With Nuclear Threats, Putin Plays the West Like a Fiddle

In June 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of a “growing barrage of information attacks unleashed against Russia,” one of numerous times the Kremlin has accused the West of engaging in psychological mind games. In fact, it is the West that has let itself be manipulated by the Kremlin’s calibrated influence operations. Among these, Putin’s most effective tactic has been to use nuclear blackmail to play on Western fears of escalating the war in Ukraine. He has repeatedly used this tactic to successfully deter the West from scaling up military aid to Ukraine, providing new types of weapons, and fully backing Kyiv’s victory over Moscow.

These manipulations mirror the old Soviet technique of reflexive control, which refers to a sustained campaign of feeding an opponent information that has been crafted to push that opponent to act, out of its own volition, in the Kremlin’s interest. In the context of Russia’s war to subjugate Ukraine, Putin knows that nothing better pushes the West’s buttons than threats of nuclear escalation.

Putin has relied on Western fears of nuclear escalation to manipulate Ukraine’s supporters in Washington, Berlin, and other Western capitals. The result has been self-deterrence out of fear of pushing Putin too far. The Biden administration, in particular, has allowed itself to be played by Putin in this way. It has limited military aid, placed strict restrictions on how Ukraine can use certain weapons, and delayed the required permission for various NATO allies to reexport U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine. If the United States and its allies truly want Ukraine to win, it is high time to see through the Kremlin’s manipulation.

Russia rolled out its nuclear escalation game as soon as the war started in February 2022. As a warning to the West not to stand in its way, Russia placed its nuclear force on high alert. In September 2022, Putin warned the West to take his nuclear weapons threats seriously. A few weeks later, U.S. President Joe Biden reminded Americans that the world was facing possible nuclear “Armageddon,” and, like Pavlov’s famous dog, the Western news media couldn’t help but jump on lurid scenarios of World War III. Out of fear of escalation, the Biden administration has refused to send various weapons to Ukraine, including longer-range missiles, such as Army Tactical Missile Systems.

The Kremlin saw that its tactic worked. This June, Belarusian strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko publicly confirmed that Russia was moving tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus; the following week, Biden warned that this constituted a credible threat of Putin using nuclear weapons in the war. And just last week, Russia announced that it had placed the advanced Sarmat nuclear missile system on “combat duty,” warning Moscow’s enemies to “think twice.”

Putin is fully aware that the memory of the Cold War and its ever-present threat of nuclear war lingers in people’s minds—and that any talk of a nuclear attack automatically triggers an Armageddon scenario in the collective memory. And so he and his helpers never tire of pressing the nuclear fear button.

Russia’s rhetoric thus conjures up images of World War III, threatens the use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and accuses Kyiv of planning to blow up a nuclear reactor (when, in fact, it is Russia that has booby-trapped the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant). All of this is calculated to grab Western news headlines, inspire fear, and create political pressure on Western leaders, who believe they are reacting rationally to real potential outcomes. Nearly imperceptibly, the Kremlin’s messages are thus influencing Western thinking and all but forcing decisions to support Moscow’s objectives.

While Russia’s nuclear threats make many Western policymakers uncomfortable, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, believes that Russia is bluffing. He is probably correct, especially given the very high priority given to influence operations in Russian thinking. The Russian Defense Ministry website officially states: “Information war is the confrontation between two or more states in the information space … a massive psychological manipulation of the population to destabilize the state and society, as well as coercion of the state to take decisions for the benefit of the opposing force.”

Of course, we do not know what Putin is willing to do. CIA Director William Burns said “potential desperation” could lead Putin to order the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Putin, however, has no rational incentive to use nukes. First, in absence of outright victory, his main strategy is to settle in for a protracted war, either exhausting the West’s desire and ability to support Ukraine or waiting for the U.S. and other elections to produce a more Russia-friendly leader, and a nuclear standoff could get in the way of that preferred outcome. Second, China and India—two important partners on which Russia relies—appear to have warned Putin already against using nuclear weapons. And third, any radioactive fallout in Ukraine would likely float into Russia given short distances and the region’s prevailing westerly winds.

But the nuclear question isn’t about strategic reality—it’s about successfully manipulating the West. When a journalist asked then-French Defense Minister Florence Parly if her country’s military should be sent to defend Ukraine, her rejoinder was: “Do you want a nuclear war?” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany takes Putin’s nuclear threats “very seriously—anything else would be frivolous.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, defending Germany’s continued reluctance to supply Ukraine with better weapons, warned that “there must be no nuclear war.” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto emphasized that Russia may resort to nuclear weapons “if the point of no return is passed, if they risk defeat.”

Other prominent public figures play into the Kremlin’s manipulation as well. U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned that “we are now at the edge of nuclear war,” while former U.S. President Donald Trump—who called Putin “genius” and “savvy” for invading Ukraine—said that “first come the tanks, then come the nukes.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has adopted a host of Kremlin talking points, added to the nuclear hysteria as well. If pushed into a corner by Ukraine, he inquired, “why wouldn’t [Putin] use those nuclear weapons?” Former U.S. Rep Tulsi Gabbard claimed that Biden is pushing toward an imminent nuclear war “would destroy the world as we know it.” Score all this rhetoric as a win for the Kremlin.

It’s high time for Washington to see through Putin’s games and stop amplifying the fears Moscow is deliberately instilling. The first step is changing the content of the conversation. To this end, Biden said that if Russia were to use nuclear weapons, it will “become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been.” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan threatened “catastrophic consequences” if Russia escalated to using nuclear weapons. This is a good start: Instead of amplifying the Kremlin’s messaging with Armageddon scenarios, the argument must be about what would happen if Putin used them. One consequence could be nonnuclear retaliation, such as the destruction of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet.

More fundamentally, what’s missing in most Western governments is a comprehensive, strategic effort to address Russian influence operations and other means of manipulation. One immediate step would be for Biden to issue an executive order requiring every U.S. department and agency head to commit to a governmentwide response to counter psychological and information warfare directed at the United States. This would go far to increase awareness of these operations, decrease their effectiveness, and direct more resources at the problem.

Biden should also designate a department or agency to coordinate the United States’ own information operations, with the aim of countering adversaries’ messaging and ensuring that these operations are coordinated among various parts of government. The U.S. National Security Council, relying on key departments and agencies, should promote and coordinate similar efforts among U.S. allies and partners.

In addition, Biden could enlist the help of Congress to expand the scope and resources of the U.S. Global Engagement Center, which currently has a mostly defensive mission focused on discovering and understanding foreign propaganda. This is all for good but woefully inadequate for winning a high-stakes information war. With little appetite in Washington for reestablishing the U.S. Information Agency, which helped counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, expanding the Global Engagement Center’s mission to include offensive operations in the information space would help build resilience against foreign influence operations and strengthen U.S. national security.

The West should not fall prey to Russia’s psychological games. It is time for the Biden administration to stop acting the way Putin plans for it to act. Since the end of the Cold War, Washington’s use of information operations has deteriorated amid a fixation on hard power. Russia, meanwhile, has achieved significant successes through psychological warfare. It is time for policymakers to understand how Russia is manipulating Western decision-making processes—and respond forcefully.

foreignpolicy.com