Russian Nuclear Doctrine and Escalation

Olga Oliker 0:02

It's amazing how if you just do some research and raise some questions about established conventional wisdom, everybody says, oh my God, you're so right, and changes their mind.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:16

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Aaron is away, probably chasing after a small toddler, and I am really lucky that I am joined by Olga Oliker.

Dr. Oliker works at CSIS, but she is, well, I know her best for her work on Russia's nuclear doctrine, but I gather from what we were talking about off the pod, that casts your expertise too narrowly.

Olga 0:54

Basically, if it's Russia and its neighbors, I'm probably interested in it. And I'm probably thinking that I should be writing something about it. So you kind of got sucked into the nuclear mafia? I started life off as a Sovietologist with some interest in weapons and security and all of that. And then the Soviet Union collapsed when I was in graduate school.

So I became a national security generalist. And I probably started off more interested in U.S. nuclear weapons than Russian ones. But because I spoke Russian, I quickly got dragged into looking at the Russian side of things. And it was interesting. But when I was in my 20s and working on nuclear issues at the Pentagon, I worked on the first nuclear posture review in the mid-90s.

I would occasionally have people ask me what I did in bars, and I would say I do nuclear weapons policy at the Pentagon, and they would run away.

Jeffrey 1:49

Now, see, I'm tempted to be difficult and suggest that isn't speaking Russian a real hindrance in talking about Russian nuclear doctrine, at least in D.C.?

Olga 2:00

In the sense that I might actually point out what the Russians say about it, it certainly does seem to inconvenience people and their theories about Russian strategy and Russian approaches. The reality of what the Russians say and write don't quite match with a lot of the hypotheses that you hear in Washington.

Jeffrey 2:19

Yeah, I should say for listeners, I think one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is, you know, my background was in studying China's nuclear program. And I had this consistent experience of going to Beijing and listening to Chinese people talk about their nuclear posture and then coming back to Washington. And nominally, we were talking about the same country, but it actually felt like we were talking about two radically different countries.

And I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but sometimes I would actually be at a meeting with And we would have a conversation and there'd be other Americans in the room. And then when I came back to the US, my experience was that the discussion we had about the meeting in DC was totally disconnected, at least in my mind, from the conversation we'd had in Beijing.

Olga 3:04

Yeah, there's an interesting psychological question here about the extent to which people hear the things they expect to hear and place things into the frameworks that they've already established for themselves. And perhaps I'm guilty of that too. But one of the reasons I started digging into Russian nuclear strategy more recently was that there seemed to be a consensus developing over the last few years in America and Washington, to some extent in Europe, but much less so.

That Russia's nuclear threshold had dropped, that Russia's threshold for the use of nuclear weapons had dropped And I keep up with this stuff. And I was thinking, wait, I haven't seen this anywhere. Where are you getting this from? Oh, but it's obvious. It's clear. So I started digging around to see what I could find. And what I found was that I didn't see the evidence that Russia had dropped its nuclear threshold.

I tried to trace through the things that people were arguing were evidence that it had, from statements from Russian officials to exercises. To simply the development of weapons that might be used in such a strategy. But okay, we all have those. And I just couldn't make that add up. But my first thought was, wait, am I wrong?

I need to look into this. Do these people know something I don't? And I don't think they do.

Jeffrey 4:26

Yeah, well, so I was going to say, so you pointed all this out, and then, you know, things just magically got better, right?

Olga 4:33

Yeah, yeah. No, it's amazing how if you just do some research and raise some questions about established conventional wisdom, everybody says, oh, my God, you're so right, and changes their mind. Yeah, it's great how that works.

Jeffrey 4:49

Oh, so I, you know, one of the things I wanted to start off by asking is, you know, I know that I think for casual listeners, I mean, I think the way in which they're going to have interacted with this debate is this assertion, which I see made with with, you know, great seriousness, you know, that Russia has a strategy of escalating to deescalate and in which, you You know, the Russians would use a small nuclear weapon in an otherwise conventional conflict...

Olga 5:17

Early.

Jeffrey 5:18

Early, right. Do you... I mean... I generally have not found that to be a very compelling argument. I sort of think, I don't know, Putin's speech the other day, those didn't seem like small weapons.

Olga 5:34

Those weren't small weapons. And he wasn't talking about using them early in the heretofore conventional conflict either.

Jeffrey 5:39

Yeah. I mean, it was kind of funny because I actually was just in Munich and... Kislyak was really taking offense to de-escalate. And I kind of wonder if sometimes he wasn't thinking like, no, no, no, we're planning lots of horrible things.

