Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to use nuclear weapons, just as he doesn’t want to still fight his “special military operation” against Ukraine. But he is still fighting — because he’s unable to win. That also means he might yet drop a nuke, as he once again threatened this week. The U.S. and its allies — and Putin’s putative friends in China and elsewhere — need to decide now how they’d react.
For Putin, nuclear escalation wouldn’t be a way of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, but of snatching survival — political or even physical — from the maw of oblivion. Unlike democratic leaders, he has no way to retire gracefully after all the damage he’s done. As a quack historian of the Tsars, he knows that his end could be messy.
This is why he might dust off a Russian doctrine that Western analysts call “escalate to de-escalate.” It means going nuclear to avoid losing a conventional (non-nuclear) war. Putin would detonate one or more “tactical” (as opposed to “strategic”) nukes. These are low-yielding blasts large enough to eliminate a Ukrainian army position or logistics hub — but too “small” to erase an entire city.
