Russia’s Successful Nuclear Deterrence

Under what conditions would Russia be willing to use tactical nuclear weapons? It is important to understand that nuclear weapons are mainly psychological weapons. They are meant for psychological deterrence, mainly not to be used, as using strategic nuclear weapons is out of question in Europe. This surely opens the question under what circumstances and where and how Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons? Russia has recently engaged in substantial and successful psychological warfare to convince the United States that Ukraine cannot be allowed to win strategically or Russia will resort to tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. However, in order to destroy the Ukrainian resistance with tactical nuclear weapons Russia would have to destroy much of Ukraine since Ukrainian forces are not concentrated in a few military bases but are spread out throughout wide areas. Rather, Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would even further galvanize the Ukrainian resistance. It is quite disappointing that US intelligence has naively bought into this transparent Russian disinformation campaign. Moscow would in contrast be willing to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO targets particularly considering that Russia has far more tactical nuclear weapons than its NATO adversaries and could use them to deter NATO forces from resisting a Russian invasion of the European Union.