Olga 5:54

You just have the wrong horrible things in mind. You don't understand. We're not going to go with a small nuclear weapon. Well, I think it is. Look, the Russians, the way the Russians talk about this is that you can't control escalation. The principle, first, I hate the terminology of escalate to de-escalate because in most cases you are escalating to make things stop.

That is to de-escalate either because you think you'll win that way or because you think that your adversary will at least back off, you'll get a draw.

Jeffrey 6:23

So I don't... You're saying that escalate to YOLO is not an actual alternative?

Olga 6:30

Right. Yeah, which is basically what it seems to be, right? Escalate for the fun of it. Yeah. Escalate to win, but and win early and win effectively, but you're most, you know, maybe, but I think in most cases when you're looking at what the Russians are accused of thinking about is that it's escalate to stop the thing and most escalation is meant to either attain victory or to stop the thing. So okay, you're not really saying much with it.

So there's that part of it. The other part of it is that the Russian view is that it's very hard to control escalation. Now, when I say the Russian view, I don't mean every Russian who writes about nuclear weapons. There is certainly a group of Russians that write pretty consistently that actually like the idea of low yield nuclear weapons used early in a conflict in precisely the way that people ascribe to Russian strategy.

Now, the reason I don't think that's actually Russian strategy is that these people are still writing and talking about it and trying to make it Russian strategy, which suggests to me that it's not Russian strategy. But the way that other Russians, Russians who have written Russian strategy and are now talking about it, Tend to think is you can't control escalation and nuclear use will be answered with nuclear use will be answered with nuclear use and we blow up the world.

There's no getting out of it and it's certainly too dangerous to risk. And I think that was Putin's point that, hey, this is what you're risking with your low-yield weapon. I keep forgetting who said this. It was on Twitter, but the line was, you know, you go low-yield, we go high-yield. Gregory Koblenz. I saw that too. But it's not even you go low-yield, we go high-yield.

It's you can't keep the low-yield from getting to high-yield. Now, the way I really see the danger of nuclear exchange playing out is that the Russians expect a war with the United States and NATO to turn nuclear. They expect that the United States expects that too, that the United States will therefore take early action to limit Russian retaliatory potential, that they will perhaps use conventional weapons to strike at Russian systems early to avoid first use of nuclear weapons.

And the Russians will be forced to launch under attack under those circumstances. In a crisis where we don't know what's going on and the Russians might be afraid that the United States would launch such an attack, particularly given that Russian early warning, while improved, is largely based on ground-based radars, which don't give you a ton of warning time, Mistakes could be made.

Jeffrey 9:23

Yeah, I've always wondered about this because, you know, I kind of, I mean, the way that I slid into this discipline is by being interested in decision making and particularly how leaders make decisions in situations of complexity and stress. And it's always seemed to me to be sort of heroic to assume that in the midst of a crisis that the two parties are not going to have Evolving expectations.

I think Roberta Wohlstetter called it the background of expectations, you know, this, this, this, you know, set of assumptions that shape what you see and, and that somehow, you know, the Russians are gonna, are not just gonna, you know, wait and, and, and find out that it's, it's a low yield weapon and be like, oh, that's what it was.

Olga 10:13

And just one, and just one, I think that's, I think this is the issue. That they don't have a posture that's terribly survivable. They put an awful lot of their warheads in silos, on silo-based missiles. They put a decent number on submarines, but the submarines don't patrol that much, which makes them effectively silo-based missiles at sea, or on a boat, not at sea, kind of off the coast.

That would make me nervous, too. Now, you can ask, why on earth do they build a force like that? And I can give you a very lengthy explanation based on Russian culture and the bureaucracy and the strength of the Strategic Rocket Forces, which own the ICBMs. But the bottom line is that's what they've got.

Jeffrey 11:06

Yeah, I mean... I've certainly noticed this in the context of discussing the way the United States interacts with China, is that there is this real tendency in the part of American analysts, not to be overly critical, but sometimes I get cranky about it, to just not accept that people in a different country might make different choices. And, you know, like...

It's just crazy to me because I think once you accept the possibility that people make different choices and that they interpret things differently and that they react to situations differently, I think suddenly this idea that you can engage in this incredibly sophisticated signaling that actually involves hitting each other with nuclear weapons, it just seems crazy to me.

Olga 11:59

Right. Well, I mean, signaling by actually going to war is... Really bad signaling. You don't communicate well. You know, it's like arguing, you know, I got into a fight with her because just to show her how important this issue was to me. It's like, okay, yeah, she probably got it after she finished, you know, trying to put her nose back, but she also probably was angrier and it became more important to her, right?

