Deterring Russian Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons: A Revised Approach

Kryuchkov—notorious for his paranoia about the West— had visited the West and rarely interacted with its leaders.16 Soviet experiences in World War II, the increasing disparity in the US and Soviet economies and technological abilities, and the Soviet awareness of their military vulnerabilities led Soviet leadership to consider the worst as they observed an aggressive US administration ratchet up. [...] The security-conscious Soviet Politburo and intelligence services believed that as the West gained real and perceived strategic power advantages, the likelihood of a US first strike increased, and this misperception generated a genuine concern that it was in the interest, if not the intention, of the United States to launch a surprise first strike. [...] Among other conditions, this policy states that Russia reserves the right to transition to the use of nuclear weapons “in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy” or in the event of an “attack by [an] adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, [the] disr. [...] The more a force protects itself in opaque armored vehicles and alienates itself from the population, the less safe the force may become in the long run and the less effective it will be in achieving the political objective. [...] The views and opinions expressed in Parameters are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.