Russian Entanglement

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron Stein 0:21

And I am Aaron Stein, president of Foreign Policy Research Institute. Jeffrey, it's good to see you again.

Jeffrey 0:27

It is good to see you, Aaron. How you doing, man?

Aaron 0:30

You know, I'm living the dream. It's 67 degrees and sunny out here on the East Coast. There's no humidity today. And rather than jogging, I'm here talking to you. So you're contributing to poor heart health, but certainly a more relaxed state for myself.

Jeffrey 0:44

You know, I like to think everything I say, Aaron, is good for your heart. I think I like to warm your heart. You know, I just, I'm a positive presence. I don't know how you can talk me down like that.

Aaron 0:56

It's just the California vibes have worn off on you. You know, I rewatched The Endless Summer. I've learned to hug people, dude. It's weird. Have you, I know you've seen it. Have you seen The Endless Summer? I have. I recently rewatched it. Have you seen it recently?

Jeffrey 1:12

I have. I think it's problematic. Me too.

Aaron 1:19

It's really racist. The trip through South Africa really jarred me. Yeah, it's not good. It's not good. And the reason why, I don't know how we got off on this, but you can see how it captured a certain era and lingo of California, which you now have imbibed.

Jeffrey 1:37

Oh, oh, I think the segue is exactly... Wait, not the racism part, but no, the... If you listen to Andrew Hickey's excellent podcast, A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs, there is a spectacular episode on the Grateful Dead who I both loathe and admire as an object of fascination because they are, and his episode captures this...

The epitome of a specific thing, which is called the Californian ideology, which is probably a useful antidote to an America that happily no longer exists, but is in its own way deeply, deeply problematic. The hugging is good, though.

Aaron 2:25

Hugging is good.

Jeffrey 2:27

I'm glad I've learned to hug people, I guess.

Aaron 2:29

And I think what we want to talk about on this podcast is whether we have to hug each other goodbye, which is the tee up towards the debate about whether or not to allow long range weapons to strike inside Russia and whether or not the article that you and I wrote for my former employer, War on the Rocks and Deterrence, is starting to be tested yet again with the threat of nuclear war.

And those California vibes will no longer matter.

Jeffrey 2:59

You're like, ah, I love this California sunshine. And you're like, Jeffrey, it's midnight. That's a fireball.

Aaron 3:04

That's a fireball. And you're getting sunburned at three o'clock in the morning.

Jeffrey 3:09

Yeah, look, I think before we say anything else, I would like to pat ourselves on the back and say that we wrote the article in such a way that I believe it is completely non-falsifiable. It's a good article. I keep trying to update it. They go back and look at it. There's nothing else to say. I mean, it's a slightly sarcastic comment, but I think before we say anything else, I mean, I do think a central argument in the article that people fail to really internalize, I guess is the word I'm looking for, is this notion that Deterrence is this rational game, but it only functions if it has a profound aspect of irrationality in it.

So when you and I talk about deterrence functioning successfully, which I still think it is, The implication of that is that there is an irreducible, persistent chance that it all goes wrong. That is the nature of the deal. If you don't like it, you might not like deterrence. And by the way, there is a wholly respectable... Like, school of thought that suggests deterrence is, you know, it's a hell of a bargain to make over the long term.

I like it in the near term. I like it in the medium term. I don't really have anything to say to the Jonathan Schells of the world who are right. It's probably not a great, like, thousand-year plan.

Aaron 4:42

No, but it's certainly the plan we have now. I think the backdrop is that the Russians are amidst an offensive, particularly around Kharkiv. It's going, I guess, territorially kind of well in that they have the Ukrainians back on the back foot. And the Ukrainians are getting, it appears, a bit more desperate in how they want to conduct the war and are starting to chafe at some of the restrictions that we believe are in place on attacking targets in Russia with weapons supplied by the United States and other Western powers.

And so they want to hit Russia with things that we give them far beyond the front lines of the battlefield, which has raised questions, at least in my mind, about... Would that open up the likelihood that Russia would say, well, we're going to hit targets far behind the battlefield too, and that's Poland. And so I thought that was a good frame for our conversation.

