1706602063
You can also listen to the article as an audio version.
Several European leaders have warned of war in recent weeks.
We heard, for example, from German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, British Defense Minister Grant Shapps, and Danish Admiral and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer that the danger of a Russian attack on one of the European NATO states was real. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said the risk could occur even in three to five years. The head of the Norwegian armed forces, Eirik Kristoffersen, and the head of the Polish National Security Office, Jacek Siewiera, also cited three years as a realistic perspective.
One of the oft-repeated messages of these warnings is that European armed forces have been so underfunded in recent years and decades that if we do not change that, we may not have enough forces to deter or potentially repel Russia with conventional force.
But shouldn’t nuclear power also protect NATO countries from attacks that should actually deter everyone? After all, no one wants to take the risk of going to war with several states that have nuclear weapons. Has the world, or at least politicians and generals from Europe, stopped believing in nuclear deterrence?
The answers were very different. But they agreed on one thing. None of the interviewees gave a positive answer to the above question.
“Nuclear deterrence is not a magic wand”
According to Smetana, current events in the world and the statements of European representatives do not signal a weakening of the importance of nuclear deterrence, since nuclear deterrence itself has never worked as easily as the question suggests.
“Nuclear deterrence has not disappeared,” Smetana told Seznam Zprávám, adding that possessing the so-called guaranteed second-strike capability gives nuclear powers “some insurance against a possible existential threat from other states.”
According to Smetana, anyone planning an attack on a nuclear power with the aim of destroying that state is still probably on a suicide mission.
“It is also still the case that states are afraid of an uncontrollable escalation to the nuclear level in a conventional conflict,” Smetana added, pointing to the case of Ukraine and the West’s cautious stance in supporting it. According to the expert, if the Russian nuclear arsenal did not exist, it would probably be qualitatively different in many key moments.
However, according to Smetana, it has always been the case with nuclear deterrence that it is not a “magic wand” with which one can automatically force the enemy to do something.
The effectiveness of deterrence is determined not only by the capability itself, but also by the credibility of the threat. And since even the limited use of nuclear weapons carries an enormous risk of further escalation and political costs, it cannot be credibly threatened every time, the expert said.
According to Smetana, a nuclear threat to NATO would be entirely credible, for example in the event of an existential attack on states with nuclear arsenals such as the USA, France or Great Britain. Completely unbelievable, for example, in an attempt to end a conflict in which only an indirect NATO ally is attacked.
In the event of an attack on European allies, the credibility of the nuclear threat since the Cold War would be questionable, said Smetana. Since then, NATO has maintained nuclear deterrence in the event of an existential attack and conventional deterrence in the event of a lower-intensity aggression.
“What we are seeing now is not significantly different in its logic from the Cold War – with one major exception that Russia is conventionally significantly weaker than the Soviet Union,” the analyst concluded.
“Nuclear deterrence no longer offers security for a long time”
The feat offered a different perspective. Even he does not believe that anything has changed recently on the issue of nuclear deterrence. But he believes it because he considers nuclear deterrence to be weak because “it does not provide security and does not achieve anything.”
“Even if we were to imagine an extreme situation in which, for example, the current tensions in the Middle East culminate in a direct attack by Iran on Israel, Israel could theoretically consider the so-called strategic use of nuclear weapons aimed at paralyzing the enemy and causing him to die force surrender. But that can only be achieved by killing a lot of people. And if it is just a demonstration, then you are not demonstrating that you are capable of destroying the enemy’s army, his factories or any other strategic goal, but that you are able and willing to destroy many people to kill . And I think that at this point it is simply clear that killing large numbers of people is politically unacceptable,” Podvig explained his point of view using the example of the current tensions in the Middle East.
US nuclear weapons in Britain
Washington is responding to the growing threat from Moscow by stationing nuclear weapons in Great Britain. According to security expert Lukáš Visingro, the next country could be Poland.
According to the expert, calculations and considerations about the use of nuclear weapons and thus nuclear deterrence always come up against this problem, namely the unreliability of the nuclear threat. “It can’t be done without killing a lot of people. Everyone knows this and awareness of it is growing. We have the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and then there are all the statements from the G20 countries, but also from China and perhaps even India, condemning nuclear threats. I think the message is clear: this just won’t be done,” he said.
“But I don’t mean that deterrence doesn’t work at all,” Podvig added to his view, even before the question arose about whether the functionality of deterrence in the case of Russia and its ability to dissuade the West from giving Ukraine more support has not been proven.
“I’m not even talking about whether nuclear deterrence works or not in this matter. It can work sometimes. But I mean, he never does anything good. If we look at it in the case of Russia, yes, Russia used nuclear weapons so that it could afford to attack Ukraine and not have to worry about Western involvement. But what was it for? After all, Russia would have been much better off if it had not started the war in the first place. “That is simply true, whether we look at it from an economic, political and, above all, security perspective,” Podvig added.
According to Podvig, a Russian attack on Europe is highly unlikely. But nuclear deterrence does not play a major role.
“Claims of a Russian attack within three years are alarming”
Marion Messmer’s answers are in many ways the intersection of Smetana’s and Podvig’s views. In her opinion, the functionality of nuclear deterrence can certainly be doubted, but this applies in the long term. The statements made by European politicians change nothing and are more of an unnecessary fear among people than a signal of crumbling faith in nuclear deterrence.
“I think what has really changed nuclear deterrence in the modern era is the fact that more states have nuclear weapons and that we no longer have this bilateral power rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union,” the analyst said.
“If we look at Russia, for example, they obviously want to deter the US. But he also wants to deter European countries and China. And that’s how it is in almost every nuclear state. Most of them have to scare off at least two rivals. India wants to deter both Pakistan and China. The United States, Russia and also China,” she added.
According to Messmer, it is not at all certain and never has been that deterrence works and is exactly what precedes World War III or a clash of great powers. “We can’t say if it ever worked. Pro-nuclear weapons will tell you this, but I don’t think we can be entirely sure. We have no way of proving that it was nuclear weapons that secured peace. “It’s not as easy as some people think and claim,” said the expert.
In her opinion, nuclear weapons, Article 5 of the NATO founding treaty and collective self-defense are probably a sufficient threat to prevent Russia from attacking Europe. However, in her opinion, NATO’s “enormous conventional force” also acts as a deterrent, and it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the effects of these two types of deterrence.
According to Messmer, the warnings mentioned, at least those that say that Russia may attack within three to five years, are nothing more than alarmism.
“I do not suspect anyone that these statements were disingenuous. I really believe that when someone says that there is a danger that Russia will attack NATO in three years, then they believe it themselves. But at the same time, it is clear to me that these people (especially politicians) know very well that such a statement resonates with the audience. It would be more correct to say that the risk has really increased and that we need to invest in defense because we have not done so in the last 20 years. I fully support that. “But the politicians are probably afraid that it won’t work, and they know that certain statements work better,” she thought.
#Russia #attack #Europe #Experts #nuclear #deterrence #works #today