The Pointed Threat Of Russia's Nukes In Belarus

There has been a long debate about what the term TNW means. In 2018, thendefense secretary Jim Mattis said :“I don't think there is any such thing as a 'tactical nuclear weapon.' Any nuclear weapon used any time is a strategic game-changer.”

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) defines a TNW as“any weapon that's not been classified as“strategic” under US-Russian arms control agreements (SALT, SORT, START).” According to ICAN, these weapons can have explosive yields of up to 300 kilotons, or 20 times the force of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

In terms of delivery, they tend to have shorter ranges of around 310 miles and can be delivered by missiles or torpedoes, or dropped from aircraft. They are designed to be used on the battlefield . Russia is thought to have about ten times as many tactical nuclear warheads as NATO.

Current Russian nuclear doctrine outlines four cases in which it would use its nuclear weapons. The first three cases are currently largely inapplicable given no one is attacking or threatening Russia with ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons.

The last case is rather intriguing though. It says that Russia would use its nuclear weapons in case of“aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” It is worth breaking down this scenario.

First of all, the concept of aggression means different things to Russia than to others. For example, Russia sees NATO's enlargement as a hostile act .

Second, Russia has a different interpretation of what Russian territory entails, as the sham referendums organized by Russia occupied by Russian troops indicate. So retaking parts of Ukraine now seen by Moscow as Russian territory could count as“aggression against the Russian Federation” under the guidelines.

Then there is Russia's often contested policy ,“escalate to de-escalate .” This essentially means that a key part of Russia's nuclear doctrine holds that to de-escalate a non-nuclear (conventional) conflict, Russia would have to escalate it first through the threat of a limited or tactical nuclear strike.

This raises the question of whether, if Russia's war in Ukraine is in danger of failing altogether, the Kremlin might interpret the prospect of losing as a motivation to invoke this principle.

Medvedev expressed this most clearly in July when he said :“Imagine if the ... offensive, which is backed by NATO, was a success and they tore off a part of our land, then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia. There would simply be no other option.”

So the Kremlin's decision to deploy some of its tactical weapons to Belagives these concerns an added dimension. Belapresident, Alexander Lukashenko, has warned about what he called“the rapid militarization of Eastern Europe and the increased military activities of theand NATO.”

On a separate occasion, he commented :“God forbid I have to make a decision to use those weapons today, but there would be no hesitation if we face an aggression.” At least it is generally accepted that any decision regarding the weapons would be taken in Moscow rather than in Minsk .

Russia's nuclear forces have been on“high alert” since February 2022, days after the invasion began. The country's leaders have repeatedly warned of the possibility of their use. And now Moscow has deployed warheads in its client-state neighbor.

Veronika Poniscjakova is a senior teaching fellow in military education at the University of Portsmouth .

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .