Barry Hastings: Russian nuke policy is playing with fire

by Barry Hastings

Never believe a man who’s always telling you to “Believe me.”

The Sunday morning news/talk shows on all the major (believable) networks were 85 percent Trump and the Russian connection. James Clapper told Americans “No President can order a phone tap. Only the FISA court can order it done.” Leon Pinetta told the President, and America, “Trump is doing the same thing other presidents have done, trying to obfuscate the truth by raising other, unrelated issues when they’re in trouble, rather than trying to get in front of the problem he’s facing, and instead trying to cover it up.”

Several commentators, on several networks, noted, “There’s too much smoke here, not too much fire.” Trump, our President, is not even clear about how the government he’s (supposedly) running works. As a former Obama staffer noted in a tweet to Trump Saturday, “The President, by law, cannot order a tap on any citizen. The law was passed to protect citizens from people like you. “

I told the publisher of this site some time ago (a couple of months), I smelled a bigger scandal here than Watergate. Rather than irritate people by beating on Trump again, I’m going to give you a synopsis of an article from a source anyone can pretty easily check out, and, unless you’re as paranoid as the Donald, believe.

The following is based on an article in this month’s issue of the U.S. Naval Institute’s magazine Proceedings. Titled “Escalate to De-escalate,” it was written by Dr. Mark B. Schneider, of the National Institute for Public Policy. Before retiring from the Department of Defense senior executive service, Schneider served in a number of positions within the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy, including Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, and as Representative to the Nuclear Arms Control Implementation Commissions. He also served in the senior Foreign Service as member of the State Department policy planning staff.

(Items in quotation marks are exact quotes of Schneider’s words.)

Schneider opens his summary with the statement, “U.S. and Russian views concerning nuclear weapons differ fundamentally. According to a 2012 National Intelligence Council Report, nuclear ambitions in the U.S. and Russia over the past 20 years have evolved in opposite directions. Reducing the rule of nuclear weapons in security strategy is a U.S. objective, while Russia is pursuing new concepts and capabilities for expanding the role of such weapons in its security strategy.”

Schneider writes that modern Russia’s nuclear strategy and doctrine are modeled after those of the (defunct) Soviet Union, which tried to dominate other nations by force. While the communist ideology is now gone, the old threat perception remains — they see the U.S. and NATO as primary enemies. Despite current economic problems, Russia continues to to put a large part of national resources into nuclear weapons. He believes they equate “great power” status with a nuclear capability, “which may exceed that of the rest of the world combined.” He says Russia’s main official news agency, ITAR-TASS, in 2009, stated that Russia probably had, “between 15,000 and 17,000 nuclear weapons.” He believes the decay in Russia’s conventional forces in the years following collapse of the Soviet Union made nuclear forces more important to Russia’s leaders.

Declassified Soviet and Warsaw Pact documents from the era indicate Soviet intentions to use nuclear weapons at the start of a general war against the West. “Today, Russian military doctrine reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in a conventional war,” in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons, “in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation and its allies.” This publicly stated Russian policy was developed by Vladimir Putin while he was Secretary of the Russian National Security Council in 2000, “and likely understates Russia’s thinking on the use of nuclear weapons.”

Schneider writes the 2010 and 2014 public versions of this doctrine read, “when the very existence of the state is under threat.” He adds that, at first glance this seems an improvement, but it is not. In 2009, Putin announced its policy on the use of nukes as an instrument of strategic deterrence, “would be in the ‘closed part’ of the new military doctrine.” As Schneider notes, “There would be no need to classify nuclear doctrine if it is the same as the public version.” Then, Secretary of the Russian National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, announced in February 2010, “We have corrected the conditions for for use of nuclear weapons to resist aggression with conventional forces not only in large-scale wars, but also in regional or even a local one.” A month later, Patrushev said the new doctrine, “did not rule out a nuclear strike targeting a potential aggressor, including a pre-emptive strike, in situations critical to national security.”

In December 2009, then-commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces Lt. General Audrey Shvaychenko declared, “In a conventional war, nuclear ICBM’s ensure that the opponent is forced to cease hostilities on advantageous conditions for Russia, by means of a single or multiple preventive strikes against the aggressors’ most important facilities. In a nuclear war, they ensure destruction of facilities of the opponent’s military and economic potential by means of an initial massive nuclear missile strike and subsequent multiple and single nuclear missile strikes,” in what Russia terms, “de-escalation of a conflict.”

Russia began to simulate first use of nuclear weapons in 1999 in large-theater war exercises. Schneider says the Russian press has, for many years, reported on large scale military exercises that ended with massive (simulated) nuclear strikes. “A 2010 exercise ended in with hundreds of simulated nuclear launches. The same thing resulted in a 2014 exercise early in the Ukraine crisis. In May, 2014, Putin himself presided over an exercise resulting in what the Defense Ministry called, “A massive nuclear missile launch.” Less than two years ago, Ilya Kramnik, a military correspondent for the news agency RIA Novosti, wrote that the 2010 revision of Russian military doctrine, “further lowered” the threshold for combat use of nuclear weapons.

Dr. Schneider writes that Russia is extensively modernizing nuclear forces to be able to, “de-escalate a conflict,” using a small number of nuclear strikes, and then, if necessary, launch a massive strike. The Russian nuclear armory includes more than a dozen new types of strategic delivery missiles, and new, precision low yield nuclear weapons.

He quotes from a now de-classified 2000 CIA document linking Russian nuclear doctrine to its new precision, low yield warheads. “Moscow’s military doctrine on the the use of nuclear weapons has been evolving and has served as justification for development of very low yield, high-precision nuclear weapons,” the document concludes. Some of the low-yield weapons have been built for submarine-launched missiles. They’re also, according to Schneider, developing low-collateral damage weapons.

According to retired Vice Admiral Robert Monroe, former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, “Russia has followed exactly the opposite course from the U.S. It has focused on low-yield weapons research, design, testing and production.”

In June, 2015, American Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and Vice Chairman of of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld observed, “Russian military doctrine includes what some have called an ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy — “purportedly seeking to de-escalate a conventional conflict through coercive threats, including limited nuclear use.” Their statement categorized this strategy as, “Playing with fire.”

In 2016, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said, “Across the Atlantic, we’re refreshing NATO’s playbook to better integrate conventional and nuclear deterrence to ensure we plan and train like we’d fight and to deter Russia from nuclear use in a conflict with NATO, trying to to ‘escalate to de-escalte, as they call it.” He gave no further details.

Dr. Schneider says he believes deterring low-yield strikes is critical because small nuclear strikes could, “easily escalate into large-scale nuclear war.” He believes the U.S. must make an in-kind retaliatory response more credible, and do so at a minimum cost.

He says there are options for doing so. The Brits have a submarine launched Trident missile capability in which such missiles have only one warhead, probably with a lower than usual yield. Schneider says our navy could acquire a similar system at minimal cost through a program now underway – a warhead life extension program. Planning for enabling NATO aircraft are also underway.

Getting these programs up and operational, will, according to Dr. Schneider, “Be an important task for the Trump Administration.”

If they can ever get their act together, and they’re far from it today.