This notion that you can signal rather than communicate directly, it's an interesting one. I also think you don't have to do that much work to think how the Russians think. You just have to realize that they're not us and they don't believe that we are good and pure and have everyone's best intentions at heart. That they look at us and they see capabilities and they ascribe the worst possible things to those capabilities.

I mean, I think the escalate to de-escalate conversation in the United States is similar in some ways to the way Russians talk about American missile defense and have for years. That we can, you know, you can point out the inadequacies of American missile defense programs, but the Russians continue to be convinced that they are a threat to their second strike.

Nothing seems to get them off of that. You know, you tell them they can't do this, they say yes, but eventually they will.

Jeffrey 13:16

Yeah, I wanted to ask about a couple of those things because I do think that As somebody who kind of fancies himself as an empiricist, I'd really be interested in just hearing you out on, on how you think about how the Russians either think or, or react to certain things. And, you know, I hate it when people say the Chinese, so I, I shouldn't say the Russians cause I'd be very interested in, you know, your assessment of how different groups and, and, and, and, and organizations approach problems.

But could you just walk me through a little bit How you think about the russian skepticism of escalation control because i i kind of notice that when when i'm talking to russian interlocutors but that's a very different attitude than we have in the united states so i think it's actually very hard for americans to accept this idea that you know herman khan was all wrong and you can't have i forget how many wrongs

Olga 14:15

I think it comes down to Tom Schelling was right.

Jeffrey 14:17

Well, hey, I'm down for that. The man gave me a coffee maker for my wedding.

Olga 14:22

That was kind of him. It's a good coffee maker, I hope.

Jeffrey 14:25

Yeah, it was lovely.

Olga 14:27

That's good. And coffee is important. No, it's, I mean, for Tom Schelling, the threat that leaves something to chance is the idea that you don't know how bad this could get and it could get really bad and that you can't control it. And that's why You don't do it. That's the effectiveness of deterrence is you don't have a full awareness of how your adversary will respond.

And I think that's how the Russians think about it. It's pretty simple, mad doctrine at some level with, you know, maybe it's not mutually assured destruction, but it's mutually assured things we really, really don't want.

Jeffrey 15:05

I was just thinking that it's kind of interesting because Tom was on my dissertation committee, and I wrote a long book, basically, about how... In general, the Chinese system produced decisions that were very different from ours. And I think it was the nice thing about him, which is that he was able to simultaneously both think that the Chinese approach was nutty, that he wouldn't ever recommend it, but sort of accept it as an empirical fact, like, okay, well, I think they're wrong, but I accept that they think like that.

Olga 15:40

And I think we have a very hard time doing that with the Russians, with the Chinese, with everybody. Arguably, they have a hard time doing that with us too. This notion that, okay, we fundamentally disagree on things that are really about reality, but we're not going to talk each other into it. So we've got to move from the position that this is what you believe, this is what I believe.

How do we go from here?

Jeffrey 16:04

Yeah, I notice this whenever we have, we have a pretty regular series of meetings with Russians to discuss North Korea here in Monterey. And we can't convince them that the North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles are real.

Olga 16:19

Yeah, I've talked to Russians who believe that the North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles are real. There are some Russians who believe that at this point.

Jeffrey 16:29

Oh, maybe I could invite them to our meetings.

Olga 16:31

Let me know.

Jeffrey 16:32

It's pretty lonely sometimes.

Olga 16:34

Let me know when you have the next one. I'll send you some Russians.

Jeffrey 16:39

All right. That would help. One other question I had about this, which I've always wondered about, and I guess it's the serious version of my funny Kislyak story, which is, is there a cost factor? Associated with us consistently misdescribing Russia's nuclear posture. Like, I sometimes wonder if, you know, when the Russians don't get our posture right, certainly on the American side, I see my colleagues sort of point to this as, you know, some kind of sign of Russian perfidy.

You know, it's not that the Russians are wrong. It's that the Russians are, you know, being deliberately obtuse. Do you get any sense that the same thing happens in Russia where people seize on Our depictions of them as evidence that something more nefarious is at foot?

Olga 17:28

Oh, absolutely. This is Putin talking to his assembled parliament. The Americans have clearly come up with this false notion that the Russians are investing in low-yield weapons so they can develop a warfighting nuclear capability. That's exactly what they think and how they look at it. Now, I'm sure they can't quite understand why, since we have all of these amazing conventional things that can destroy everything immediately with great success.

I mean, they really do see U.S. capabilities as... Magical in a lot of ways. But, you know, we're obviously trying to justify this new system and to threaten Russia with it.

