The question that’s currently asked everywhere is whether Russia will now escalate to use of tactical nuclear weapons after Biden’s regime deliberately crossed their red line of using long-range missiles to strike Russia proper.
It’s a complicated matter, because the Americans are applying their way of thinking to the Russians, and the Russians run a different algorithm. Basically, they are playing poker, and the Russians are playing chess. In poker, there is a concept of bluffing, and at some discrete point the cards are revealed, and the Schroedinger’s cat box is opened; basically, probabilistic uncertainty collapses into certainty and you have a binary outcome. The Russians are developing a multi-dimensional self-serving strategy; essentially, they want to ensure a long-term positive outcome for themselves, and they don’t believe in a zero-sum game thing, where others have to lose in order for them to win. From a Russian perspective, others have to lose only if they decide to play such a game that positive outcome for Russia isn’t possible while they exist. This means that Russia has no problem with multiple powerful actors on a world stage that each play their own game and try to be successful in their own way, as long as that allows Russia to mind its own business and prosper – basically, trade freely with others, cooperate with others in science, technology, sports, art etc., and not have implacable foes accumulate weapons and armies at their borders.
Russian self-serving strategy means they would very much like to avoid any outcome where Russia enters a mutual-destruction pact with America. Russia would prefer it if America blew off steam and made their arrogant posturing, while Russia creates the alternative UN with BRICS, basically excluding America and their vassals but keeping everything else that’s useful in the international relations, so that they can all trade and cooperate freely while America sanctions itself out of existence and their economy implodes. Basically, the Russians are buying time, because they understand economics well enough to know that America is hollowed out, unsustainable and in too much debt to be able to continue as it is now; why have a nuclear war where everybody dies, when they can just wait for America to go bankrupt and thus solve the problem peacefully, and they end up winning by default?
The problem is, the guys who are running America knew this much before the Russians figured it out, and I don’t think they will allow this. If I could plot out this scenario, it’s quite obvious that the American analysts plotted it out as well. The problem with every strategy is that the opponent will actively resist outcomes that are highly unfavorable to them.
Also, this makes Russia very averse to any kind of radical moves, which makes them susceptible to “salami tactics” – basically, if the opponents slices up aggressive strategy into small chunks, each of which is too small to warrant extreme reaction, you end up with an entire salami up your ass before you know it. It’s a game theory thing – and the Americans invented game theory. Basically, they count on the fact that a self-serving actor will respond to a small provocation with conciliatory moves rather than resort to mutually destructive action, and even if some moves will then have to be reversed, it will be just the last salami slice, not the whole damn thing; essentially, you will be in a position to revoke the last centimeter of a kilometer-long encroachment, and even appear to be a reasonable peacemaker when your victim eventually turns aggressive.
The additional problem is that Putin sees himself as a savior of Russia, and you can’t be a savior of Russia if you react in such ways as to start a nuclear war. Also, he likes to see himself as a Christian, so he would rather try turning the other cheek, and giving you his shirt after you’ve stolen his coat. He is very much inclined to try all kinds of peaceful and diplomatic solutions before resorting to war, and in war he will try to use the minimum force necessary to accomplish goals.
As a result, there is now a widespread understanding in Russia that the concept of deterrence is broken, and the enemies of Russia feel that they can do whatever they want with impunity, because nuclear war is off the table as long as they don’t use nukes first. They feel this to be unacceptable and harmful to their long term goals, because if their enemies are not deterred from messing with them, all kinds of mischief will continue in perpetuity, and they are pretty much tired of it now. This means that various powerful and influential actors within Russia are mounting pressure on Putin to put nuclear weapons back on the table, and this has been going on for quite a while, and the most recent concession Putin had to make is the change of the official doctrine for use of nuclear weapons.
The problem with this doctrine is that in itself it does nothing to establish deterrence – there are too many scalars and not enough Booleans. It’s all “if an attack is estimated to be large enough, we might…”, and no “if any violation of this principle is observed, use of nuclear weapons in response is obligatory”. Also, the reason why American deterrence works is not the fact that America has nuclear weapons, it’s the fact that they used nuclear weapons on two cities, so everybody knows they are crazy enough to actually do it. Russia never used nukes against an enemy, so there is doubt if they are actually willing to use them at all, and Putin did absolutely nothing to eliminate this uncertainty; in fact, he contributed to the problem. In order for deterrence to work, your adversaries must think you’re reasonable enough to deal with normally, but crazy enough to kill everybody if you’re fucked with enough.
That’s why there were calls in Russia to perform a nuclear test and show that nukes are on the table, but that obviously won’t work, because it doesn’t show you’re willing to use them against your opponent if encroached upon; it shows you’re willing to detonate them in some wasteland.
In order for Russia to be taken seriously, they will have to use a thermonuclear weapon against a densely populated military installation of their opponent upon encroachment. This makes the present situation very serious, because if Russia doesn’t make the Bryansk attack a point where they respond with nuclear weapons against American military installations in the first ring of support around Ukraine, further encroachments will follow and there will be no deterrence whatsoever to inhibit them, eventually causing a full nuclear exchange. On the other hand, the Americans are just waiting for use of nuclear weapons from Russia to justify their own nuclear attack, which will lead to a full nuclear exchange. So it’s a tree of options where every branch eventually leads to the same outcome, which is why Putin would prefer to avoid the whole thing and just wait for America to go bankrupt and have a civil war across the damn ocean and leave the rest of the world alone finally; however, he won’t be allowed that option. This has to be dawning to the Russian analysts as well, which is why the pressure is mounting on Putin to create a psychological wall of credible deterrence that was lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The entire situation is an explosive mixture, and I’m taking it quite seriously.