Jeffrey 5:35

I think that's an excellent frame. The only thing I would add to that is that this seems to have been brought to the fore because the Ukrainians hit a radar in Russia.

Aaron 5:46

Right.

Jeffrey 5:48

And radars are dual purpose. But one of those dual purposes is a very important nuclear mission. And so it naturally begins to raise questions that James Acton has called entanglement. Right. Little, little, little asterisk there, which is John Steinbruner had a very similar idea of entanglement and, you know, John, like a parent. So I, I got a rep for John, but really is James who I think gives us our modern notion of, of entanglement as you kind of look at the connection between conventional operations and nuclear operations.

And so like Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting question.

Aaron 6:34

Well, the radar, I think it's at Armavir. I mean, I'm sure I'm pronouncing that exactly correct.

Jeffrey 6:40

In true arms control wonk fashion.

Aaron 6:42

Yeah, Armavir. Basically, I think it's part of their early warning system, and it's oriented south. So it would look at potential missile launches coming from the Mediterranean and further south. But it covers a portion, I think, of southern Crimea. Yeah. And so the idea was that the Ukrainians want to hit it because it may have enabled the Russians to conduct strikes themselves or to monitor the use of Ukrainian weapons to strike Crimea.

And where I think people like James wrote on Twitter are concerned about is that targeting Russian early warning systems is bad for them knowing if they're being targeted by our systems. Russians are paranoid. And as other people have pointed out to me, It's in Russian nuclear doctrine to launch if their early warning system is under attack.

Jeffrey 7:33

Yeah, exactly. And there's some back and forth about whether the Ukrainians informed the Biden administration they were going to do this and how upset the Biden administration was or wasn't. And it sounds like the Biden administration was... Generally okay, but either later expressed consternation or when they really grokked what was happening, expressed some consternation. So this is one of those things that sits at the intersection between it's a legitimate military target, you understand why the Ukrainians went after it, it makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, it brings us back to our op-ed and it's like, Oh, that's also how escalation happens.

Aaron 8:13

Exactly.

Jeffrey 8:13

And so we want to be cautious as we edge out on what Tom Schelling described not as a cliff, but as a curved slope where you don't quite know which footfall is your last.

Aaron 8:27

Right. And when I saw that, right, and then when I saw the broader debate – because they hit the radar ostensibly with their own weapons, right? But when I saw that coupled with the increasingly sort of forceful debate about taking the gloves off, quote unquote, I saw a tweet by Dmitry Stefanovich. I'm sure my pronunciation was also good as well.

Who said the debate in Russia right now is whether or not to target Western ISR and basically parts of the kill chain to make more difficult the idea that you could use these atacums or storm shadows or whatever weapon they choose to hit targets deep inside Russia. That is entanglement. That is literally the James Acton sort of entanglement model right there in that you're using conventional weapons to target things that have dual use.

Jeffrey 9:18

You know, I think so much of this is really about a fundamental idea in escalation. So this is how escalation happens. Mm-hmm. Escalation does not need to escalate all the way. You know, as listeners know, I have been in favor of some escalatory steps because I believed we could make them without bad things happening, and transferring ATACMs to Ukraine was one of those.

I strongly supported that. I think it's totally legit. But it is nonetheless an escalation, and we kind of, you know, are walking up the ladder. But again... Escalation is not certain, it is not automatic, and the only way that any of this works, the only way that you can hate escalation is that level of uncertainty, and embedded in that is the chance that you miscalculate.

So you can absolutely understand that this is an escalation, and it might be worth doing, and you might calculate the Russians won't respond, they're gonna make the same calculation. They are going to look long and hard and they are going to ask that question of like, well, you know, what if the thing we hit was on the...

Polish-Ukrainian border, and it was just a little bit on the Polish side. And so much of what we do, this was the point I was trying to make at the beginning, and I distracted myself, is how do you create tacit red lines between adversaries? That's super hard.

Aaron 10:54

Right. Right. Exactly. Those tacit red lines.

Jeffrey 11:01

I'm curious. And like borders are a pretty good one. I mean, they're arbitrary and they're bullshit, but they're, you know, like we all agree where Poland is. Sorry, go ahead.

