Tense situations that prompt nuclear threats occur when one (or more) of three conditions exist: when the state issuing threats feels weak in some important respects, when other means of suasion are unsuccessful, and when the stakes involved are exceptionally high. Examples abound. Kim Jong-un threatens nuclear devastation when U.S. and South Korean troops carry out joint exercises. The United States resorted to not-so-veiled nuclear threats against China when bogged down in the Korean War. Nikita Khrushchev used veiled threats during the Berlin crisis. (“It is best for those who are thinking of war not to imagine that distances will save them.”) Pakistan employed nuclear threats when both armies mobilized after the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by extremists based in Pakistan. New Delhi threatened massive retaliation if Rawalpindi resorted to first use.
To threaten mushroom clouds when the stakes are low (see Kim Jong-un, above) devalues the currency. Ditto for repeated threats of mushroom clouds. Multiple nuclear threats are once again emanating from the Kremlin. NATO’s advance eastward and Vladimir Putin’s actions to reassert Russia’s sphere of influence along its periphery are the proximate causes.
Time, once again, to pull Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (1987) by Richard Betts from the bookshelf. Here are some passages:
Confusion is the central reality of beliefs about nuclear leverage. The source simultaneously of potential political clout and potential military disaster. Confusion can be used against against an enemy by increasing his uncertainty and encouraging caution, but it also widens the range for miscalculation…
In the first twenty years of the postwar era… presidents and their principal advisers often appeared to make the [nuclear] threats without carefully thinking through whether they would be willing to initiate the use of nuclear weapons as implied by their signals or what the consequences would be if they did. They focused more on the political imperative of blocking the adversary’s advance than on the danger of war if the enemy refused to desist and the dispute intensified.
From the record of American deliberations during past crises, it is hard to argue that any of the Soviet threats were effective; indeed, they provoked more than deterred.
If direct confrontations recur, they will probably be over peripheral areas that become central or over local conflicts that spill into more crucial arenas.
Moscow might be willing to push Washington to the brink. Or if Moscow shares Washington’s view of the balance of interests at stake in a confrontation, if Soviet protestations … are not only illegitimate in U.S. eyes but disingenuous in theirs as well, the balance of resolve will favor the U.S. position and lessen the likelihood that the Soviets would stand up to a U.S. threat.