Jeffrey 18:16

So where does that leave us? Because, I mean... At least from my perspective, I'm kind of, as a person who's fundamentally interested in arms control, I'm fairly disheartened by the collapse of that activity. And it certainly looks to me like both the United States and Russia are making very large investments in arms. Very different kinds of systems.

And maybe it's, I don't know, maybe it's not exactly a race, but it's an arms competition of sorts. I mean, it's certainly interactive and people are justifying things based on one another.

Olga 18:54

And you could certainly cut back on a lot of it with arms control, right? You could really, you could save a lot of money.

Jeffrey 19:01

Although maybe that, you know, I mean, as I love to point out, right, me saving money as a taxpayer is often someone losing the dream project of their life.

Olga 19:13

Absolutely. No, and I would argue that a lot of Russian nuclear force posture is explained by Russian defense industry as well. There are a lot of jobs riding on this. On the other hand, because there are a lot of jobs riding on this, without arms control, they will build so many missiles. Yeah.

Jeffrey 19:31

Well, and that's kind of where I think we're headed. And so, I mean, I end up in this weird position because I'm always the person saying, like, it's an arms race, which makes me sound like I'm excited about that fact, but I'm not. But I also feel not quite sure how we arrest this process. And that's probably my ignorance of the Russian side.

Olga 19:52

Well, I mean, I think the problem we have is that historically the United States has been the proponent of arms control and the Russians have gone along with it, even though the Russians have their own interest, including controlling their defense industry. Now, I would argue, I have argued that right now with the United States backing away from that position, it behooves the Russians to get serious about arms control, make sure they get in line with the obligations they've already signed on to.

And make the case for why we need more. The Russians don't seem to be comfortable with that role. They like the role where they're the spoiler. They like the role where the United States drags them to the table and they eventually agree, where they don't have to admit that this is good for them too. So that puts us at something of a very dangerous impasse.

Until we have a U.S. government that's interested in arms control again or the Russians realize that the Americans aren't going to do that and it's all on them, we are stuck without arms control. And a lot of bad can happen in the meantime.

Jeffrey 20:57

So what, I mean, what would you recommend we do as initial steps? I mean, I feel a little bit like we're... Who's we?

Olga 21:05

I mean, which, who's we? I mean, the Trump administration? I'd love to have the Trump administration extend New Start. I mean, I'm...

Jeffrey 21:11

So assuming that we survive the duration of the Trump administration And presuming we remain a republic with elections, something comes next. What do we say to those people who come next about what they ought to be planning to do? Because my sense is that right now we're mostly focused on being sore about the treaties we're losing. And we aren't doing much about thinking about what new agreements that are bespoke to our current situation would look like.

Olga 21:44

I mean, look, I would love to have the power to say to the Kremlin, get your act in gear on the agreements you already signed on to, and we will consider doing something on missile defense again. Because that's what they want. I mean, that's what they really would like to control.

Jeffrey 22:00

And do you think that that's still a high priority? I mean, in my North Korea life, the thing I've gotten sensitive to is that sometimes when you miss a window, you really miss the window and it's closed. But you think that there's still a profound interest in limitations if they include limitations on defenses?

Olga 22:22

Less and less as the Russians build their own defenses, but perhaps more and more as the Russians start realizing their defenses aren't any better than ours. And they continue to think, I mean, really are, and they continue to think that ours are somehow magically capable. If they actually realize that this is all useless for everybody and just a big defense industry jobs program, then maybe all interest does evaporate, but that's okay if they're not terrified of it.

You get into these complicated circles of logic. But I think there's still a chance of that, and I think that is a point of leverage the United States has. It's just not one that we tend to have with Congress.

Jeffrey 23:02

Yes. I mean, I have to say one of the things I was really struck by is when Putin gave the speech. I can't really say debuting these systems because several of them we knew about, but promoting, promoting, promoting, you know, and in some cases debuting. Right. But promoting these systems. I mean, it was very clear from the speech that he was framing them in terms of the ABM treaty.

And I was really interested by the fact that whether or not one believed that the almost knee-jerk reaction in the U.S. was, well, this is about the nuclear posture review.

Olga 23:37

Some of it is. I mean, I think the emphasis on nuclear systems is about the nuclear posture review.

Jeffrey 23:42

Okay.

Olga 23:42

I think the way that they were presented... And all of this talk about how they can overcome missile defenses was about the ABM Treaty, because that's how the Russians think about nuclear systems. I mean, it's ridiculous. The Sarmat can overcome missile defenses. The Sarmat is a silo-based system. So first of all, if a whole lot of them can overcome missile defenses in a Russian first strike, Okay, yeah, you're right.