Aaron 11:10

We do all agree where Poland is, but. I'm curious because one of the things that we were discussing, I guess, in our WhatsApp chat was – against the backdrop of this is that the Russians just rehearsed the inter-nuclear war in Europe.

Jeffrey 11:28

And they did it like overtly, right? We have spent so much time osinting the fuck out of those videos. It is incredible. What? You have the- We could do a whole episode on counting access ports on canisters. I think it really was. I mean, they're not shitting us. It really was a nuclear exercise. Go ahead.

Aaron 11:50

But that's my point. And this was in sort of the long arms control tradition. It was full frontal. It was completely X-rated, right? There was a little bit of blur. Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 12:02

But that was for the- And they're missiles, so this is male nudity.

Aaron 12:05

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it was the European version of male nudity, which is like full frontal. Everything is coming at you right in your face, right? And so like – Oh, yeah. If that's not a signal, I don't know what is, right? They telegraphed it. They told everybody what they were going to do and then they put it on display like it was the David sitting in a museum in Florence.

Jeffrey 12:26

Well, and then there's also a Russian think tank talked about how it might be a good idea to do a demonstration nuclear strike. Oh, yeah. Which I think we're still probably several moves away from. But yeah, man. I mean, look. We want them to lose. I want them to lose. I want them to suffer a humiliating defeat.

They do not want to suffer a humiliating defeat. That's complicated because a lot of things we also care about, like the norm against nuclear use, may not be as important to them as avoiding a defeat.

Aaron 13:08

So this brings us back to the question. Let's go back to the attack on the storm shadow deep strike debate.

Jeffrey 13:17

Taurus, don't let the Germans off the hook.

Aaron 13:18

And Taurus, okay. Let's do cruise and ballistic missiles, two of our favorites on this list.

Jeffrey 13:22

I mean, they haven't transferred them. I just want to remind the Germans that they're not doing their part. We know where this is headed.

Aaron 13:28

They're going to start striking targets in Russia. So if we were sitting there in the Monterey classroom right now, what would we tell the United States to do to try and deter Russia? Anything different? I'm not sure. This is a question I've been talking to myself about. Do we do something? Is that escalatory? Do we send a private message?

Probably. Do we tell the Ukrainians you can only hit here, but you can't hit there? I mean, how does one manage this?

Jeffrey 13:55

Yeah. So the way I think through it, and I agree with you, I don't have glib answers. Is we don't want to lose sight of the fact that our goal is to prevail. Right? I'm willing to run escalation risks to some extent to prevail. And I think that limiting escalation depends in large part on not letting Putin ever think that escalation will result in him prevailing.

Because if it did, he would. Right. The minute he thinks a limited use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine results in Russian troops rolling into Kiev and changing the regime, I think he would do that. So that's a really important part. And so now you're playing this game of like, how do you stymie the Russians while not putting them in a position where they...

Either feel like they have to or they feel like they would get some advantage from escalating. So I'm not sure I would change anything. But as we go through this process, it's all about finding natural firebreaks. So being really clear, if you start hitting targets in NATO countries... That's a problem. Like that's an escalation. That is, that's, that's a invocation of our security commitment.

And now we have a wider war and like the next fire break after that is really hard to find. So I agree. So finding up, so we, sorry, I meant to say like, we have to find like little fire breaks in between that. So we don't get there with the Russians. And I, I don't know what those are.

Aaron 15:45

I don't know. So I agree with you. I wouldn't actually change anything. But we're focused on our side. They've told us that one of those sort of like, I don't know, running the fire break, jumping the fire break. We're using more California wildfire terms here. Is using attack them to strike Russian command and control assets in Belgorod.

Jeffrey 16:11

Yeah, I think. So we've got a couple of things. Potential theories of the case. I mean, again, I think as long as we maintain the ability to prevail, that's going to be a powerful damper on escalation. And we probably need to make sure that they don't think their government is going to fall because that's I think the gloves absolutely come off.

And then now there's the question of what causes them to think the government's going to fall, it's going to be an unsurvivable, humiliating defeat. I want it to be a survivable, humiliating defeat. So you've got a couple of strategies. One is you could talk about classes of targets, which is why I don't like that one as much, but that's why the radar caught people's attention.

