Worst Case Scenario – What Would Happen if Putin Decided To Go Nuclear?
America and NATO would have to react while avoiding WWIII.
Almost three months after the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, not a week goes by without Vladimir Putin raised the nuclear threat to the Western world. Thus, the worst-case scenario must always be considered. Putin could thus pronounce the two words synonymous with the worst for the world: “Go nuclear”.
These two words are often synonymous with going off the rails in English. This is not a coincidence.
The Kremlin, cornered and humiliated by a now plausible military defeat, could launch a tactical nuclear bomb on a Ukrainian site in a desperate attempt to turn the tables. This is at least what the Kremlin, which theatrically put its nuclear forces on alert just after the beginning of the invasion, on February 25, 2022, would like to persuade us so that the public opinion of the Western countries, terrorized, pushes its leaders to drop Ukraine.
Even if tactical nuclear bombs are less powerful than Hiroshima - 15 kilotons of TNT, a thousand times less than strategic bombs capable of leveling megacities - they are still ... nuclear. Their use would trigger a spiral whose outcome could be the annihilation of humanity. The Kremlin is probably bluffing, but some also believed that it would never invade Ukraine ...
A Russian nuclear strike remains unlikely, but we must be prepared for any eventuality. This is in substance what all the military experts of the Western world keep repeating. Putin's bluff does not work for the moment, considering the heavy Western arms deliveries that are intensifying week after week.
What would happen if Putin went through with it?
Let's think the unthinkable: the Russian president presses the red button to launch a two-kiloton bomb on Ukraine. He would then probably obtain the immediate surrender of Kyiv. How can we imagine that soldiers, no matter how brave, would continue to fight against an adversary determined to kill 40,000 fighters and civilians with a single missile?
Not to mention the panic caused by the deadly radiation. This is what caused Japan to surrender in a few hours in August 1945. All Ukrainians feared being executed by the occupier, and all those who refused to live under the Russian boot would then take the road to exile. Ten to fifteen million Ukrainian refugees in Europe overnight.
A surrender of Ukraine following the use of nuclear weapons would plunge the country into an endless guerrilla war
The war in Ukraine would not end for all that. It would simply change in nature, with “behind every window a babushka armed with a Kalash”, say the Ukrainians, where the Russian army would be deployed. Not to mention the thousands of anti-tank and anti-helicopter missiles supplied by the West, not yet used. Years of guerrilla warfare worse than Afghanistan in prospect ...
After a moment of stupefaction, the international community would need nerves of steel. The West could not stand idly by, that is obvious. New economic or diplomatic sanctions would seem derisory and a military response would probably be necessary, for example by destroying the Russian surface fleet. But without resorting to nuclear weapons or touching the Russian nuclear infrastructure, this would cause an uncontrollable escalation.
Retaliating, even in a conventional and limited way, could however push Vladimir Putin, who has just shown that he does not back down from anything, to outbid a NATO country with nuclear weapons. The ostentatious alerting of the nuclear forces and interception batteries of all the countries of the Alliance might not be enough to dissuade him. At the very least, conventional strikes by NATO would almost inevitably provoke Russian responses of the same order: in a word, a classic NATO-Russia war, a nightmare since the establishment of the Iron Curtain, because it would mean the beginning of the third world war.
To retaliate would therefore be risky, but not to do so would undoubtedly constitute an equivalent risk, just postponed. Indeed, if Russia could bring Ukraine to its knees with impunity, this would make tactical missiles no longer a tool of deterrence, and defense, but an instrument of coercion, and offensive. A disruption of the nuclear “grammar”, explains Peter Rosen, professor of military affairs at Harvard University, “that would give ideas” to China, North Korea, or other “little Putins”, not to mention those who, to avoid the fate of Kyiv, would hurry to acquire their arsenal: Taiwan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, South Korea, even Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, etc ...
Eventually fifty nuclear powers?
By using an atomic bomb at its convenience against a peaceful neighbor, almost as if it were an ordinary weapon, “Russia would destroy a keystone of the world security order,” summarizes Malcolm Davis, a member of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute: the Nagasaki taboo that has prevented the use of an atomic weapon since August 1945.
Such madness on the part of Putin would make Russia a global pariah for decades to come
The universal revulsion at this act and the ensuing planetary destabilization would make Russia a pariah state for years, even decades. Even the currently neutral African and Asian countries would be forced to cut off their ties, and probably even China, furious at seeing the world stability that ensures its prosperity shattered. The last countries still ensuring regular air links with Moscow, less than a dozen at present, would probably suspend them.
In addition to the dubious honor of seeing a resolution voted against it at the UN by, no doubt, 190 countries out of 193, Russia would no longer be able to sell its hydrocarbons because of the reputational risk, or of sanctions against its clients, of Westerners weighing 45% of the world's GDP. As these sales provide the majority of its foreign exchange and budgetary revenues, this would result (in addition to a surge in international black gold prices) in a vertiginous fall in the standard of living of the Russians and the bankruptcy of their state.
Enough to make the Kremlin hesitate. One can therefore try to reassure oneself by remembering that the Russian nuclear code is, it seems, divided into three and that Vladimir Putin would need the agreement of his Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and of the Chief of Staff, Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov reputed to be “reasonable”.
Even if the risk of seeing Putin use nuclear weapons remains very low, it is not zero, and in these conditions, it is not surprising to see the Western world thinking about the worst-case scenario for several weeks now, to be able to respond as quickly as possible if this were to happen.
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