They can also fly. They can overcome missile defenses in a second strike. What makes you think you'll have any left? Yeah. It makes no sense. But this is how everything is framed. Basically, if the Russians want to sell a weapon, they say it overcomes missile defenses.

Jeffrey 24:31

Oh, that's interesting. So that's like a branding issue internally within debates?

Olga 24:40

You just have to say that. I mean, they all have to. That's one of the things that they can all do. And with wonderful new technology that is special and, you know, countermeasures aren't that hard.

Jeffrey 24:53

Yeah, well, this is one of the perplexing things. I mean, I have my own guesses about it, but, you know, like... I think when the U.S. would blow off the Russian concerns about missile defense, you know, we would always say, well, just build more missiles or put countermeasures. It takes a special kind of outlook to say, no, actually, I think I'd rather have a nuclear powered cruise missile.

Olga 25:16

Yes. I mean, that one. Yes. There is certainly. That's cool. That must have been fun to design. Yeah. I don't have a lot, you know, you kind of look at this and you're like, seriously? Who let that happen?

Jeffrey 25:36

Well, you know, I mean, there's an interesting character on Russian social media who ended up on the news because he had a technical degree. And he provided a very basic description of how a nuclear-powered cruise missile would work. And it was Wikipedia-level stuff. But, you know, he had, like, a beard and suspenders. And, you know, he drew nice diagrams.

And so, you know, a viral social media star was born.

Olga 26:01

But he actually, it's nice. I need a beard and suspenders.

Jeffrey 26:05

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's, I mean, he looks the part, right? I mean, if you're, if you're, you're imagining, you know, nationalist crazy mad Russian scientist, he really, I mean, straight from central casting. Maybe he's a plant. Maybe. But what he noticed, which I thought was really interesting, is there was a long discussion over the same time period that the nuclear-powered cruise missile was being developed in which the Russians were trying to engage the U.S. on a nuclear-powered engine for interplanetary space travel.

And while it's a little different because you've got to... You know, the cruise missile can just use air, which, you know, in space, you got to bring your own fuel with you. It is like a comparable system. And so I get the sense that like Roscosmos and Rosatom were just, you know, nutty about this thing.

Olga 27:00

We're looking for a thing to do. Yeah, that's certainly plausible. And don't forget whichever firm designed and wants to produce this.

Jeffrey 27:07

Right. So we usually try to end on a cheery note. I'm not sure we're going to get there today.

Olga 27:16

We're talking about Russian and U.S. nuclear strategy. I think you can do dark humor, but it's really hard to be positive.

Jeffrey 27:24

So short of the United States Congress having a mass outbreak of sanity and deciding that, yes, we're willing to talk about missile defenses. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask. One last question, because we were talking about Sarmat. So if we're not in a position where we can convince the U.S. Congress to talk about the things the Russians want to talk about, Then we're kind of down to the New START treaty.

And as you said, we'd just all be delighted if the Trump administration was willing to extend it. Are the Russians willing to extend it? And how do they deploy Sarmat in any numbers while staying under the treaty's numerical limits? Or is that just a sign that New START's going to go the way of INF and everything else?

Olga 28:19

They download it. They don't fully load it. That's the same for the submarines. That's how they stay under new start limits. And I think they really like that because they've never liked the U.S. upload potential, so now they've got their very own.

Jeffrey 28:35

Right. So having won the right to keep a massive upload advantage, we're now going to be cranky about it because it no longer works for us.

Olga 28:44

But look on the bright side, a whole lot of it is going to be taken up by the Sarmat, which is a silo-based system.

Jeffrey 28:50

That's a happy note. You know what? I'm going to end us there because we desperately need to end on a happy note.

Olga 28:56

This has been really fun. Likewise. Yeah, no, I've enjoyed this unhappy conversation as well.

Jeffrey 29:03

If you want to hear more from Olya Oliker, she has her own podcast, Russian Roulette, which you can find on all the usual podcast places, as well as the CSIS website. Russian Roulette covers a cornucopia of topics relating to countries that used to be Soviet, from right-wing nationalism to Georgian food and wine. God, I love Georgian food.

From election campaigns to literature, as well as, of course, a bit of arms control here and there. Hey, Scott, do you want to jump in and say anything nice about how cool things are on the Slack channel? Everything's going great on the Slack channel. We're still figuring out the schedule with Schmerler in terms of getting the satellite imagery walkthrough done and the imagery uploaded, but everything's fantastic.

And if you would like to support the Arms Control Wonk podcast and our research, you can head over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast and kick us $5 a month or $3 a month if you are a student. Great. Dr. Olga Oliker, thank you so much for joining me.

Olga 30:05

Thank you so much for having me.

Jeffrey 30:07

And thank you for listening.