You know, people in like the China scenarios have tried to think about like geographic firebreaks.

Aaron 17:10

Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:11

Sure. You know, the one I have advocated for utterly unsuccessfully is good for the goose, good for the gander. Okay. Which is we match their behavior. Right. We've talked about this, but yeah, go ahead. So they're not... They have avoided... Trying, as best I can tell, they have avoided a big missile strike to try to kill Zelensky in Kiev.

Aaron 17:42

Correct.

Jeffrey 17:43

So if Kiev's off the table, then Moscow's off the table.

Aaron 17:46

But they do hit these places with those Iranian shahids.

Jeffrey 17:52

Yeah. So I think I think our and I like I think you have to do this with declaratory policy. I think our position is the Ukrainians are allowed to do to the Russians what the Russians do to the Ukrainians. And it's got to be parallel. And so, yeah, if they start lobbying missiles, you know, they put a ballistic missile in Kiev, then.

I think the Ukrainians could put a ballistic missile in Moscow because you're trying to establish restraint. You're trying to set up red lines. So, you know, I unsuccessfully argued the whole argument we should have made with ATACOMs, which we didn't do. I mean, I'm fine that we transferred them. But the argument we should have made is, you know, we will not transfer these if you stop using so many miscanders.

If you restrain yourself, we'll match that restraint. And then I used to make the arguments to the South Koreans who, you know, I'm sorry, South Korean conservatives, but you're full of sh**. You know, they love to talk like such a tough game. But the Russians are buying tons, tons of Hwasong-11s from North Korea. They are funding the North Korean missile program.

And the South Koreans won't sell that same capability to the Ukrainians? Like, come on, you're not serious. So I would match. And that would be matching offense, but it would also be matching restraint. So if the Russians stop doing certain things, I would argue that we should stop doing them as well. So... Let me ask you – so – By the way, I mean that sincerely.

I don't mean that in like the bullshit DC way of being like, well, if the Russians would only restrain myself, I would when people actually don't mean that. No, no.

Aaron 19:27

I actually do mean that. So I don't think it was actually – I mean maybe it was a complete coincidence. But – Basically, the same week or within a week of them doing the full frontal European nudity, Iskander tactical nuclear weapon exercise to fight nuclear war in Europe, is that sources close to the Kremlin said Putin wants a ceasefire along current lines.

Do you... Are they sort of, because what we think we know about their doctrine is that they could use nuclear coercion to lobby for peace or lobby for settling conflicts on Russian terms. This may be a completely tortured argument, and it probably is, but it's something that creeped into my mind as well, is that was the demonstration of the European nudity actually something that they were going for to try and set the table to lock in lines now, or at least begin to set the stage going into the winter?

Jeffrey 20:27

Yeah, I don't know. I think one of the dumbest things we do in D.C. is... Which neither you or I are in, by the way. We are D.C. I'm D.C. adjacent, and you are D.C. opposite. I visit too much. You know, I think one of the dumbest things, but I say we, because I am part of this culture.

Yes, I am as guilty as anyone. I don't think we can assess... Russian incentive or Russian sincerity in negotiations in real time. I mean, I like, it's literally why you pay diplomats. Right. You know, like there's this whole debate over the article that who is it? It was Sergei Redchenko wrote about the, and somebody else wrote about Sam, Sam Cherub and Sergei wrote in foreign affairs about the Istanbul.

And like people got so freaking worked up about that. And like, I, I mean, That stuff is a not clear to the participants at the time. So, you know, like the argument that people are having is literally stupid because I am certain that anyone who's ever been involved in any kind of negotiation in real time knows that the participants themselves disagree about all of the things that people are arguing about on Twitter.

You're not going to get there on Twitter. But it's also like very uncertain because you never you no one no one involved has the whole story. Right. Right. And so I think that we have to be open to Russia being willing to end the war without being naively enthusiastic about every piece of furniture. And I just don't think that you or I sitting here can do that.

