develop a just war theory (currently nonexistent in Eastern Christianity) and nuclear-religious jurisprudence: a theological explanation for when, how, and for what purpose it is appropriate to use nuclear weapons.

Although Putin has endorsed Russia’s nuclear orthodoxy, he is a symptom and not a source of the phenomenon. Whatever happens to him, the national security elite is likely to continue merging messianic rhetoric and escalatory signaling to maintain ambiguity and increase Western confusion.

The current relatively relaxed state of mind among Western analysts about the prospects of Russian nuclear brandishing makes it more difficult for them to decipher the genuineness of the escalatory and eschatological intents of Russia’s leadership and of the country’s nuclear operators. But the new nuclear normal in Russia is likely to increase the obedience of operators in response to escalatory nuclear orders from Russia’s leadership. And if Russia experiences civilian-military instability, the chances of unsanctioned use could go up.