... where escalation toward a nuclear confrontation lacks any strategic logic. Glenn Snyder once described this as the “stability–instability paradox.” Consequently, in today’s context, the proxy war waged by the United States and its allies against Russia is not a “bug” but a “feature” of nuclear deterrence.
This paradox is confirmed not only in theory but also in historical practice. At a minimum, the Vietnam and Afghan conflicts of the bipolar era constituted proxy wars in which one nuclear superpower confronted the other indirectly; ...
China is narrowing the gap and adding complexity to Russian–US strategic nuclear deterrence relations
In recent years, the missile and nuclear forces of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have undergone serious qualitative and quantitative changes. This causes concern in the United States and among its allies in the ...
... the Pentagon, and it is possible to push for more.
How will Russia and China respond to a major build-up of U.S. strategic nuclear forces?
Aleksey Arbatov:
Nuclear Doctrine and Strategic Stability
Strict numerical parity is not essential for credible nuclear deterrence. Russia has not even maxed out its New START limits, often falling well below them (especially in terms of deployed delivery vehicles, which are the most expensive to produce and maintain). But given that the U.S. has nuclear-armed allies, a substantial ...
... duty.
Nuclear deterrence can essentially be interpreted as a specific foreign policy tool—the threat to use nuclear weapons to prevent an adversary from implementing certain actions. The 2020 policy paper “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence”
spells out
the possible actions by other states that should be prevented through the capacity and readiness to launch a nuclear strike. First, is “the reception of reliable information on a launch of ballistic missiles attacking ...
Kiev is the most vulnerable party in any development of the situation—both radical and basic. The question is the price for all participants. The price for Ukraine will be the highest
Russia and the West are going through another stage of military-political escalation. Its immediate indicator was Ukraine’s use of American and British missile systems to strike Russian territory, the emergence of Moscow’s new nuclear doctrine, the ...
Russia’s leading experts on the new Russia’s nuclear doctrine
On November 19, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin
signed
Executive Order Approving the Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence. The new nuclear doctrine incorporates the changes announced by Mr. Putin at a meeting on nuclear deterrence on September 25, 2024. What is the main difference between the new doctrine and the previous version? How can the new doctrine ...
... response to the Ukraine crisis alone
During a meeting of the Russian Security Council standing conference on nuclear deterrence on September 25, it was announced that changes would be made to the document titled “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence.” At the time of writing, the revised version of the document had not yet been signed into law by presidential decree, but this is expected to happen soon. Nevertheless, it is already possible to share some considerations on the upcoming ...
... Seoul, which established the Nuclear Consultative Group and approved (on the margins of the NATO summit) the Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula.
New coalition and alliance constructs resembling NATO are taking ... ... the notional Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, in the rhetoric and documents of the United States and some of its allies, Russia, China, Iran and the DPRK are increasingly often appearing in a bundle as a kind of “quartet of evil.” They (together ...
... Pentagon’s desire to create a broad regional missile defense infrastructure in Asia Pacific to meet the country’s unique nuclear deterrence needs [
5
]. Notably, no country of East Asia, in whole or in part, has ever expressed its intentions to unprovokedly ... ... bases, warships in East Asia and the high concentration of destruction capacity in the area of the Taiwan Strait, as well as Russia’s alleged deployment of missile weapons with an intermediate range of 3,500 to 5,500 km.
In the opinion of
some U.S....
... explicit mentioning of escalation concepts in official doctrines, there is understanding within Russia that conflict escalation can be inflicted through the ‘
application of calibrated damage
’. By placing an increased emphasis on ‘
strategic non-nuclear deterrence
’ since 2014, Russia has raised the threshold for nuclear use. That being said, while some of the Russian vehicles like the
Avangard
hypersonic glide vehicle and the sea- and land-based Tsirkon hypersonic missile are
explicitly designed for nuclear payloads
, other,...