It's a little bit like the Iranians. For years, I was incredibly frustrated with the Obama people because I'm like, how can you not see you have to let them keep some centrifuges? And then lo and behold, it was like, oh yeah, no, you were right. We knew that, but we couldn't say that publicly. So they were having secret meetings in Oman, which not even the French knew about.

Aaron 22:40

And they let us know that they didn't know.

Jeffrey 22:43

Oh, they were unhappy.

Aaron 22:43

They were unhappy.

Jeffrey 22:44

So I just think that as we look at this... It is possible that that signal is a sign that escalation is to come. It is also possible that that is a little bit of chest puffing before peace overture. All things are possible. And I would leave it to the pros to tell the difference. Me, I'm an escalation guy.

That's what I like. And I'm happy to just serve some warmed over Tom Schelling to people with a dash of John Steinberg.

Aaron 23:21

And James Acton, friend of the pod. Friend of the pod. And yeah, I guess we can wrap it up here. I've come down to conclusions that I think it's going to be okay, right? Yeah. But like what else is there to really think, right? Because otherwise you really are in the endless summer. Just you can't surf in Australia in the winter.

And in there – I screwed that one up.

Jeffrey 23:44

I mean there's an on the beach joke.

Aaron 23:47

I was about to make it. I was going to make it. Yeah, exactly.

Jeffrey 23:51

I mean I think your observation about Putin in the air of flat stewardesses remains true.

Aaron 23:57

I have very few things that I'll go to my grave with but I want that on my tombstone.

Jeffrey 24:03

This is a wealthy man who wishes to retain his wealth and power. And his access to Aeroflot stewardesses. Yes. I mean, what is the point of being a wealthy, powerful man in your 70s if not? I mean, that is the worldview that's on display. And so while I believe we must be committed to Preventing him from winning, right?

That we must inflict a defeat on him. It is clear to me that the escalation limit is that we can't make him think that accepting that defeat, he has to both A, believe he cannot achieve the victory he seeks, But he can't also – he must also not believe that accepting that defeat will mean the end of his reign.

Right. So there's a sweet spot in there, and we have to keep policy sort of firmly in that middle zone, you know, all the while hoping for, you know, what is inevitable. You know, like – Joe Stalin stroked out. Everyone dies. He will not run Russia forever. It is – it's not possible.

Aaron 25:23

It's not possible. And so maybe the red line, the firebreak we're looking for is to ensure that wherever he is laying domicile and wherever he can do the things that rich men get to do is off limits and the war is kept far away even if Western weapons are pounding targets inside his borders.

Jeffrey 25:44

Yeah, I mean, there are elaborations on that too, right? Shaping what the people around him think and so on. But yeah, I think fundamentally you're right. And honestly, it's the search for tacit firebreaks.

Aaron 25:57

That'd be the title of your next op-ed. The title, Our. Next op-ed. Next op-ed. Not the Aeroflot.

Jeffrey 26:06

Not writing that shit below.

Aaron 26:08

Not the Aeroflot.

Jeffrey 26:10

Not the discreet charm of Aeroflot stewardesses.

Aaron 26:13

The world's going to be okay because Aaron watched Vladimir Putin smiling with a bunch of attractive ladies and was like, you know what? This guy wants to stick around.

Jeffrey 26:24

I mean, deterrence is not sophisticated stuff, right? No, it's not. Deterrence is visceral. It's money, power, sex, death. Those are the things, man.

Aaron 26:37

Yep, and that could be the – I'm sure that was also captured in your rock and roll podcast as well.

Jeffrey 26:45

Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Hickey has an appropriately skeptical view of these humans that rivals even my view of world leaders for – some would say cynicism. I would say clear-eyed realism.

Aaron 26:59

Clear-eyed realism. You are the Kenneth Waltz for the 21st century. Now we're really off the rails. Kill me now. He knows. Maybe we'll be off on that endless summer and you'll be dead. And so will I. But with that, I think we've nailed it. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast to sign up to be a member. Join the Slack channel where you too can count access points on Russian missiles.

You too can be cited in the Washington Post and things like The Economist and join the Star Wars bar of arms control OSINT community. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast. With that, Jeffrey, good to talk to you.

Jeffrey 27:39

Good to talk to you, Aaron.